Haying Days

While the Sun Shines - Paintings by Poppy

Could you meet me at the crab apple tree,

Where you and I grew up?
Could you meet me down in the tall hay fields,

Where life was simpler still?
Could we go back to those days?
Can we go back to our haying days?

Those days, we wandered the hills and the breezes were made for us.
Those days, our bicycle rides couldn't have lasted for long enough.

Those days, we laid on our backs counting stars 'til it was too late.

Those days, trust was enough and our parents knew everything.

Those days, we caught fireflies only to let them go again.
Those days, mudpies were the rage in our very own mud cafe.
Those days, I cried when the forts were so cool that I couldn't come in.
Those days, our dogs chased the stones that we shouldn't have thrown but did.

Could you meet me at the crab apple tree,

Where you and I grew up?
Could you meet me down in the tall hay fields,

Where life was simpler still?
Could we go back to those days?
Can we go back to our haying days?

I want to drink from that thermos that my whole family did;

I want to smell that hay that got in our clothes and always itched our skin;
I want to watch my Mom and Dad walk hand in hand;
I want to hold a buttercup underneath my sister's chin.

Can we go back to then? Can we feel those things we once did?
Can we go back again? Can things be simpler like they once have been?

Crush

I want to get it out.
Cut it out of my chest like a cancer,
this sticky, black, heavy burden that

crushes.



Not the beautiful, crashing, cleansing 

crush

of the ocean waves; the elegant pounding of the 
built up tides.



Get it out, this maleficent, heinous, unspeakable

crusher.



Not remotely near to the joyful tension that resonates as with a new

crush;

the boy at school sending tender glances and a playful wink.



How can I rid my lungs, my articulations and my 'wits about me' of this

crushing?



My heart and flesh cry out; my soul longs and even faints.







I am nothing.

Unsocial Life

I love being married. 

I really do.

I love that I have someone that I can wake up when I'm having nightmares, someone that will volunteer to do the dishes when neither of us really want to, someone that I can start a pillow fight with (and promptly, lose). 

I love my husband, so, so much. 

I can't imagine my life without him.


But the truth is, sometimes I get lonely, even when he's around.

What a horrible thing to say, am I right?

But it's true. 


Sometimes, my heart aches when I look back at friends that I've had in the past. How did I let things slip so quickly? How did I not recognize when those friendships were falling away? How could I be so selfish?


Let me tell you: it's incredibly easy.



It's easy to tell yourself that no one could possibly understand how you feel. It's easy to say, "I have hurts and burdens that are way too heavy for me to bear on my own, and obviously no one cares enough about me to be interested in my overly emotional problems." It's easy to start drowning in depression. 

It's easy to find one person who will listen to you and to leave it at that person. Not only did I fall in love with my then-boyfriend, but I found the one person that I would allow myself to trust with my burdens. How unfair is that?

Because, let's face it -- no one likes those kind of awkward conversations where you just have to sit and cry with someone. I don't. It's uncomfortable and it makes me sad. That's just the truth. So, I convinced myself that having those conversations only once was enough.

To those people that I didn't trust enough to share my life with: I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't allow myself to be uncomfortable, both in listening to how you felt and in sharing how I felt. It's easier to avoid talking about problems than it is to work through them with sweaty palms and excruciating silences. It's easier to say nothing than to potentially say the wrong thing. It's easier to avoid eye contact than to look into the darkest places of a persons soul. I'm sorry that I was a coward, and I'm sorry that my actions hurt you.

To my loving, burden-carrying husband: I'm sorry that I put so much pressure on you to be my only emotional support. I'm sorry that finding and sharing my life with community seemed too overwhelming, that I was silent in the small things and waited until they became big boulders of pain to drop on your shoulders. Please forgive me.


Trudging through life feeling lonely is an awful way to live. 

And so, back onto the clumsy, bow-legged horse that is my social life I climb. 

It's finally time that I allow myself to share in life's awkward pauses, terrible misunderstandings, poorly worded condolences, and times of deep, deep sorrow.



Because I would rather share every aspect of life with friends than to find my heart sitting painfully alone at the end of the day. 

Cuss Words and Questions

It's been a difficult few months. 

Illness. Lonliness. Depression. Death.

It's in these recent months that I've truly began to question God's goodness. It's a hard place to be, trying to juggle the tangible depths of pain with the unseen mountains of God's grace and goodness.

How can God be good when He allows our friends and family to fall ill? How is God being good to us when He lets us descend into illness that is debilitating and isolating?

How is God good when we pray that He would send a much needed community to a person's side and yet they stand alone, so sure that they are so alone that they would rather end it all?

How is God good when the sorrows of life seem insurmountable, when the tears can't stop falling and the pain is so strong that you beg He'd take it away?

How good is a God that allows a beautiful, loving, kind young woman to go from living a joyous, impactful life to leaving a void in the lives of everyone who knew her?



Where is the goodness in any of this?





Where is God in all of this?





And that's the thing. 
I don't know the answer.
I don't know any of the answers.
And the people who claim to have the answers can hold their tongues. Really, please, hold your tongue. I don't need to hear the scriptures that people always quote in times like these. I know them.


It's okay to be angry.
It's okay to question.
God is bigger than my cuss words and He's bigger than my doubts.



I choose to live in the tension of not knowing and yet trusting that God is good.

Faith.

anxiety.

It's fear. 
It's anger. 
It's upset tummies and racing heartbeats. 

It's anxiety. 


Anxiety gets me every single time. It seems to overtake me as quickly and mightily as an avalanche of wet BC snow, sliding down a set of vaseline greased marbles on a steep sheet of ice. 
And as stunned as I might seem, I always feel it building. 

Oh yes, the low rumblings, creeping their way into my stomach; 
the hummingbird wings beating in my chest where my heart once was; 
breath... short... lump in throat... inevitable tears where an appropriate response to such seemingly trivial matters should go. 


I seem to have missed some important lessons in my life — like, when I was supposed to tell people how they made me feel, and when they were hurting me. I missed the foundational class of how to express and stick up for myself, without lashing out. Somewhere along the way, I learned that putting other people first, out of love, meant that you were their doormat. 

I was never taught to stick up for myself, out of love. 




A few years back, I finally started the counselling that I knew I'd needed to help me deal with my unresolved issues. It was incredibly helpful to know that, even when I was being completely unreasonable and over-sensitive, my feelings were real and valid. 
I had licence to tell people how they were making me feel. 

Unfortunately, it seemed that, whenever I tried this perfectly legitimate course of action, friendships became tense, I was told off, I wasn't taken seriously. This made for awkward interactions, and, well...


anxiety.




What a tricky little cycle.

What a lonely place to be.

This isn't what God intended.

Gomer

Love is patient, love is kind,

I'll try to keep that all in mind,
If you'll hold your hand in mine.

Won't you hold my right hand,
give me the strength I need to stand?
Isn't that what you promised?

I've been broken, I've been bruised,

Nobody wants to love the used

Love is just another word, for let me hurt you

Will you be my salvation,

the loving arms that won't let me run?

Even though I don't always want it.

Will you persevere?
Break through my walls, and angers and fears
Will you persevere?

Put your hand in mine,
Love is patient, love is kind,

Or so I've been told

Faith, hope, and love these three remain,

won't you bring me home again?

Even though I'm prone to go, go, go, go, go–––?

Will you protect me from myself?

It Is Dangerous to Read Newspapers

While I was building neat
castles in the sandbox,
the hasty pits were
filling with bulldozed corpses

and as I walked to the school
washed and combed, my feet
stepping on the cracks in the cement
detonated red bombs.

Now I am grownup
and literate, and I sit in my chair
as quietly as a fuse

and the jungles are flaming, the under-
brush is charged with soldiers,
the names on the difficult
maps go up in smoke.

I am the cause, I am a stockpile of chemical
toys, my body
is a deadly gadget,
I reach out in love, my hands are guns,
my good intentions are completely lethal.

Even my
passive eyes transmute
everything I look at to the pocked
black and white of a war photo,
how
can I stop myself

It is dangerous to read newspapers.

Each time I hit a key
on my electric typewriter,
speaking of peaceful trees

another village explodes.

-- Margaret Atwood (Published 1968)