How do you get out of a bottomless pit?

One recent night I found myself in a dark place where the world and my life looked bleak - as if all I ever did was the same thing over and over again, as if I was giving to life but life simply wasn't giving enough back. Like constantly exhaling and never being able to fill the lungs with fresh air again. I suddenly couldn't see the point of getting up the next day (and, yes, before you ask, these moods DO come over me more often when I've stayed up too late, and they have often passed in the morning!). I dragged myself around all evening and got into bed dark and sad.

In the darkness I whispered my own darkness to Jeremy and lay on his chest and cried a bit as he simply held me. Sometimes that's enough, but that night the hole inside me was bottomless and I wanted more, demanded more; wanted human him to be all the breath and love I would ever need. We both know this pit too well and when I drag him in with me and ask him to fill it, this story never ends well.

A few dark words later, and Jeremy says: "I don't think you're seeing things right. I don't know... maybe you need to work on gratitude or something."

Double-edged swords, these words. It's true but it's not what I want to hear right now. Can't you see? My pit is bottomless! I'm flailing in the cold dark here; I need rescue! I tell him so: grudgingly admit that I know I need to work on gratitude, that I've ordered and am waiting for the book that will help me find it ;-) but that that's not what 'now' is about - and he quietly holds me still.

But in the dark, and again when the light dawns, these words play around the edges of my consciousness, forming alliances and garnering support: from Will's talk last Sunday and from the desires that caused me to order the book in the first place, from my deeper longing for true joy rather than either denial or wallowing. And slowly I feel sadness withdrawing (Please, don't leave me!) and this one rose begin to find some breathing space among the thorns.

Only day two of the 'Joy Dare' for me and already I have felt both unexpected bursts of joy, soft tears falling as I read an amazing post this morning (new eyes to see) AND a resistance to "this naive, Polyanna denial mechanism". Yes, I see I have a push-pull feeling about gratitude. Call it a love-hate thing too perhaps. But I'm hoping that this spring-from-winter, joy-from-sadness season I'm in - and this book and the dare to live fully RIGHT HERE AND NOW before anything changes or 'gets better' - will make the pull and the love stronger, and the hating push fade into the background. Because it's not that the darkness isn't there, not that I want to pretend it doesn't exist; just that I have a suspiscion that the way out of the pit is to look up at the light and - hand over hand, remembered gift over remembered gift - climb up... and out.

Joy Dare: 3 gifts green:
1 - A poem brings green to my imagination and heart even while fresh, sparkly-diamond-snow covers the world this morning. 2 - The spinach and kale I put in our smoothies for breakfast, that nourish our bodies without us even tasting it! :-) 3 - The tulip plant I bought to welcome my parents-in-law to their room as they arrive today (praying for safe driving for Jeremy going to pick them up from Bangor).

All joy and no fun?

Last week a friend sent me a fascinating article from the New York magazine about why parents hate parenting. It was entitled ‘All Joy and No Fun’, and took as its starting point a range of academic research that shows that, although “most people assume that having children will make them happier”, in fact “parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so”. The article also discussed the fact that child care and parenting come pretty low down on surveys in which people rank how pleasurable they find different tasks. A similar result also shows up regularly in relationship research, with children “invariably reducing marital satisfaction” (not a surprise really, when you think about the strains parenting puts on a relationship!). There follows some really interesting discussion about why this might be – the challenge that parenting has always been, plus recent changes in society that have changed roles, tasks and expectations – and a couple of passages about the reality of being a parent made me chuckle in recognition.

One such statement, that “While children deepen your emotional life, they shrink your outer world to the size of a teacup, at least for a while”, reminds me of the moment when we finally got eleven week old Amélie to sleep in her cot at a decent hour in the evening, got excited that we’d at last be able to go out for a relaxing twilight stroll together as we had loved to do, but then realized that at least one of us was actually stuck in the house! It was one of those moments when the penny drops and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry – I think maybe I did a bit of both. The other part of the article that made me laugh out loud was the story of a famous psychologist who, when he finally got around to having children, told a colleague that: “They’re a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit.” This expresses so succinctly and colourfully the feeling I often get when an otherwise pleasant meal, road trip or walk in the woods is subtly or dramatically ruined (for want of a better word!) by the presence and needs of my darling daughter. Don’t get me wrong, I want her to be there; it’s just that sometimes I would like her to be there in a quasi-adult form, without the demands, meltdowns and whines, or even the very reasonable need for my attention and care. And there is no denying that when, as we did last night, Jeremy and I get a rare evening alone to jaunt off to St Andrews-by-the-Sea, sit on The Gables restaurant terrace by the water, eat without responsibility for the nourishment of a child, and talk without interruption, it is a far more purely pleasurable experience, and our ‘marital satisfaction’ probably experiences a sudden surge!

But the article also goes on to ask why, if parents aren’t happy, we as a race keep choosing to have kids, we generally love them dearly, and most parents do not regret having children (except on really bad days!). Then, in discussing a particular video clip of a stressful and rather typical exchange between a teenage boy and his mother over ‘screen time’ – a video referred to as brilliant birth control! – the article points out that neither a video, nor the content of one conversation or argument, can show the very deep love that is in the heart of this mother for her child, nor the hopes and values she has for the child that cause her to enter into a conflict zone she would probably much rather stay out of. And this is what it comes down to for me, and why I have never regretted becoming a parent, though there are days when my resentment levels are higher than normal, or when I think it’s a task I cannot manage: I’m ultimately not in this for easy, instant pleasure or personal satisfaction. Sometimes those things call out to me so loudly that I can hardly hear anything else, but the voice that calls me back is, I hope, love. That’s what I want to grow in, and into, who I want to become. That’s what I’m hoping is slowly drawing me out of my self-centredeness. So I’m happy that the article chooses to finish with some research that sensibly, instead of asking only about the pleasurableness of tasks, asked people to rank how rewarding different parts of their life are; unsurprisingly, parenting came high on the rewarding scale, though much further down on the pleasurable scale. This makes total sense to me, and also demonstrates the arbitrary and slippery nature of words. What do they really mean, all these words? Pleasurable or rewarding, fun or joy, satisfaction or love, happiness or contentment… Yes, my life is more challenging and less ‘unruffled’ than it used to be, but of COURSE there is happiness, pleasure and fun in living with a little person bursting with life and love! When I picked Amélie up from her sleepover this morning, a fresh explosion of unnamable loveliness and lightness entered the car along with her precious, pint-sized body. So perhaps what is really at stake here is how we as individuals and as a culture define the important concepts embodied in the words we bandy around as desirable goals and experiences. And perhaps parenting is one of the significant life experiences or ‘encounters’ that could help (or force) us to redefine our concepts, words, goals, values – even ourselves – for our own and everyone’s good. A longer quote from the article:

“Martin Seligman, the positive-psychology pioneer who is, famously, not a natural optimist, has always taken the view that happiness is best defined in the ancient Greek sense: leading a productive, purposeful life. And the way we take stock of that life, in the end, isn’t by how much fun we had, but what we did with it. (Seligman has seven children.)”

There’s something to this idea, but I’m not utterly convinced (seven kids must kill a few brain cells, don't you think?!). What about this for an idea though? If all you’re looking for is ‘fun’, life will inevitably blindside you and you’ll end up with very little of the experience you so desperately seek; but if you’re willing to aim for the sort of ‘joy’ that takes some hard work and sacrifice, fun will jump out at you from behind a tree while you’re minding your own business, and want to come along for the ride. That’s my experience, anyway. And one I’m hoping will – lack of sleep notwithstanding – repeat itself when I camp out with Amélie in the garden tonight!

Go to the ant...

Have you ever noticed that just as the trials and tribulations of one season are behind us, fresh ones belonging to the new season suddenly appear?! Here in Canada this means that, just as winter’s harshness is being forgotten, the pleasant summer air becomes filled with the buzz of stinging insects, and the lush new growth of grass with biting red ants! In our garden anyway…

Well, those blasted ants reminded me today of something that happened to me when I had known my now-husband Jeremy for a few months and we were co-leading a team of young people on a two-month trip to South Africa and Namibia. Next to a vlei, in the heady balm of a summer evening in the Cape, we had finally confessed to each other that we were interested in more than just friendship. But the next morning, instead of feeling excited, I found myself overcome with fear about the future, about the potential for 'making a mistake', and about the pain and struggle I knew marriage would inevitably bring. (The romance of this story just took a nosedive, didn’t it?!) As I sat outside thinking and praying about this, my eye was caught by two tiny ants on the African earth, trying to move something many times their size. I watched them for what seemed like hours as they persevered in their task together, pushing and tugging to get their prize over obstacles and out of the dips into which they often fell. A number of times the wind would blow one of the ants away, but the remaining ant would struggle on alone, still committed to the task, until – when I had begun to think the second ant would never return – it would suddenly reappear and carry on exactly where it left off. At other times, the pair got truly stuck in some crevice far too deep for them, but incredibly they never gave up. A few times they were joined by a third ant, who would help them just until they were unstuck, and then go on its way.

As I watched, this ‘ant’s tale’ became a parable, a lesson, and a promise for me. I received it as a promise that, yes, there would be struggle and hard work, but that this did not mean the task would ever need to be abandoned. I saw it almost as a preview of what Jeremy and I would experience if we chose to spend our lives together: that sometimes it would feel as if one of us was abandoned and struggling on alone; that at others the task would seem impossible; but that we would in fact never be deserted or alone, and so the task was achievable. And I took it, too, both as a promise that the help we needed would always be there at just the right time, and also as a lesson to look for, expect, and ask for that help – from God and from others. Of course, to give a balanced perspective on marriage – and to better reflect what has been my experience – it would have been nice if those ants had frolicked blithely in a grassy meadow for a while; or casually tossed the object they were carrying back and forth to each other like a beach ball; or put it down and used it as a table to chat and eat around with their beloved, tiny ant-children! But ants only do those things when they’re not being watched, so I suppose this was exactly the experience I needed at the time to give me the courage to take the plunge into the unknown. It also became for me a picture that has helped me to re-envision myself, Jeremy, marriage, and the role of others in our lives, in a way that has been extremely valuable over the years. The famous proverb tells us sluggards (there’s that darned sloth again!) to go to the ant and consider her ways – her diligence and foresight, perseverance and discipline – and be wise. Because in every significant relationship or endeavour there are seasons of hard work, and then seasons to enjoy the fruit of our labour; there are winter seasons and there are summer ones. Though, even in the summer seasons, you just can’t avoid those flaming ants!