Help and Thank You

Every time an ambulance goes by, it's automatic.

I make the sign of the cross and begin,

"Hail Mary, full of grace.  The Lord is with thee..."

Before I put food into my mouth, it's habitual,

"Bless us Oh Lord and these thy gifts..."

As my children put their heads on their pillows and close their eyes, I say,

"Now, I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep..."

Prayers like these bring me comfort and the rote, ritual, habitualness of them grounds me.

***

When I was in college, a Philosophy major, I used to claim that religion was an opiate for the masses, a crutch, a place for people who didn't want to think...sheeps who wanted to be told what to do. I couldn't imagine giving anything over to God. 

The difference between being 22 and 42 is that significant amounts of life have transpired.  I have three children walking around the world, with parts of my heart beating inside of them, and I cannot control what happens.

And there are big chunks of my life that have no rational explanation.  There are things that cannot be bought, eaten, screamed or explained away.  They just are.  And everyone has them.  I think of them as big holes--places in our being that just don't add up--spots that feel broken or lonely or severed.  Maybe not all the time, but definitely upon reflection, some of the time.  And no matter what you do or consume or extricate, you can't make the feeling go away.

Likewise, there are miracles.  And we've all experienced them.  We can try to explain them with technology or modern medicine or fate or fortune or serendipity or happenstance or coincidence, but some things are too great to trust to circumstance.  And we wonder, how did this happen?  How can this be?

***

I didn't find and subsequently forge my relationship with God until I was 25...on my hands and knees on a cold apartment floor searching for answers, begging for a new beginning, searching for truth.

My initial prayers looked like, "Help me and thank you." They were the only things I knew to say.

I've later learned after becoming a ginormous Anne Lamott fan that her favorite prayers are, "Help, help, help and Thank you, thank you, thank you."  An extraordinary writer and observer of what it means to be a nonjudgemental human, she gets it. 

The God I pray to likes that I cuss.  It's okay that a good chunk of my prayers start out, "Get a fucking load out of this"...and then they turn into, what would you do if you were me...how do I make this right...which path is best....I don't want to....I'm tired...I wish that...thank you for him....please, please help me to be better...promise me that it's going to be okay.

I pray on the way to the gym at 5am.  I pray in the shower.  I pray at night.  I pray while I'm cursing out the dip shit, ass wipe driver in front of me.  I pray when my kids are driving me up a fucking wall.  I pray when I'm really tired at night. 

I am no longer afraid to pray the right or the wrong prayer or the right or the wrong way.

I just pray....for me, for you, for us...and I do it because I have faith that my prayers mean something as I believe that my life and your life do.  And I try in that space to cry out for what I need and to be grateful for what and whom I've been given.  And I stand reminded that in a world spinning crazy, sometimes, Help and Thank you are all you need.

I'm Here

When my nephew died, I stopped.

I refused to get up at 4:30am to run.

I couldn't bear to engage social media.

The idea of posting inspirational, life-giving mantras felt like a farce.

I ate anything I wanted, which included lots of milk chocolate and next to no vegetables.

I did only the things that I had to do...work, my children's activities, laundry and grocery shopping.

And, I l stayed largely sad and sometimes, mad.  It's still incredibly hard for me to make sense of a life lost way too early.

But then yesterday, I went to the funeral mass of a dear friend's mother...another woman who passed away too early as well.

And while I was praying and crying, watching so many loved ones gathered to say goodbye to an incredible woman, I thought about the way that she lived her life...to the hilt, brashly, boldly, fully and with laughter and fun.

And I thought, grief is grief and it probably won't ever go away, but it's time to live, because after all, I am a part of the living.  For many days, weeks, I thought it was a betrayal to laugh at things or post something flippant or silly, because really, doesn't the world remember and need to honor that someone really extraordinary has left us.

But I don't think that's how it works.  I think instead that you can be walking around dead, even though your heart is beating.  I think you can shut people and activities off that help you to rise to your best self.  I think you can lose sight that your one precious life is still available for whatever God has in store.

And that the real task is to live in the murk without letting the murk overtake you.  And this is no small feat.  It's hard to allow pain to move through you without letting it drown your being.  It's hard to look at pictures, video and to remember all that was so, so, so good and to know that those pictures are in the past.  And there is no rational explanation or sense to be made...so trying is in and of itself, futile.

But what is paramount is to live.

And so today, I ran again.

I just finished writing this.

I ate vegetables.

I documented in my journal.

I shared coffee with a friend.

And I thought, Nathan would like this.  He would laugh that I even wasted a moment on thinking that I shouldn't.

He knows that my story is still being told and that so too is his through all of us...and that we have a responsibility and a gift to say, "Today, I'm here."  Here's to the unfolding, pain, laughter and all...