72 hours can be brutally short, but they are, at least, more forgiving than 12, 24, or 48 hours. We measure time and expectations this way, our military minds stretching the limits of what is possible in a day. We refuse to say it can't be done, and, as a wise cross-country coach of mine used to say, "When we aim for what's impossible, we pass what is possible on the way." I feel this to be true, have seen it become true. It ennobles the gymnastics we do to "make it happen": the sense of urgency justifies the scrambling, the sleeplessness, the scribbling and furious typing and phoning. Our families, if they are sometimes agitated by the quick turnarounds, are often a little smug, too. They know they are tough. They know they are a kind of nomad. They know that they can weather things others never dream of. They hustle, take out the slack, help us through our packing lists, and all but stop the sun to get us ready to go out the door. They are a triumph of logistics, communication, intelligence and maneuver, and they keep us anchored in stormy seas, aiming steady when home is a moving target. I kiss my infant daughter and my husband on leaving, and it feels like a flip turn in the middle of a long swimming lap: I push, spring forward against my own current from a secure platform that allows me to displace the time that glides around and slips off of me.
In 72 hours, I am on an unfinished road that I have griped about many times before. The late-day trees are spectral, offering the rising tensions I used to feel when returning from vacation, back to work. Maybe, too, some regret clings to their boughs, cascading down with musty memories of things mismanaged, opportunities missed. I run, begin to revisit the site of old wounds, press them to see if they are still sore, much as I stretch travel- and workout-weary muscles, massaging them to feel the extent of the damage. Am I still that depressed person I was when last here? Am I able to trust, able to rejoice, able to abide? Can I once again push the "reset" button that had long stopped working the last time I stood outside that building near the corner, red-faced and seeing red? I retrace steps, old run routes, old commutes. Am I different enough? No one here would know to tell me: the faces all have changed. Am I resilient now, that thing that eluded me here?
Before showering, I release the pressure built up during a night of milk-making: just enough to tell my body to stop doing what I've asked it to do for ten months, to get ready instead to go to war. The war, representing so many human sacrifices--fueled by blood, sweat, sleepless months and tears. I heard this morning that it seems set back almost to day one because of one sergeant who left his base for a killing spree. I think of Afghan parents who have bloodstains where there used to be children, more collateral damage in a war difficult for anyone to understand. As a mother I am shocked again by what I have always known was possible and occurring; how anyone could be afforded or take the chance to hurt a child is beyond me. I ask what I imagine the parents ask, "God?!" and it isn't long before I have to start my shower to muffle the weeping. Crying in the shower, or in the rain, it's easier to hear that God is weeping, too.
I have clean, hot water, when so many do not. The steaming droplets catch and beam light. In the (renovated since I was here) locker room, someone has thoughtfully installed rainmaker showerheads that look artful and drizzle a steady shower that refreshes and reminds of the outdoors. The locker room is pleasant and professional, slipping me a note that someone values my time, my efforts, my missed morning at home. These are quality-of-life details I think would have appreciated when I was here before, repulsed by the chronic dankness and the hard water scum...but would I have given thanks for them? Would I have gone to work more grateful, more peaceful, able to inhabit each moment, one at a time? I have not always had eyes to see the small, good things of the everyday. I have felt entitled.
When I look at my scars through the lens of gratitude, I am staggered by how small they seem, how much healing has already occurred, how my picking at them only caused them to fester. Somewhere, in a perpetual war zone, a mother has just had her viscera ripped out: yesterday she had a child, and now in a few bloody moments, she does not. Is it the first time? Second? Third? Her child left this world in terror, helpless. It sears, it sears! And then it compels me...to thank God for my wounds. Thanks--for professional disillusionment, for personal loss and grief, for physical pain and discomfort?
Yes.
And mysteriously this does not make my problems disappear, does not make brassy idols of my work, the pursuit of happiness, or good health. All is not well, and these remain glaring, disparate, in contrast with what should be. But I am different. This is what the Psalmist was talking about:
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
And forget none of His benefits;
Who pardons all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases;
Who redeems your life from the pit,
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;
Who satisfies your years with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.
The LORD performs righteous deeds
And judgments for all who are oppressed.
The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.
As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
Bless the LORD, all you works of His,
In all places of His dominion;
Bless the LORD, O my soul!
(Psalm 103:2-6, 8, 10-15, 22 NASB)
This calling to mind of gifts, many which we must keep open hands to receive daily, despite the clenching reactions to evil and pain in the world, is a habit that requires further cultivation, no matter what piece of earth I am standing on in the moment. I pray for the now childless woman I have known and imagined. I do not know how to pray for her, but I pray, more with molecules and electric impulses than with words. This place for me is haunted, by what was, by what could be--it is both ugly and beautiful, saturated with the anxiety of becoming and the resignation of the unchangeable past. I am the same--still ugly, still beautiful, already and not yet. I do not yet wear a habitual "crown of lovingkindness and compassion," I do not bless with all my soul. I pray that, with eyes to see the goodness of God and the creation, that my becoming will cause no collateral damage, that I will refrain from sprees of ingratitude.
"Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins;
Let them not rule over me;
Then I will be blameless,
And I shall be acquitted of great transgression." (Psalm 19:13 NASB)
It would be a shame unworthy of the day's goodness, stuck in the ugly, to never take part in the beautiful.
