her warfare is accomplished

It has not been a calm week in our house. Perhaps that is because we now live, by choice, in 350 square feet. Perhaps it is because we just brought a new baby home. One thing is for sure, our almost three-year-old, like each of us, is adjusting. Her waking exclamations of "our tiny house is finally finished!" as the sunlight streams into her loft turn into groans of "it's not time to get up yet, it's still dark!" when her little sister has a wakeful night. These are, of course, problems faced by new families regardless of the size of the home, but perhaps we are more acutely drawn into life together by being totally at the mercy of each other's rhythms in a smaller space.

This time last year, I was nearing the end of a deployment to Afghanistan, living in a 25' by 10' container,  and realizing that all of this was more possible than I'd previously thought. Just outside the wire, I'd seen semi-nomadic camps of Kuchi tribespeople, their women brightly dressed, usually with a baby on the hip and several small ones lugging fuel and water to the collapsed mud walls where they draped their tents. It occurred to me that while I could wash my face and order an omelet within minutes, these women managed many more competing urges on waking: relieving the bladder after a full night, consoling crying children, starting a fire for breakfast, keeping skirts and head coverings from tangling with everything. Under this, they often face the nagging reality of being overlooked and under appreciated for all these feats. They usually lack a voice in the family and larger society entirely. My worst mornings are still a cake walk compared with this.

When I think of the last Great Altercation between my preschooler and I over toilet training, my anger seems petty, and I realize that I am too easily overwhelmed. Before and after deployment, we have had many chances to tango over her using the toilet. (My frustration mounts because I remember a time when, at six months, she could eliminate waste predictably while held over the seat, using gentle communication techniques known throughout the world wherever there are no disposable diapers.) That we still have puddles on the floor daunts me. Weeks have gone by without incident, but this week we stepped so far back in time that it made my husband and I wonder whether the behavior isn't just regressive attention-seeking, with all the adjustments of a new addition to the family.

I have peace of mind that prior to deployment I spent every available moment with our daughter, who was 18 months when I left for dusty Kandahar. Likewise, we have been very intentional about my quality time with her during reintegration, despite the almost immediate news that we were expecting another little girl. So why all the strife? Why do I not handle it better when she disobeys, misfires, or acts out in frustration: "Mom, I don't KNOW why I'm crying right now." Her Ls and her Rs are still Ws. Her "th" sound is still a "f" most days. Why do I expect that she can always tell me why she's upset, when many adults cannot do the same? I have been ashamed to repeat to my husband what can transpire when he is gone and things go poorly. It is clear that we parent better together, and that I need a refresher course in relating to my own child, with all these changes.

Thankfully, my daughter is already a pretty good teacher. I hold to the idea that authority figures like parents and teachers, while uniquely accountable for their leadership within the learning process, are also co-learners with children and students. Recalling this is like remembering that someone hid you a key under the flowerpot when you believed you were locked out of the house for the rest of the day. It helps me unlock the clues that my daughter keeps leaving for me, and reopen that sense of wonder in parenthood as co-creation with God, when I lose it. The best clues lie in her play and make-believe.

While waiting for the labor pains to start that would bring us a baby, my daughter and I developed a ritual on those evenings when my husband was out working: dinner, an episode of "The Magic School Bus," bathtime, books, and bed. It was calming and in tune with the falling darkness outside, and she is riveted by the drama and characters in her new favorite show. Early on, she began calling me Ms. Frizzle, the zany and ebullient teacher who safely shepherds her class through nature and science while putting them in the driver's seat and urging them to "Take chances! Make mistakes! And get messy!" When I am Ms. Frizzle, my daughter dubs herself Keysha, after one of the students who tends to catastrophize when the class seems to be in peril of, for example, a fast-approaching T-Rex or meteor, saying, "Oh bad. Bad, bad, BAD!" When she repeats this to herself, there is usually no real danger, but as I eavesdrop, her imagined crises usually relate to something dropped, lost, soiled, or broken, much like in her real world. That she calls me Ms. Frizzle is a reminder of how she wants me to be - a secure base from which to explore the world, to take perceived risks, to make a mess, to get it wrong - and to do this unflappably, with a smile.

One is reminded of the Banks' children's advertisement leading to the arrival of Mary Poppins: "If you want this choice position, have a cheery disposition... play games, all sorts... never be cross or cruel, never give us castor oil or gruel." While I sympathize with this desire for a self-possessed adult who always seems to know how the story ends and therefore never gets too cross, I wonder where is the place for anger, for frustration, for being at your wit's end in parenthood? Surely even God shows displeasure with us, his children. I am reminded, however, that I have more in common with Ms. Frizzle than I would like to admit. Neither of us is really omniscient, or perfect, even if a child's eyes can make us seem so. After all, as a teacher, I am accountable for incorporating my daughter's messes and mistakes as part of the learning process, to embrace them and to not come unglued. If I make a complete confession, I would have rather spent my minutes doing something other than teaching her how to clean up a mess, and I feel am owed more fun in life than that. I do not see it as the sacred task that it is, and I do not see Jesus making me more in his image as I parent. When I consider my failings, compared with Ms. Frizzle's cheery demeanor, I am reminded that perhaps there is less room for righteous anger while teaching my daughter than I'd like to admit. "In your anger do not sin," Jesus told us, and perhaps that is why I ought to be a little more like Ms. Frizzle and leave the righteous anger to God.

While I was deployed, my husband faithfully took our daughter, then a toddler, to swim lessons, preschool, and the library each once a week in a routine that both kept them sane and presented her with strange new situations to satisfy her brain's craving for anything novel. At the library, Margaret Hodges' retelling of St. George and the Dragon became a fast favorite. Our daughter styles herself as St. George, and calls me Una, the princess who leaves her realm to find and bring back a knight worthy to free it of the afflicting dragon. The elaborate illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman show Una as beautifully fragile, but also as strong, as capable of defending her people with the right help, ranging epic mountains and fearful woods on horseback, leading St. George to his quest. I am happy that my daughter sees herself as a kind of warrior - life itself affirms that this is true. I am puzzled that she sees me as her Una, and today I struggle to decipher what she is telling me that she needs in calling me this name. Perhaps she is telling me that she knows we are in the midst of a struggle, that the fiery, unpredictable dragons of anger, exhaustion and self-righteousness can strike at any time in the heart of our small realm. Perhaps she is telling me that she knows we are in this together when she says, "Una, I am very sorry I peed in my pants again," and waits for me to say, "I forgive you." Perhaps she even knows that it has been hard to switch from responsibility for only myself and a staff of adults to just two little women - that I wrestle with the need for importance and motion and the illusion of progress. Perhaps that is why sometimes I need to hear her say to me, as the wings of my retreating anger flap overhead, "Mom, I forgive you, too." 

Fictions are not just a luxury: we need them. When my daughter creates these other worlds for herself to live in, I am reminded of my own need to see past the world as it is and envision what it could be. J.R.R. Tolkien put it this way in his essay, "On Fairy Stories":

The consolation of fairy stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist,’ nor ‘fugitive’. In its fairy tale or otherworld setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophy, of sorrow and failure; the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glance of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. 

I have witnessed many homecomings in my life, growing up as a Navy kid. I have heard many stories from peers, superiors and subordinates during my Army service of brief honeymoon periods, followed by an insatiable desire to escape and bury oneself again in work after returning from deployment. Perhaps one reason reintegration with family can seem so defeating to us is that we feel a guilty kind of discontent that we spent so long missing family, and when we return, we don't remember how to enjoy what we've been pining for. It may help to be reminded that this frustration is common, and that it is part of the "anxiety of becoming" experienced by all of creation. We fall so far short of our own expectations because we live in a fallen world, and because we are still being remade: out of the distorted image of a parent who never gets angry but abdicates responsibility to correct bad behavior, or on the other hand berates a child over spilled milk. We should expect to feel futile sometimes, and when we despair of the "perfect parenthood" we imagined for ourselves, we find hope in the words of St. Paul to the Romans:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.

Romans 8:18-25 

I am also reminded of the prophet Isaiah's words about the coming of Christ and his Kingdom:

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.
“Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And call out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the LORD’S hand
Double for all her sins.”
A voice is calling,
“Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
“Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together; 
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
Isaiah 40:1-5 

This passage, in rehearsals and performances during one Advent season in college, is responsible for my not abandoning the Church altogether, and for that reason continues to be a luminary for me. I keep it, like the bottled starlight given to the hobbit Frodo by the elf Galadriel: "May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out" (from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien). When I went to war, it was in my arsenal to ward off despair and the sense of futility that threatens all of us when we are far from home on an uncertain path. My husband sent me a mixed tape for our anniversary simply titled, "Her warfare is accomplished," containing a track of the "Messiah" movement containing this passage on it, wedged appropriately between the electronica and classic rock. I felt oddly reverent to be on the receiving end of a mixed tape, as we had made many recordings for my father during his deployments when I was a kid. After thanking my husband for this labor of love (mixed tapes are, I'm told, a very precise art!) I also recall wondering with him how to avoid bringing my "warfare" home with me when I left Afghanistan. We knew I would certainly bring home some kind of scar, however small. We prayed that this would be for our good and that we would heal and recover well together. At that point, we knew, even as we did not want to acknowledge, that there would be some dark days of learning how to be a family again, up close.


Military training and experience teach us to set goals and pursue excellence in all matters, personal and professional. It also teaches us to balance this with intimate knowledge of our own capabilities and those around us, helping to regulate our expectations. Sometimes the chance to wargame how badly something might go, and arm ourselves for that worst-case encounter is, oddly, comforting to us. This week, as I reflect on my recent labor to bring our baby girl into the world, on my husband's sacrifices to help us each thrive over the past three years, and on our preschooler's struggle to choose a world that revolves around our life together instead of just herself, the expectation of difficulty is comforting. We do what's hard all the time - we train for it. With a wry laugh that comes from tough, resilient joy, we remember that the struggle to become better members of a family is as epic as it seems, because our very souls - and those of our children - are at stake. It makes sense, then, that it should be tough and adrenaline-charged at the same time that it is fun and exhilarating: all of our most gratifying experiences are. 

my god and my mother

My mother was someone special. Many of us feel that way about our own maternal figure, and it's easy to see why. Mothers can fill our bellies with warm cookies, rub our weary shoulders, and spangle our memorable moments with celebration. My mother was not so great at the making of cookies--not for lack of talent, but of time--once three, four, and five daughters tumbled in to fill her days with mud pies and make-believe. She did relish the act of creation: we each have a handmade Christmas stocking from an earlier, craftmaking period, and the stitches tell that her sewing was much better than mine is. Somewhere along the way, though, it became less important that she made things for us from scratch, and more important that the household division of labor prepare us for future life on our own. Around sixth grade, we each were assigned our own weekly meal to make. Minus a few confusions of salt for sugar, everyone benefited from the experience of making and partaking together. Mom was the glue that made all the macaroni, popsicle sticks, and glitter hold together: our meals, projects, and special seasons.

Growing up in a navy family, special seasons could come at any time of year. Pictures bear witness to posters and coordinated outfits, part of our homecoming rituals for Dad's return from months on a submarine. In the parenthetical, pregnant times between his coming and going, we never seemed to lack, but enjoyed elaborate 3-dimensional cakes frosted by hand, themed birthday parties by the beach, and visits with family and friends. There were whole days spent in the water, broken only by a midday picnic. Mom at the pool those summers was my first glimpse of raw womanly power: elastic, surging, gliding through the water. She was water to me; a female foil for Poseidon, willing the oceans to give Dad safe passage, washing, bubbling, brimming and rushing to fill in the empty spaces in our days. She used water especially to fill our free time, sending us back to swim lessons until we completed all of the Red Cross swimming levels, making sure we each felt powerful and at home in the water from an early age. She was savvy enough to redouble her energies by letting our swim instructors wear us out all morning, before swimming with us all afternoon. With extra sets of eyes and arms all around, often in coordination with other mothers, the five of us sisters were far easier to keep safely busy and entertained. Even so, she never let us think that the water was inherently safe, but taught us how to keep a watchful eye on each other. I once watched her, fully-clothed, enter a friend's backyard pool (her rescue training taking control) when two of my sisters were locked in a dire, deep-end struggle past the point of hearing reason. In moments like these, she seemed to wield the power of life and death to me. 

That she brought us into the world, creatively sustained us and restored us from skinned knees, broken arms, and wounded pride is God-like and deserves reflection. But that is just the beginning. In the arc of my mother's story, it seems easy to trace the peaks and valleys. Perhaps the highest peak was when she wrote her book, Footsteps of the Faithful, about our adventures as a military family from Groton to Guam. In a sense, she was a Penelope to my father's never-ending odyssey, savvy defender of home and hearth while my father, "skilled in all ways of contending," came and went with the tides through many deployments. But my mother did more than weave tales and pine for Dad's return. To me, she became larger than life when he was away. Besides the dogged synchronization of schools and soccer, births and homecomings, she strung our days together with a sense of adventure that gave each deployment (and each new home) its own story within the story. Her narrative ability went beyond the creation of meaning: she also chose to breathe life into people through her use of language. "The tongue holds the power of death and life" she used to remind us, and exemplified speech that was "seasoned with salt" meant to encourage fellow God-followers and woo future ones (Proverbs 18:21 & Colossians 4:6). She used Scripture in song to help us "hide God's word in our hearts," and we marveled at her ability to find that "word aptly spoken" both for her family members and friends. (Psalm 119:11 & Proverbs 25:11).

She could also be like the sea in stormy weather, with unpredictable swells that threatened to capsize conversation. It seems any woman formidable enough to weather life as a navy spouse would have to have a few barnacles, too. What staggers me, looking in the mirror, is how some of her rough edges have passed on to me with the strength and the salt. I hear her in my arguments about dishes and mail-piles at the end of a long day...on ocassion, if I argue accidentally near a mirror, I see her. I stop, I breathe, and wonder. The roles are somewhat reversed: I do not wait, but come home to kiss my husband at day's end, tally the order and chaos, and am tempted to pronounce. Would I do it any better as a stay-at-home mom...could I? I am my mother's daughter, and that means strength and effervescence, but also the barnacles. "Reckless words words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing," I hear my Mom chide, and the implication is that we should speak only to give life to our fellow beings, never to take it (Proverbs 12:18). 

My mother and I are both good examples of how difficult it can be to harness the tongue, and well-meaning, purposeful women can often do the most harm to each other with their words. It's as if the pursuit of excellence in one woman's life precludes her from allowing another woman's excellence because it takes another form. One does not have to look far to find examples of this in our current political dialogue, and as a working mother who loved her stay-at-home mother, it saddens me to see women attacking and undermining each other in this way. I lost my mother the year I got married, the same year I also lost my grandmother. I often wonder what we would say to each other, my daughter bowling and beaming around on the floor during my lunch break or holiday leave. Mom usually disapproved of working motherhood, and struggled with the idea of me in harm's way when I joined the Army.  My mother and I probably would have to work hard at affirming one another's divergent paths in life, and we undoubtedly would have stepped on each other's toes at times. Even so, there are many unsaid things I wish I could share with her. I wish I could swap insights on marriage, on motherhood, on my vocational adventures. In some ways, the same iron jaw that got her through deployments on the homefront is the same one I'll rely on when I deploy: life in the trenches of childrearing and homemaking might not be so different from going to war. Both require ingenuity, endurance, and courage to face one's fears in a very fallen world. 

What to do with these inheritances? How to find just enough salt and the choicest words for the current task? How will I ensure that whether I am swimming forward or treading water, my strength will be renewed in proportion to the time and distance required? As I ask myself what she would do in my boots, I realize that my sisters and my daughter each hold clues. My daughter works at taking her first steps, and there is the furrowed brow, the brimming eyes, the hard-set jaw, the determined nostrils. My sisters compete in the rugby field, the office, the classroom and there are the flexing calves, the springing-forward torso, the long, swift arms and the fully-engaged eyebrows. And there--there--is the triumphant, overcoming grin of the struggler-turned-victor. These form a composite picture of a woman who has fully engaged her own childhood, adolescence and beyond, and is now ready to help sustain and nurture someone else--even as she herself continues to unfold. In our best moments as daughters, sisters, mothers, these are insights into very God: 

"It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
    taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize
    it was I who healed them.
⁴ I led them with cords of human kindness,
    with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts
    a little child to the cheek,
    and I bent down to feed them."

--Hosea 11:3-4

At first glance, all this nurturing sounds so serene and beautiful. But it's not so idyllic when you're sweating, cleaning up the latest mess on the floor, your hair didn't quite get done and the ever-heavier baby is making excellent headway toward the stairs. Then there is the relative egocentrism of the child: "they did not realize it was I who healed them." My daughter only sees the one thing she wants us to do for her in that moment, not the stacks of other tasks that must be done, and tries to register her impatience as if she's got other places to be. In these moments we nurture her, yes, but it is not all peaches-and-cream and butterflies: it is phlegm and milk and blood and excrement, not for the faint of heart. That God's love for Israel--and for us, through Christ--is nurturing and tender and motherly should not come as a surprise, since life is full of all the toughest and most disgusting things...things mothers are always dealing with. Scripture is replete with more examples of God mothering us, but perhaps the most lasting images of God in this role start with the women we love best. Lest we make God in her image, we remember that Mother is a human creature, too. But we celebrate God's self-revelations through her in the hope that every day she is becoming more herself... more and more fit for heaven. That she always has another hand, hip, or shoulder with which to bring us along in that journey is marvelous.

the riddle of the sphinx

Few things are so joyfully disarming as a baby trying out her first glottal stops under the Christmas tree. On picking her up to bury my face in baby fat, she broadcasts a wide, toothless grin. Sometimes she smiles so hard, it looks like it hurts. Her smiles proliferate, it seems, the better we get to know each other, the less we have to guess at what comes next. More often than not, we look forward to bedtimes and to waking, to baths and sweet potatoes and grass and crawling...there is much to look forward to, and plenty to grin about.

At other times, she looks at me quizzically, one eyebrow cocked, both eyes wide. She seems to be wondering if I know what I'm doing, or if this is some kind of rookie parent mistake. It is the same face, I think, that I make when sizing up a new commander or boss: she is both impressed and wary, and she'd love to chat about all her thoughts on how we could improve our organization! The trouble is that she only has about four phonemes currently at her disposal.

It has been said that the reason we don't remember our first months of life is that they can be traumatic--our sojourn in a strange, new world begins almost before we are ready. With only a range of cries, flails, reflexes and stares, we are left to communicate with often unexperienced interpreters. It is the beginning of an arc that can take us to an eerily similar end-of-life experience. Like the ancient riddle of the sphinx suggests, we are strange creatures who go from four legs to two and then three. Whether we go out with a bang like St. Peter, or we quietly fade from disease into shadows of our former selves, Jesus' words to Peter describe the phenomenon so well: "...I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." (John 21:18, NIV)

So much of a baby's life mirrors this feeling of helplessness, even as we watch her strive and gain her autonomy by increments every day. How strange to reflect, gazing at a baby, on the end of her life...even stranger to imagine all the ways that adult life can still script and array our waking hours to lead us where we do not want to go. For me, more precisely, that means being led away from where I most want to be: I recently learned that a deployment to Afghanistan is on the horizon.

Predictably, any eagerness to put professional training to good use is muted by my anxiety about long-distance motherhood. What will I miss, while she is tripling her vocabulary every day, and I am searching for succint and diplomatic ways to render difficult news...while she is learning to dress herself and I am donning the same uniform every day? It is impossible to know how we will both feel about the experience afterward, but during this anticipation, I watch her a lot for clues. She is, after all, the person I've most recently watched undergo a transformation, and I wonder what secrets of bravery and contentment I can learn from her that might help carry me through this separation.

My best thought so far is expressed in Psalm 3: "To the Lord I cry aloud, and He answers me...I lie down and sleep, I wake again because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear the tens of thousands on every side." (verses 4-6, NIV) Because I know too many combat veterans, new parents, and babies alike who cannot sleep through the night, this verse has become my special prayer. Beyond my obsession with getting enough good sleep, this verse is a picture of secure attachment between child and caregiver, God and God's children.

Rarely anymore do we hear our daughter sound the panic alarm, as she has expanded her repertoire to include monosyllabic chants, moans, and whinings that tell us she is trying to soothe herself as she drops off to sleep. Once in a while, she can still sound the sorrowful note we first learned to swiftly comfort--the one that sounds like she has surely been abandoned to starvation and the elements. It is horrific to hear, and it is a pleasure to alleviate her fears with our presence. In a very real sense, we sustain her between waking and sleeping, and in doing so mirror all the duties of our Divine parent. It is easier to feel oneself washed, wrapped, fed, and warmed by the Creator when you see a baby's panicked or peeved face give way to pure contentment.

So much of our daughter's infant angst seems to stem from being so alert--she has always been just aware enough of her surroundings to be very concerned, unable to filter out what is easily overwhelming. A combination of swaddling, shushing, rocking, and sucking would interrupt her panic enough to help her withdraw into a private, restful place where she could tune out what was bothersome. As I consider this new irritant in my environment--the prospect of a long separation from my daughter and husband for the first time--I am reminded that this month's happy crawler under the tree has never really started from scratch as she adapts to her world. She always falls back on the raw materials and parameters given to her: the limits of a room, the waking hours in a day, the genetic makeup she inherited, the now-familiar responses she can trust from her parents and other caregivers.

She also is a breathtaking example of cognitive development, situating new knowledge in meaningful ways within the context of what she already knows. When she acquired her first xylophone mallet earlier this week, it went first (predictably) into her mouth, under the acute visual scrutiny of one raised eyebrow, and then finally into repeated contact with the colored keys to replicate the sounds she'd seen her dad make. I am taking a page out of her book: like a securely attached infant, I am deciding to tackle this new problem as I have tackled others in the past--with hope, with prayer, and in the context of community. Like a late-night diaper change or a protested snot-clearing operation, it will certainly get worse before it gets better, but God is responsive, loving, and knows what to do. This week I will rest in that, and be glad that most deployments are down to nine months nowadays. Happily, I have living, low-crawling proof that I can do just about anything for nine months.

seeing spiders

A friend of mine says that in many cultures, spiders are associated with the act of writing. I have been seeing spiders all month, and having the urge to write, as well. With a 3-month-old in my life, this doesn't seem especially feasible most days, but occasionally writing is simply the overflow of a full heart: it feels harder to avoid it than to sit down and begin.

I have been back at work for a month now, and military motherhood has left me, as Mary, with much to ponder in the solitude of my own heart. First, there is the hard reality that my mother would probably not have approved. Faithful to traditional models of what it means to be a woman, my mother advocated strongly for staying at home with little ones, and for the art and science of full-time homemaking. This made my childhood wonderful, and I can appreciate that raising five daughters was a full time job. On one occasion, my father related to me that an insurance adjuster advised him to increase my mother's life insurance policy, as he would not be able to afford to pay anyone to do all that my mother did for us in the event of her untimely death. My father wisely listened to this counsel, and used the discussion as a humorous way of explaining how much he deeply valued all our mother did during long years of sea duty in the submarine force. It also made me aware that the unpaid work of homemakers is easy to underestimate, until you attempt to quantify it. Then, it becomes glaringly obvious that the role is often taken for granted.

I had always thought I would follow the path my mother took, and am still surprised to find myself on active duty in the Army while raising our first child. My husband, a Reservist and full-time graduate student, is also navigating a much different experience than he anticipated for much of his life. To say that he is "Mr. Mom" seems demeaning, for he is not playing at being an excellent full-time care provider for our daughter--if anything, he is "Mr. Dad," the genuine article. Though his approach to various baby-related problems differs vastly from mine, he finds ways to meet her needs I never would think of, like the night he jogged her to sleep to the song "Heartbreaker." Who would have thought that blasting classic rock records would soothe a baby so completely? I saw it happen in my own living room, and rejoiced that God made us both, male and female, in his image. Still, there are pangs of guilt when I steal away to physical training each morning, and then again to work after breakfast and feeding the baby. What kind of woman am I, to choose such a demanding profession during my childbearing years? How will my choice to stay in the Army for a few more years affect my relationship with my daughter, and with my husband? Is this really the kind of work I was born to do long-term, or is this a detour on the road to my true vocation?

I do not have bulletproof answers for these questions, and there are better women than I who have chosen either to be professional Soldiers or to be homemakers. What I do know definitively is that the Army has made me a better mother in a few tangible ways. First, I am a far more persistent person than I was before active duty service. Somewhere between the first 20-foot rope I had to climb (with a weight vest on), and the last late night at the office poring over PowerPoint slides, I gained a kind of visceral self-reliance that I never knew I had. I learned that I could outlast the Army's demands on my time and energy, and that even when I felt myself to be at a breaking point, there was always a little bit left, if the mission required it. I am reminded of St. Paul's words to the Corinthians: "And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed." 

Second, the Army reinforced the value of camaraderie, especially that of other women, in a way that few other experiences can. While I have grown to value and rely on good collaboration with my brothers-in-arms, it doesn't give me the pleasure I experience in the company of good, strong women who can push and encourage me toward my best self. This is the kind of fellowship St. Paul recommends to Titus that women can uniquely offer each other, when he says that older women should, "teach what is good" and "urge the younger women to love their husbands and children." In other times, this meant that women helped each other to manage their households while their husbands won the bread, but the support that women offer each other in the daily self-sacrifice of family life is timeless. While I value and seek the mentorship of older, wiser women both inside the profession of arms and outside, I have found that my peers often astound me with their insight, their problem-solving, and their desire to be faithful to their calling as wives and mothers. In one sense, as the oldest of five girls who grew up replicating the comforts of sisterhood in my friendships, making female friends was second nature to me, and was always much easier than my friendships with men. But I also was privileged to be part of a group of newly married female lieutenants at my first unit who confirmed for me that sisterhood was as necessary to my professional life as to my personal life. As we learned how to operate and excel in a world heavily influenced by men, we enjoyed the lifegiving camaraderie that kept us afloat even on the toughest days. It is little surprise, then, that we have one by one leaned heavily on each other as we entered into motherhood, easing the most demanding calling any of us has answered yet. If I can teach my daughter one thing about the company of other women, I hope it is to seek its encouragement and never to play the lone ranger.

Finally, Army life has given me an unexpected set of roles to explore that, while unconventional by some standards, usher me into the fullest experience of womanhood I have known. The medieval Christian mystic Julian of Norwich is well known for her meditations on the motherly, nurturing aspects of God. When I first read her work in college, I did not connect with it and felt it strange and foreign. My first week back at work after maternity leave, I experienced the costume change from Army uniform to nursing wear and back again, and I was broadsided by the wonderful feeling of providing for my daughter and my family in so many different ways. I could then identify with Julian's vision of God: "A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother, Jesus, can feed us with himself. ...With all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully... in these blessed words, ...'All the health and life of the sacraments, all the virtue and grace of my word, all the goodness that is ordained for you in holy Church, that I am." (From Revelations of Divine Love, circa 1393) 

Persisting in my efforts to breastfeed is something my mother would have championed, even if she disagreed with my going back to work, and I was struck by the total, physical takeover that motherhood is. All my waking moments were suddenly geared toward provision and nurture, and even my combat-ready exterior could not obscure that warm, gentle reality. My friends and I have joked that being a woman in the Army means constantly "getting in touch with our masculine sides," but going back to work after having my baby was the most thoroughly feminine experience of my life. I have experienced God as all-sufficient, in the name El Shaddai: "El" indicating might and strength, "Shaddai" derived from the word for breast, "Shad," indicating sufficiency and nourishment ("Shad" and "dai" may also be a contraction meaning "one who is enough,"). This side of heaven, we often experience lack that leaves us unable to provide for those we love perfectly. How appropriate, then, that Christ modeled God's all-sufficiency for us even while limiting himself to the frailty of human experience, saying through St. Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you: for my power is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me."

By virtue of an Army connection, my husband and I recently had the privilege of entertaining an Afghan officer who is attending school here in the states. I wondered, of course, how to achieve the right balance as a woman in my interactions. If I were in his country, for example, I would not reach for a handshake during a greeting, and would probably cover my head. He was in mine, however, and this was a unique opportunity to model what it means to be a woman who wields the full power of her own choices in a society that permits her to do so. As the evening progressed, my husband and I exchanged the baby, the dishes, and the components of dinner, I watched our foreign guest relax: initially he had not even wanted to make eye contact or speak directly to me. Ensuring that I did not wear revealing clothing, participating in the making of the meal, caring for the baby, and taking great interest in stories about his family and country, I stumbled through the cross-cultural encounter, as did he. He asked me several questions about my work and how I felt about leaving my baby, and about my husband taking care of her during the day, and he kept revisiting this theme as if it were magnetized. I, similarly, asked repeated questions about women in his family and culture. He asked me for a blanket and took it outdoors to pray twice during the evening, and laughed when I warned him to look out for the tarantulas in our yard. When we broke fast with him at sundown as part of his Ramadan observance, he saw that the delicious meal had been made more by my husband than by me. Still, at the end of the evening, he reached for my hand as he left, and said, "Thank you, my sister," and wished us both a "long, good life." I wished him the same, my heart running over. He had heard me say that I enjoyed my work, but that I loved being a mother, and that it was a difficult problem to solve, wanting always to be in two places--and I think he understood that this choice was something I'd rather struggle with than not have at all, and I hope he saw it as part of my relationship to God.

It is with fear and trembling that I work out my vocations of military service and motherhood, searching for how best to reflect the imago Dei and to imitate Christ's supreme sacrifice and example. I only know that this is the most joyful, and the most complicated, phase of my life so far. Because of that, I believe--if God gives his saints anything particular to do in his heaven--my mother who departed for glory before she could satisfy her eagerness to be a grandmother is ideally positioned to intercede for me in this endeavor. Because motherhood itself is, like the rest of creation, groaning in its imperfections and radiant in its triumphs, I would not be surprised to find that the fellowship of Christian women spans the "already and the not yet" of the kingdom of heaven in this way. The thought of what my mother would say, think, or do in my situation spurs me forward in a pursuit of excellence in motherhood, joining the examples of my friends and mentors, and helping me to find inner resources I never knew I had. Whether or not I have a military career in front of me, it is my hope that I can blend the best of my mother, the best of my many sisters, and the best of the self God gave me into a gift I can give to my husband, my daughter, and hopefully future children, too.

what's in a name?

Reading through Genesis on a quasi-weekly basis with my husband (we fall off the wagon easily, these days, but hope any effort will be taken in earnest by God, who will ultimately draw us more often into the Word that is so familiar from our earlier lives), I am struck by the references to language, specifically the act of naming things and people. It begins with God, of course, naming day and night, but extends quickly to naming Adam, who is given the task of naming Eve and the other creatures of the Garden. It goes beyond this, into each generation of his descendants, and the names they will give their children.

It's a mysterious and weighty thing, the business of naming someone. I can't help noticing that since God gave Adam the task of naming the animals, we have all had some role in the shaping of the world through our use of language. For Adam in the garden it was work, but it was also joyful co-creation. Since the fall, we have the added tasks of co-redemption and co-restoration with God when we name.

As the birth of our first child approaches, we are still wrestling with this responsibility of naming. There are the usual pressures to pick names that are coherent, attractive, not too common but not too strange. All these other considerations notwithstanding, I hope that if we can settle on a name that makes the invitation, "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we will have begun the task of raising this child well.

apple and eve

My husband was too quiet, his eyes concealed behind sunglasses he hadn't even wanted to buy, much less wear. He was thinking, it seemed to me, of how to avoid kicking something, and terribly focused on just breathing. I am always caught off-guard by the physical discomfort I experience in the rare moments when I know he is choosing his next words carefully.

I thought this punishment extreme for my "offense," and told him so. "I told you not to do it," he breathed, "and you did it anyway!" I had thought he might be a little upset. I had miscalculated. More than six months I had deliberated--and he had been privy to it--smiling while telling me firmly, "this discussion doesn't matter, because you're not going to do this."

I suppose I should have known he was serious. The smiling threw me off, because it usually accompanies all kinds of admonishments to slow down, relax, and lay my burdens down. My husband knows that I am calibrated to run circles around him most days, and that his job is to find the button, switch, or turnkey that will shut me down when I simply cannot. He smiles in such moments because he also knows that some days he might as well stop the wind from blowing or the tide from coming in.

I was serious, too. I began to entertain the idea at first because I just couldn't keep up with my own default setting. My life had begun to outstrip my stamina, between the bills, the messages, the calls, the to-dos... Then it occurred to me that it would be nice, to be able to hold and polish all that concerned me in he palm of my hand. The risks--and the price--of such convenience weighed on my mind. To hold so much information so readily would make that information not only more accessible and useful, but so precious and easily lost or misused.

It wasn't until later that what I will call the shinyness of it began to grow on me. I want to be clear about this and say that it was first convenience, and later the shinyness. It makes me feel more justified and less shallow...somehow less easily led astray. The shinyness lay in that I would be able to see and hear and do so much with the touch of a finger, that I could customize and accessorize and somehow make a statement about my life and why it mattered. Neither the convenience nor the shinyness mattered now, and neither gave me any comfort in the face of this silence and this breathing. I had shattered some idyllic dream of his, and the world would now be different.

I laid on the bed next to where he sat, the sweat of a day's work pouring off of him. I could see the accusation in his eyes now: he had been slaving away to impose order on chaos, to turn a profit while I had frivolously been throwing it away. Indignation rose into my throat, and I reminded him that I, too, toil to make our living, and that my work in part had motivated my choice. I could not even look at the thing I had brought into our home--it sat lifeless on the bed between us. My eyes were glued to his, which were staring at the wall.

He looked down at the bed, over at me, and picked up my new iPhone. I could tell that my husband, the ludite technophile, was conflicted in this moment. He had never even wanted a cell phone. When his Army instructors cajoled him into getting one when we were brand new lieutenants, he had "stuck it to the man" by buying the cheapest, most obscenely large, brick of a phone he could find. This is also the man who convinced his roommate to heft a typewriter to class in protest against the laptop girl who clicked and clacked a little too loudly in our "Milton and the 17th Century" class in college. Setting the margins as small as they would go in order to maximize the bing! that punctuated every sentence, he even duped the professor, who just laughed and baptized the obnoxious behavior as a clever ludite protest. At the same time, he is the techie who introduced me to StumbleUpon, Skype, Newsmap and Pandora. I can't even listen to Aphex Twin without the music seeming to paint images of his face in my mind, I feel so indebted to his obsession with the marriage of art and technology.

Now, he browsed the first page of apps, without looking at me once. He sighed deeply. In that sigh, I sensed some lofty, dying desire that the two of us would, on a whim, sell all our worldly possessions to go live in the mountains, or go halfway around the world. We would subsist in a desert, like monks, meditating on all the great books and wines and cigars we had ever sampled, without consuming more than the bare necessities ever again. Stripped of everything, we would feed on our rich inner lives and be able to enjoy each other's company unhindered by the world and its ploys, its crassness, its responsibilities. Perhaps in his sigh was also the knowledge that one more radiation source had just been added to our daily routine. With this, the fear of succumbing to brain cancer or distracted driving crept to the forefront of my thoughts, as I watched his fingers learn their way around YouTube and the stock quotes on the smooth touch-screen.

I was fairly certain that I had not been motivated by vanity, even as I knew that it was not modesty, contentment, or survival that had motivated me, either. I had wanted to a tool that would enable me to manage my life more calmly and happily. I wanted maps, answers, raw data, transaction and relationships at my fingertips, because life as I wanted to live it demanded this. I laughed as I watched him nibble at the idea of this new reality, hoping that with time he would only see that it was good. He threw a fiery glance my way, and I was quiet. I hoped that this was not going to get us expelled from our thus far paradaisical experience of marriage.

ticket to ride

On my kitchen table there is CD that is not just a CD. It is a ticket to ride, by train, boat, or anything else that travels along the surface of the earth. It can take you almost anywhere, as long as you are in no rush, and provided you don't have to fly. It's white and deceptively blank-looking, with ADVENTURES 2009-2010 scrawled on it. It records the trips my husband and I have taken since last fall...many of which we will remember even in our old age.This past Christmas, after hoofing it to midnight mass in Jackson Square, we took a train from New Orleans to D.C. to see my mom's side of the family.We hadn't seen them since her funeral two years ago. The romance of the rails was everything we hoped it'd be and more...but I especially appreciated the time to think, decompress, and prepare to see the people I love most. As we left the levees of Lake Ponchartrain I kept Willie Nelson's famous song, "The City of New Orleans" on my brain. As we made our way north to where the snow swished across the tracks connecting small- town America, the towns and stations we passed looked like so many ceramic collectible scenes, warm-lit, nestled in their winterscapes.

Months later, when we celebrated our anniversary in Mexico, we went by ship, and I appreciated this slower, almost premodern mode of travel for the same reason. I have a hard time leaving work at work, and being stranded on board a ship or on a train is perfect for making me leave it all behind. During that trip, I finally got to see the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, and my skin crawled with how alive the place still felt. The temple pyramid of the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl rang with echos as we stood before it and clapped--echos that sounded like the call of the Quetzal bird and the flurry of feathers. It was no longer a wistful, grainy image in a textbook, as it had been all my life. I was reminded of deferred dreams of teaching language and literature in Spanish and English, both on hold for awhile while I'm in combat boots.


In many ways traveling by these older modes of travel took me back to a time when steel and steam were at the cutting edge of progress, when everything that now seems slow and cumbersome by comparison was shiny and swift. I went back in time in other ways: back to my mom's childhood, back to the birthplace of America...

pitter patter

I had the immense privilege today of accompanying a friend and coworker to her ultrasound. That we had to drive 2 hours to get to this appointment should tell you something about just how rural Louisiana can get--how long has ultrasound technology been around? Going in place of her husband, who was very disappointed that he could not get off work to accompany her, I was poised to get the video footage that would make him feel like he hadn't missed this irreplaceable event. (This is especially poignant for this couple, because this pregnancy is the first to successfully pass the first trimester, so this is a story of overcoming odds.)

From the first, tentative images of the baby wiggling around inside of my friend, I found myself referring oddly to this child as "it." Was "it" an alien, or an animal, that this pronoun was appropriate? Of course not, but I didn't know how else to relate. Still, I was captivated as we traced from one human feature to another. Spinal column, upturned nose, flexing ankles and fists... I was one creature beholding another, a new and still-forming life. And then, without warning, we moved to the baby's lower regions, where, prominently displayed, spread-eagle, between (already!) muscular legs was the mark of future manhood. From then on, it was not so hard to talk about hands and diaphragms--they were all his, and he was breathing, moving, living as we watched and held our breaths with anticipation.

Later that evening, with our small group bible study, we talked about how he will reorient the lives of his parents. In a sort of alien invasion, he will reprioritize and reorder the world as they know it, abolishing all notions of "his" and "hers" and "yours" and "mine," becoming the first thing that is totally "ours" for both mom and dad. We laughed about the ways he is already beginning that shift, making way for his arrival. Watch out world! We prayed the following portion of Psalm 139 as an appropriate prayer of thanks for the health and safety of this baby, and for the life given to each of us:

¹³For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother's womb.
¹⁴I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
¹⁵My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
¹⁶Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.

(from the New American Standard Bible)

(-) invective

tell me
without tremors
your sine qua non sobbing--
don't offer
with clenched fists
a cold blanket to wrap up in
against the hurricane
unfurling inside
to wreck all arguments
and make flotsam
out of buoyancy.
spare me
the harsh sand settling--
burying our so-called waterloo
with
finality.

(Written as a perspective meditation from my husband's point of view. He has to put up with too many of my tirades about the Army lately. I think I saw this poem in his eyes this week, bent over the spaghetti he was making, as he asked if I could render the account of my horrible week "without invective.")

jack the ripper houdini

Today I'm in awe of my fish. An African lemon cichlid, he is such a beautifully colored, inquisitive little predator. We can't agree on a name for him, so he is alternately Jack and Houdini: the latter because when he was smaller, he once got stuck in the neck of a green soda bottle in his tank, and went in and out of panic mode for almost an hour while figuring out how to escape. But any sympathy for him is short-lived when you consider that he has repeatedly attacked and finally eaten two other blue cichlids of a sister species, as well as a plecostomus. In every case, we were on vacation, and he truly "left no trace." We finally have a pleco who's bigger than he is, so I hope he'll be safe when we leave for the holidays. And then there is Buddha, a small, polka-dotted pleco who's been with him since the beginning, but who is always given over to a kind of trans-existential meditation. I think Jack thinks Buddha so strange and un-fishly that he leaves him alone. Buddha has been known to immerse himself in profound studies of otherness--transforming himself into a hermit crab, and then a barnacle for weeks on end. I can't put any more shells in the tank, or we'll never see him again: when I finally got him out of the barnacle last year, his face was kind of smashed and he didn't look right for a few days. We were hoping the other pleco would teach him how to be one, but no dice. He sometimes rummages around the back of the tank along the ground, but mostly stays totally still, having given up all worldly pursuits in favor of enlightenment. All the while his buddha-belly gets rounder and rounder. Maybe he has a tumor. I don't know, but I feel responsible for them--for their little world, which I in a sense created. I am their sustainer for all practical purposes, and I hate it when there is hunger and death and toxic chemicals and bouts of uneighborliness. I know that I anthropomorphize Jack, especially. He is so yellow and so stuck on himself, he's hard to ignore. He's been swimming up and down all day today, exploring the new dimensions of the tank after I gave back an inch and a half of water that had evaporated. There is a water lily I put in there that just won't grow beyond a few sprigs, because he constantly eats at its roots. Far from paradise, but oh, to be just a fish sometimes. Things are quieter by virtue of being louder, underwater.

tension is to be loved

My husband and I went on Columbus Day weekend to Dallas, visiting with my college roommate, her husband, and family, as well as my dad who happened to be visiting his girlfriend. We heard Anne Graham Lotz speak on Sunday morning--a simple message from a complex passage surrounding the vision of the prophet Ezekiel. Anne drew from the supernatural beings of Ezekiel's vision--who are a composite of mythical creatures and who seem to defy description by their occupance of time, space, color--a picture of the characteristics of God. The appearance of winged man, lion, ox, and eagle are already well established christological symbols, corresponding to the nuanced portrayals of Christ in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. On many a church facade the writers of the four gospels are often depicted as these figures, so close was the correlation between Ezekiel's vision, these four pictures of God, and the accounts of Christ in the gospels in the mind of church tradition. A complete rundown of the allegory can be found at the following link:
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/reference/four-evangelists.htm

Suffice it to say that Anne conveyed, with a distinct blend of Eastern Seaboard and Southern Bible Belt sensibilities, a simple message from the passage: when we are at our most disillusioned, Christ comes in royal strength and power, offering himself as our intermediary, as one who has shared in our suffering humanity, as the one who is still sovereign, soaring over all of our circumstances, and toward whose purposes all of life still tends. What struck me in her exegetical approach was that, even though she was standing on rock solid ground when it came to church interpretive tradition of the text, she did not mention it once. I appreciated the connection between her interpretation and art that I had seen in Europe, along with the minutia imparted to me in my college Christian theology class, silently. The effect was that I was quickened, riveted--such aesthetic connections bring me satisfaction and pleasure in a way that I can actually feel physically, as if I had just had the first bite of a pie just taken from my own oven, or been given a kite to fly. The excitement these connections generate for me can only be properly called part of my worship experience.

Whether Anne also relished that connection is unclear to me; she can't have been totally unaware of it, with her education and exposure to the world. Though her father Billy always deferred to her as the better preacher of the two, I saw his influence in her decision not to make a show of erudition or "dropping names," so to speak, by making this longstanding connection in church tradition between the four heavenly creatures. Perhaps it is the American evangelical way to avoid "vain knowledge that puffeth up," or the need to distance oneself from all liturgical impulses within the church. I would have liked to hear her mention it, since the ability to recognize such patterns in old buildings, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, poetry and prose, remind me that American evangelicals are not the first to try to bring the tenets of the faith and the person of Christ to the people--to make them come alive in allegory and color, making known the hidden knowledge of God. The effect her omission of this detail seemed to have on her message, however, was to add freshness and relevance that drew the whole hour toward a single insight: the presence of Christ on his throne. Anne's catchphrase and book title "Just Give Me Jesus" rang appropriately with the preeminence of the divine relationship and presence, even if I would have preferred to revel in the mystery of the otherworldy messengers, their movement, the rushing of wings, and the expanse "like ice" above their heads. I could get bogged down alternately in the symbolism of each description, or in creating a pictorial image of each. As I sit here I think I subconsciously must want to write a paper connecting this vision to Christ in each of the gospels, characteristic by characteristic. But what Anne did stylistically was to draw attention to her real theme: the consolation of a God who is enthroned, yet comes to speak into our despondency:

Then there came a voice from above the expanse over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire,and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.

It is this speaking that most captivates me about the passage now, though it took me too long to pay attention to it. Wading through the images to get to the words:

He said to me, "Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you." As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.

And later in the passage:

"The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says.' And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them. And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions... You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you."

As intimidating as it is to have God put words in your mouth that must be spoken to others, regardless of their receptivity, I love especially that God uses disillusionment here as a catalyst for his cause. Into the vacuous space of disappointment and even resentment, God can speak his solution, his Being into the not-being of our unrealized hopes. I find this so comforting, because in my nascent professional life of nearly three years, I have never been so easily frustrated, embittered, or disillusioned. These moments for me rarely possess that epic quality of unrest portrayed by the protagonists in the movies, where sorrow comes only for a few scenes, and joy comes bursting through--just in time for the overcoming chords of a triumphant musical score--to resolve all the pain and trials before the credits roll. My frustrations are of a more persistent and thereby corrosive nature: the longer I spend with them, the less I feel like an overcomer, and quotidian pressures often keep me from rising above my own disillusionment in a way that feels resolved or accomplished. Nevertheless, I have found that God visits and speaks, if not with flashing and sapphire, between the dishes and the dust of the morning commute. If we take what he puts into our mouths during such visits, chew and digest them, and speak them out to the intended audience, we in those moments become co-creators with God, co-intercessors, co-heirs, and co-restorers of the broken world. Hearing Anne speak reminded me of this reality, once very natural to me, but now more awkward with age and the knowledge that often, the intended audience will not receive the word that God has given you for them. That is the risk, I suppose, of joining in any divine venture this side of heaven.

The primary cause of our trek to Dallas--the U2 concert itself--was also well worth it. I felt as if I hadn't missed out on decades of listening to them, because they played some of the old stuff and some of the new. Bono, as is his wont, got preachy about fighting injustice and hunger, and Rev. Desmond Tutu addressed the audience in a video presentation...it was all meaningful. I about lost it--no, wait, I did loose it, thinking of my mom and grandma, and the throbbing sea of humanity around me--when they played Where the Streets Have No Name. I knew it wasn't quite church, or heaven on earth, that we were experiencing, but there were shadows and glimpses of it enough. It was a very good concert, in the sense that you couldn't really say that it was all a vanity. They were realizing their vocation as spiritual creatures--artists, at that--by making the most exquisite music. Bono remind me of David dancing before the ark, a comparison made by my husband's college roommate that has stuck with us.

And then, afterwards, ears throbbing, the onset of a headache coming on, I was lost in a dreamworld, like Mary, treasuring what I had seen and heard in my heart. I was reaching for my husband's hand (he was a zombie, too), and walking past some floor-level boxes when a row of middle-aged, wealthy-looking men, leaning over their box rail said something to me and started laughing and whistling. I didn't register it at first, but my husband Z later confirmed that they had, with the drunken camaraderie of nostalgic fraternity brothers, offered me $20 to see my "titties." I had not even worn a shirt with a low neckline, as I wanted to be comfortable, and I burned with anger for hours after hearing him repeat what I thought I'd heard them say. Z got mad, too, and had either of us not been so distantly preoccupied with nobler, more heavenly things, we both probably would have cussed them up and down and caused a scene. But it was like that space between a dream and waking up where you fight to stay asleep--we couldn't rouse ourselves enough to be angry or even make eye contact in the moment, and just kept walking. So, as I was rudely reminded, it was not church--not even close. But if that concert was like heaven, then they were like the fool who, having been invited after the first string of guests refused to come, came to the wedding feast in the wrong clothes, and for being so out of tune, was thrown out "where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 8).

lone star

When you occupy a piece of ground early in the day, and watch it shift from afternoon into twilight, you experience an unexpected intimacy with the landscape. When evening comes, and the lengthening shadows constrict your easy movement around roots, holes, and sylvan debris, your senses are quickened but you still feel at home in that space. Not so when thrust into a place where night has already come before you. There are other eyes that watch you comfortably, alert, having spent the day where darkness has fallen. You are the one who doesn't belong--you have not become a part of the landscape and your clumsiness in the night gives your near-panic away.

I saw so many shooting stars this week, out in the field with my Soldiers. Each night we were in a different location, but whether in the slick, humid woods or out in the open grass we could see the stars. Do stars shoot through the sky all the time, and we just can't see it because of all the light pollution around us? There may have been an extraordinary amount of meteoric activity lately, but I didn't waste a single shooting star. I wished I was home, I wished I were a better wife, I wished my mother were still alive. Wild horses checked our perimeter, and I wished I could coax one into letting me ride.

I asked my platoon sergeant, who also noticed the extraordinary stellar activity, if he ever felt overwhelmed by a feeling that he married someone so wonderful that it was hard to believe they ever fought, or did anything but stay very, very close to each other for hours on end. He said that this feeling snuck up on him often while he was away from her. He and his wife have children and are decades ahead of me in life, but I was contented to hear him say this. It does keep growing, the needing and loving and wanting not to be apart. It made me feel less childish that I was really, deeply, missing my husband while on a short training event less than an hour away. Sometimes I wonder what we will do if/when either of us deploys. How did my parents do it? I have no answers, only the vague apprehension that it is virtually uncharted territory, and the only existing maps are lopsided and contain warnings that "Beyond Here There Be Monsters." It is one thing to miss your dad for six months every year, as I did growing up. This will be another thing entirely.

premonition of grief

I was watching " Seven Pounds" with my husband several weeks ago. The scene is irrelevant, but at one point during the movie, something washed over me that is barely accountable in words. The kind of desperate sobs I emitted are by now not strange to my husband; he tightened the circle his arms made around me and pressed his head closer to mine, as if to better hear and interpret my reverberations and gurglings. I felt, with a surety that clenched my whole ribcage and sucked the air from my lungs, how unbearable it will be to lose him to death. Beyond that, I have run out of words. To account for how long and how deeply this feeling racked me, this glimpse of a particular, eventual bereavement, I have to borrow words from Stuart Townend's hymn "How Great the Father's Love for Us":

How great the pain of searing loss...

Perhaps it is my conviction that very few of us actually have one single "soul mate" to find in the world, but rather a handful of people with whom we could find love and happiness. Perhaps it is my utter lack of certainty in nearly all worthy endeavors prior to making that leap of commitment, and taking the first steps that, gaining momentum, convince me that this was my path all along. Perhaps it is the happy contradiction that my husband defies the model of compatibility I would have chosen when we first became friends, and when I was looking elsewhere for love--that our friendship, and then our romance, have been a pleasurable experiment across culture, affiliation, lifestyles and temperament. Each of these things precludes for me the kind of immutable "in love" experience where we are both deadsure that "we are meant to be together." I deal in endless possibility, and so am able to hypothesize what life would have been like if we had chosen different people, different paths. But in the aftermath of losing my mother and grandmother--two women who I could not have chosen but who rather chose me--I have encountered a new kind of certainty about the people I am committed to. It would be morbid to base everything on this, but allowing the possibility of someone's absence to sneak up on me, to imagine for a moment life after their departure, is quite helpful in determining how much they mean to me, how intertwined our lives have become. The strength of my grief parallels the strength of my love for my husband: I know only that without him, life would be shabby, so many shades of grey, that my howling would go on for months--even years--upon discovering his absence. It is proof of the thing's existence by the vacuum, the shockwaves felt in its absence--about as close as I can get to being deadsure of anything.

...
The stone was semiprecious
We were barely conscious
Two souls too smart to be
In the realm of certainty
Even on our wedding day
We lit ourselves on fire
Oh, God not deny her
It's not if I believe in love
but if love believes in me
Oh, believe in me
...

U2 "Moment of Surrender" from 2009 album, No Line on the Horizon

if ida been a terrorist

I snuck up on my husband today. This is noteworthy only because he is not easily surprised. Famous for saying things like, "If that'd been a terrorist, you'd be dead by now," to jab at my lapses in situational awareness, he prides himself in choosing the seat with a vantage of all doorways in a public place, placing his back to the wall whenever possible. He knew I would be in the field until Friday morning, at least. When my Soldiers and I were allowed to complete training and return to garrison sooner, I did not apprise him of the change. I didn't think I had a great chance of pulling it off, but I wanted to have an aromatic supper cooking, and be shower-fresh when he got home from work. Thursday is deadline day for him, and it can be brutal.

I called him to acsertain whether he would head straight home or grab fast food on the way--it happened that I was still bathing when I heard him walking through the front door and still on the phone with me. I thought there would be too many clues that I was home: the dripdrop of the full tub with me in it, my car parked in the lot, the clear path from the doorway to the kitchen, his mother's spaghetti sauce recipe simmering on the stove. He was so tired, he missed all of it. He even wigged out that the air conditioning was back on--he knew he'd turned it down before leaving for work. I extracted myself from the bathroom and made my way down the short hallway, convinced that my very next move would betray me. In our game of hide-and-seek, I was unsure who was the hunter, who the hunted--had he known for minutes I was in the apartment? Was he now poised to jump out and terrify me? I finished my sentence on the phone while leaning over the back of the couch until he could see me. He didn't move, and I didn't know whether to gloat until he blinked out the slightest bit of disbelief. Only after that passed over his face did he smile, and I knew the unthinkable had occured: my husband had been caught off guard. These small intrigues are an occasional source of unexpected pleasure, as if we had burst into each other's world all over again.