Saying the words I hate to say

We are sitting opposite each other in the diner waiting for our breakfast to arrive, her pale little face elflike below the new khaki beret. The mad rush to get here in time, her infuriating slowness and indecision, my sickening nagging and unnecessary criticism – these fall away like water below a dammed up stream. Above the dam created by this break in our routine, by a time painfully carved out, the water settles and stills. It’s as if I’ve been caught in a torrent of frustration and needless stress, and I’ve wounded with my thrashing limbs and thrashing words. Why do I do this?

The table between us, the sitting and waiting, is distance and time enough to stop my thrashing and look around me and come into my right mind, right heart, again. I look across at her and see the precious, fragile thing she is and I take her elfin face in my hands and look her in the eyes, hoping my shamed and loving gaze reaches deep into her soul, and I say the words that still come hard, get stuck in my throat:

“I’m sorry.”

I tell her it’s not her at all (her eyes show me she needed to hear this); that’s it me and I hate it and I’m sorry; that she is the dearest, most lovely thing to me (eyes open, soften and brighten as love and delight begin to heal what should never have been), and that I hate the words that come out of my mouth – so small and mean – even as I hear myself saying them; that I know these small, mean words are flowing more often, more freely, these recent days (she nods shyly in assent) and I don’t know why or how to stop but I see it and will try, and I’m sorry, again.

“I’m sorry.”

Oh how I hate these words as well: Hate that I have to say them; hate what has come before them and made them necessary. I hate them because they are so small, too, and never seem enough. They can’t roll back the waters of time as I wish they could; they can’t affect a miracle of absolute healing and oblivion; they can’t guarantee that this same devastating flood will not ravage our world again next week, even tomorrow. I hate them because they wound my ego and lay me bare to the reality of my power and my misuse of it, of my desires and their constant disappointment, and of my apparent helplessness at times to be anywhere close to the human, woman, wife, friend, daughter, mother (oh yes, especially mother) that I long to be.

If I hated these words less, maybe I would hate my hard, critical, harsh, unkind, careless, uncontrolled, hurtful words more? Enough to hold them in and hold them back? Enough to stop the torrent and step back from the edge of that crashing, hurtling, shattering precipice?

But though I hate the sorry words, still I love them and need them, as much as a drowning man needs the rock that agonizingly stops his freeflow freefall down the raging river. Though they are hard words, yet they soften – the hard places in me and the hurt places in her. Their very hardness is solid ground for me if I will cling to them, and a foothold for the long climb back up if I can stand on them and move beyond.

Moving beyond means accepting the forgiveness that I see mercifully, graciously leap up in her riverblue eyes from who knows what deep, clear inner spring. It means accepting the truth that I am, today, not mountain-climber, rockface-scaler, summit-reacher; but simply one who ackowledges the need to start again, again, at the foot of the towering cliff, thankful to be on dry ground and be given the chance to try again.

It is a humbling, praiseless task, this trying again; but a timeless one too. Even those who have dedicated their lives in monk’s cell to the pursuit of God and holiness and right-relatedness (I remember this with growing courage) embraced this task as worthy life’s work and spiritual discipline. I would expect more from them (from me) but this is the age-old truth and tale:

A curious outsider asked the burning question, hoping for spiritual enlightenment: “What do you do in your cell all day, Father?” The old man replied: “We fall down and then we get up again.”

So I get up again.

And I open the story book we had forgotten and had had to go back home to get, wasting ‘precious minutes’ and provoking one of my frustrated tirades and her hot tears now dried. She moves around the table to sit next to me and be able to read along and see the pictures, and we are together again – warm limbs and happy imaginations, healing hearts and hungry tummies.

We find the place where we left the story last time, and we begin again.

“Always we begin again.”

(attributed to St Benedict of Nursia)

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!