The Fairness of Baggage

Probably one of the most painful lessons I've learned in my own life, and in observing the lives of those closest to me, is that of dealing with serious personal issues LATER.  Which means, in general, that those serious personal issues are NOT being dealt with right NOW.  I ran away from the remains of my childhood while in Israel -- a long story -- and thought I took control of my life.  I thought that right up until problems with my marriage and my mothering of my firstborn in her elementary school years pulled me up by the short hairs.

That's because in my late teens and through most of my twenties, I reveled in my supposed freedom from the emotional baggage of my youth.  Things I heard and witnessed and endured.  The pain of feelings suppressed; the fear of no safety net; the disconnect from society; a deep spiritual abyss of confusion.  What I couldn't see clearly was that all of that baggage accompanied me through my perceived escape from an oppressive existence . . . and it rolled right alongside me as I took my marital vows, labored through childbirth, struggled to understand the nuances of 'real life', careened through parenting and exhausted both my husband and myself in those early years.

Though my gifts for compassion and discernment ran deep, they were tainted by a skewed perspective and a surprising naivete concerning the nature of people around me.  My sense of right and wrong was very acute and intensely black and white in situations where I really should have loosened up a bit.  And as I pushed headlong through my budding adulthood, a greenhorn in so many areas of the mundane day-to-day duties, my anger grew.  It erupted in the face of intense emotional situations which became so because I didn't have the internal tools to effectively and quietly deal with bumps and spills in relationships without taking it far too personally.  My sense of righteousness and my way with words made me a force with which to be reckoned.  Not to everyone.  Only to some.  And most often to myself.

I was afraid at the root of it all.  Afraid of loss.  Afraid of failure.  Afraid of being wrong.  Afraid to have the rug pulled out from beneath me yet again.  I craved regularity for so long, stability and security, and yet when they arrived their features were so unfamiliar that I turned from them.  I turned to the familiar unhealthy thought patterns.  I turned and embraced the very pain from which I had been running.  And in doing do, though I remained worthy of love and affection, though I could present as intelligent and amusing, I became ineffective in very vital ways.

For years, I ran into walls with my children, sure I was inadequate, afraid to introduce them to the God in which I was sure I still believed, and positive they would eventually be as screwed up as I felt.  Instead of finding the good in my husband, in our relationship, I allowed for the eventuality of divorce, the inevitability of a split, the finality of an end to us in the not-so-distant future.  My problems with my body image, with bulimia, with Gloria, created terrible moments of private paralysis -- a pair of snug jeans or a serving of corn chips could be, and often was, my emotional undoing.  Not the best of foundations for success in my chosen lines of work, so to speak.

Though I do believe that with the passing of each year a piece of me returned to the whole and was knitted back into place, that process didn't happen quickly enough to spare those around me from the damage I inflicted in my broken state.  Not that it was intentional.  In some cases, I didn't know any better.  My boundaries were stretched.  My mindset far from center.  If ever I could change one thing about my life after my childhood (because that would be the obvious Genie-in-a-bottle wish) it would be the rate at which I realized that eschewing my hurts only caused further hurts.  By not dealing with my wounds early on, I created a far more difficult scenario from which to extricate myself AND my loved ones later in life.  I could have been a better parent and wife and sister and daughter.  A better friend.  More effective.  My life could have been lived with far more purpose and much less getting by.  That whole survive or thrive thing.  It's not that I live in that regret.  No, not at all.  I love my life here and now.  Enough healing has occurred for me to feel reset and restored . . . and purposeful.  But I live with the awareness of that fact.  An awareness which makes me more sensitive to others caught in similar webs.

That my powers of persuasion and assistance are limited is now excruciatingly obvious to me.  Excruciating because outside of prayer and love, there is often nothing I can do to change the life circumstances of people for whom I care very deeply.  When my sister suffered her post-partum psychotic episode and took her children's lives, I couldn't spare her the resulting agony nor could I walk the dark path back to life on which she had to journey.  Nor could I absorb the pain of the other families or my own.  Such an all-encompassing helplessness, beyond anything I had felt previously . . . and that's saying something.  When I turned my baby brother into the police, and he was sentenced to over a decade in prison, a flame in some deep chamber of my heart was tamped into darkness for what seemed several decades.  Though I imagined what his life must have been, it was his life to endure and not mine.  When my other brother, husband and father to three, discovered a cancerous mass had invaded his fit body, the shock rippled like a sonic boom through me.  I couldn't love it or joke it away.  The hours of chemo and resulting illness and weakness broached no sisterly stand-in: it was all his to take in and in and in.  Poisoning himself to combat a deadlier poison.  I could not comprehend how my siblings deserved any of it after what they lived through in our shared early years.

But it's not a world where fairness is dished out with any sort of regularity and justice, is it?  Otherwise, in some burst of  wise epiphany, those of us on the outside looking in on people with problems like the ones I just outlined would swoop in and offer assistance in just the right way: disaster would be averted.  Broken hearts, destroyed lives, unfairness in truckloads . . . would cease to exist.  Someone would have caught my brother's need for counseling to combat mental illness before drugs became a complication and led to a life of petty crime and terrible decision-making.  Someone would have recognized the signs of post-partum depression and dragged my sister to a doctor, whether she wanted it or not, and Grace and Gabriel would be playing with my son in Colorado right now.  Someone would have caught my brother's back pain early on and diagnosed him before the lymphoma jumped up in stages; better yet, he would never have developed a liking for Diet Pepsi and thus exposed himself daily to the artificial sweetener directly linked to his cancer.

My experiences have increased my sensitivity to possible unfolding tragedy.  I don't seek such things out.  But my radar is a bit more attuned.  So, I don't hold back if I see a situation where a word or action might defuse a moment or create a buffer or educate, educate, educate.  But even then, some will be helped and some won't.  There are those individuals who are able to see their shortcomings and weaknesses and wish to be restored.  But it seems that there are far more who are shortsighted and too weak to accept a leg up onto the dry shore from the shipwreck banging about in the dirty waters around them.  They're the ones who still have the power to scare me to my very human core.  They're the ones who keep me tethered to prayers of gratitude and beseeching.

Often, they're the ones you love for who they are, even the ugly.  They are the closest to your bared and beating heart.  And thus they have the power to cause great damage in their wounded state.  Exploding shrapnel.  Far-reaching.  Long-range.  Enduring.  Scarring.

At times like that, all you or I can do is don our battle gear, secure our helmets and assume a protective position.  And I also cry.

Bunny Hopping

I think I may have discovered a lingering - not lingerie - prejudice within my soul-searching, people-loving, Christ-seeking self. I say 'linger' because it first blipped onto my radar over two years ago, bringing me up short as an odd epiphany burst in my brain, scattering previous misconceptions on the matter into the void where hurtles and collides all manner of discarded thought.

For the case of this writing, I am using this variation of the definition for prejudice: an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason. These feelings I have identified are not hateful, nor do they incite me to the point of exacting either physical or verbal harm on another. No, what these feelings stir within certain windowless corridors of my mind is annoyance, on whose heels follows rather quickly awareness.

This mental malingerer first appeared on the scene February 8, 2007. On this day an ex-stripper, ex-Playboy model from Texas - a fitting origin for one who was larger than life on a several different planes - by the name of Anna Nicole Smith died of a drug overdose at the age of 39. (I am 39 this year; it is difficult to imagine death robbing me of the chance to hit my 40's.) During her life, her body and her choices paved the way for her media celebrity without much evidence of her brain actively participating in the fray. After making Playmate of the Year - a pinnacle achievement - and divorcing her high school sweetheart first husband, Anna Nicole married an obscenely wealthy octogenarian oil tycoon while she was yet in her mid-20's. He passed away a few years into their marital bliss -- which is not surprising as she would have been a healthy handful for a robust young man let alone an aged billionaire with lusty tastes. She spent a good many years embroiled in a bitter lawsuit over the estate. From her first marriage she had a son who lost his life to drugs at the young age of 20; she also left behind a 3-year old daughter. Riding the coattails of earlier success stories, Ms. Smith tried her own hand at a reality-based show; she was continually portrayed as a vacuous, doped-up, dumbed-down, boobies-and-blond caricature of a woman. Pathetic in a nutshell. None of this conjured up the makings for a three-dimensional, in-depth, and worth-watching public personality. Not to me, anyhow.

Her death was covered and dissected and regurgitated, along with blow-by-blow analysis of why and where it all went wrong and who was the real father of her baby girl and endless interviews with publicity-seeking 'close friends,' by every news agency on television and online. Each day brought urgent developments, dished out for public consumption by folks like Matt Lauer and Ann Curry of THE TODAY SHOW, whose media talents I felt could and should be much better utilized with real news. I mean yes, it was tragic for anyone to die in that manner at a relatively young age (thank you, very much). It was doubly tragic that she lost her son and now her daughter was left without a mother. But, she chose to live as she did: live by the sword, die by the sword. Surely, somebody of true social importance had passed away, a real movie star, a Pulitzer-prize winner, a scientist, a social activist or major religious figure, heck, even a nobody young woman who chose to keep her clothes on and actually put attentively raising her kids above raising her cup-size for attention?

All perfectly good and witty opinions based on prejudice must come to an end.

It hit me while I was sweeping the kitchen floor, getting under the counters' edges and beneath the fridge. The blank eye of the TV stared at me, indignant at having been switched off by my irritated self after discovering more Anna Nicole coverage on a reputable news station that was decidedly not 'E! News.' Suddenly, POW! -- the freight train hit me. Would my death be more important because I chose not to gyrate around a pole for money while strange men ogled my body? Because I chose to remain fully dressed and out of the glossy pages of porn magazines? Because I chose to value my brain and decisions more than the lure of this world's money and pleasures? Further, was I more important than this ex-Guess model who slipped and fell victim to a prescription drug addiction? To men who treated her like a big juicy slab of prime rib ready to be devoured at their leisure? To a world that watched while she painted herself into a narrow corner and reduced her to celluloid fodder? Somewhere along the line, this mother of two lost her life-navigator-system and fell to wandering aimlessly through a one-dimensional life. If I was judging all of this using the yardstick of my developing-Christian perspective, I had measured Ms. Smith unjustly. I should not have considered her measurements . . . at all.

I cried for her as I should have done when first I heard the news of her death. I cried knowing that even as I prayed for her and those hurt by her passing, I had missed the chance to pray for her while she lived. I prayed for other lovely lonely women who sought attention and fame, or infamy as some cases often turned out, at the high cost of their sexuality, their individuality, their spirituality. I thanked Anna Nicole, posthumously as the case may have been, for opening my eyes to this invaluable lesson.

Except, the lesson was not learned. Not fully anyway. On Tuesday of this past week, I experienced another jolt. While in the kitchen (what is it with the kitchen and epiphany?) preparing a fantastic fish taco feast for dinner, my ears picked up the high-pitched strains of a girlish giggle. It sounded like this girl was repeatedly flubbing marriage vows. I asked what my daughter was watching on the living room TV set. She informed me it was a wedding show. Kendra Wilkinson, another ex-Playboy bunny, reality-show blond bomber, ex-live-in-girlfriend-to-nasty-ol’-Hugh-Hefner, was marrying Hank Baskett, a fine-looking hottie (Sarah’s description) of an NFL player for the Eagles. I rolled my eyes, still chopping the red cabbage, and tried to endure the next few minutes. But, after hearing Kendra gush about how her life had been transformed by this man’s undying love and devotion to her every need, while the sun’s reflection glinted off the whirring blades of the paparazzi-filled hovering helicopter overhead, and the crowd oohed and aahed from the transformed lawn of the Playboy mansion, I lost it. “Uh, yeah, right. Okay-y-y-y, then-n. . . “ Sarah, quick to discern the vast quantities of unspoken sentiment inherent in that statement, shot right back, “Mom. Just because she posed naked and is on a show you don’t like does not mean she is not a person. She is allowed to have feelings. Just like you,” she drew a breath, “and I thought you said Christians are not supposed to judge people. That is up to God!”

Well, I was proud of my daughter in that moment. No, not for defending a bunny I hoped my cat would never drag onto our back porch. No, not for exposing herself to empty programming which wasted perfectly good gray matter . . . and, yes, the chances were high that she enjoyed getting in that dig about my faith as she was not venturing with any apparent interest into that arena of belief herself. But, her core statement she spoke with conviction. All people mattered. All people were supposed to matter. Just as with Anna Nicole, I had formed - without much thought, little reason, and biased knowledge - an unfavorable opinion of this woman which kept me from allowing her any validity. I had more compassion for addicts, wife-beaters, and murderers. How was that possible? Because I detested the pornography industry and knew the pain, loss, and warped perspectives it engendered in so many, and because these two people seemed to go willingly into that dark night, I downgraded their human status. I fell prey to the media-hype, didn't do my own thinking, and thus became a bit one-dimensional myself in that area.

While I won't be picking up a Playboy magazine any time soon, I will remind myself that the women inside those slick pages are also somebody's daughter, mother, sister, aunt, friend, and the cornerstone of my faith says they, too, were created out of divine love and are worthy of my prayers.