Anticipatory Grief

I have spoken with a number of people regarding my daughter's upcoming surgery.  On the one hand, it is a fairly complicated surgery, with some serious medical technology being used.  On the other, the surgeon is one who has done this surgery many times before.  He is not simply reading the book and watching the procedure on YouTube.  He knows what he is doing.  There is great comfort in this!

But there is still this feeling of what I have come to label "Anticipatory Grief."  For those who need a refresher course on the works of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, grief often includes several stages.  There are five that she identified, and these stages can come and go in different order or in varying degrees, depending on the person and the day (or hour, or minute...).

The stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

This can't be happening... (denial)

Okay God, why are you doing this!?!?!?... (anger)

Look, if I can just be a better person, this won't happen, right?.... (bargaining)

I don't know why I never seem to get anything done...(depression)

Okay, we've done all we can, this is going to happen and we will get through this... (acceptance)

The statements or questions may be different, but I have been experiencing all of these.  Sometimes one at a time.  Sometimes several gang up together.  Occasionally, they are on a five minute cycle.

As I expressed to my colleague in ministry, "You know you are in the midst of bargaining and anger when you say, 'Okay God, that's it!  You take care of her or I quit!'"  For those who are theologically squeamish, let me point out that I know that God is big; God can take it.  God is no more threatened by my ranting than I am threatened by Lil Bit's crying.  (Although that is a post for another time about the breaking of the heart of God.)

For me, this cycle feels like grasping at control in the midst of the uncontrollable.  We have done our homework.  We have found a really good surgeon working out of a really good hospital that has a low incident of infection.  We have prepped our support networks in our families, in the church, among our friends. 

We have worked hard at treating Lil Bit like she is "normal," whatever that means.  Mostly it has meant letting her set the limits on her activity, saying "no" and backing it up when she tries to go past the limits of safety, and dealing with the usual issues of diapers, bath and naptime.

Having done all we can, I am faced with the limits of all that I can do.  I cannot guarantee her safety.  I cannot wish her surgery to magically be perfect or unnecessary.  I cannot add to the knowledge or skill of the doctors, nurses or attendants.

Part of the acceptance stage, with which I still wrestle, is realizing that this would all be true even if there were not surgery involved.  I could not guarantee her safety.  I cannot magically make it all better.  I cannot control the world and conform it to my vision of the ideal place for her to live and grow.

Having done all we can, we wait and we trust.  This gets a little harder as the date for surgery gets closer.  But it also means we get lots of practice.  And we pray a lot.  And we get teary eyed on occasion.  And we laugh a little too hard at inappropriate humor, just because we need the laughter.

I am reminded of two statements on grief.  They are perhaps opposites, perhaps mutually exclusive.  But they are also, paradoxically, both true.

The amount of grief we feel is directly proportional to the amount of unfinished business we have: what has not been said or heard; unfulfilled expectations, lost opportunities.

The amount of grief we feel is a sign of the amount of love we have for someone.

Yup.  That about covers it.

Trusting

Some of you read the blog that I (only very occasionally) write on with the Mrs., called My IVF (Irreverent View of Fertility).  If so, then you have probably already read here that we have encountered some new situations in our lives, particularly in the health of our daughter.

Long story short, on several tests, they (being the doctors) have had trouble tracking her pulmonary arteries.  The reason for this has apparently come to light in the latest CT scan.  She doesn't have a left pulmonary artery.  Turns out, it is hard to find if it is not there.  It also turns out to be a very rare condition, and even rarer for it to be the left pulmonary artery.  We have follow up visits with really good pediatric cardiologists scheduled, and they are checking with multiple colleagues.  And Lil Bit is asymptomatic, and thriving quite nicely.

Thus the "roller coaster" that the Mrs. refers to in her post.

For me, the whole adventure of having our daughter, from the craziness of dealing with infertility, to the amazing joy at her birth, from the feelings of total inadequacy in knowing how to take care of a kid to the moments of sheer grace while holding her, all of it has been an exercise in trust.

While I am having some difficulty finding the right words, I think the closest I can come is to say I am trusting that God will give us what we need to handle what we need to handle.  Sometimes that is in inner courage during difficult moments.  Sometimes it is the love of an amazing church community.  It has shown up in the form of a Facebook community that offers stories of courage and grace, of hope and support.  It comes in the form of the love of our families.

Having started this journey as an exercise in trust, now it is becoming an exercise in remembrance.  My job now is to remember that this trust is well placed and, as our choir sings near the end of every choir season:

He never failed me yet!

Thank you to each one of you amazing reminders of the love of God.

Time to Join the 21st Century

Having started a blog, and then promptly ignored it more often than not, I am now borrowing the idea of Randy Hammer, pastor of the United Church, Chapel-on-the-Hill (my home church) and blogging selected sermons here on the Interwebs.

My sermon blog is called Phil's Pulpit, and it can be found at http://uccpulpit.blogspot.com/

Y'all come!

Reality Checks

A recent conversation brought up the idea of reality checks. Reality checks are those things, people, or events that bring me to realize that there are things I am not seeing, not acknowledging, not taking into account as I make my daily decisions.

I am fairly good at noticing things what other people are avoiding noticing in their own behavior or beliefs. I can spot someone else's denial or self-deception at ten to twenty paces.

But my own? Not so much.

Like when I am given as a gift by the Men's Group at the church a little book called "Meditations for Men Who Do Too Much." Sure, it was well intentioned, even if it was off base. It was off base, right?

Recently I woke the Mrs. and asked her to drive me to the local ER. I was having chest pain, worse than any bouts of reflux I had ever had, and all the usual remedies for heartburn weren't working.

After a night's stay in the hospital, with a follow-up stress test, and some other stuff, my ticker is just fine. The problem was/is gastritis. Too much acid in the stomach. A problem that can lead to reflux and esophageal spasms, which mimic heart attacks, as the heart and this part of the esophagus use the same nerve cluster for pain.

(Before all the messages come in, yes I know that a reflux attack this time does not mean that next time isn't heart problems. They share the same nerves after all. This is why I went for the stress test and the follow-up doctor's appointment.)

All of this, and some pestering by family members who know my family's heart history, have been a massive reality check for me.

I know that I have a stressful job, between pastoring and chaplaincy, and that a baby on the way (see here for more on that topic) does not lower the stress. My blind spot was my lack of adding enough appropriate coping behaviors.

Some things I have started doing include:

1. Saying "no." I have recently been asked to hold an office of leadership within the Association (a regional body within the United Church of Christ), to chair a committee within the association on which I serve, as well as several other things. All of these positions are important. I have something to offer in each of these positions. I am not saying I am the best person for each of these, but I could do some good in them. Instead, I have declined. My plate is full. There are enough things of importance to which I have agreed. To spread myself any thinner would require me to lose focus on what I am already doing.

2. Getting people I trust to help hold me accountable. Some of these folks are already people I have been in conversation with. But I am now ready to hear them when they speak of rest, sabbath, exercise, etc.

3. Practicing what I preach. This is perhaps the hardest: admitting that I have been doing a poor job at those things I counsel others to do. So when I preach on keeping the Sabbath, I need to go back and reread the sermon and not merely be a speaker or hearer of the word, but a doer as well.

4. Prayer. I pray all the time. I have a list of people I pray for. I have times of leading prayer just about every time the church gathers. But do I listen? Do I cultivate the silence I so easily commend to others? The answer is no. Now it is time to work on it.

Throughout all of this, I am thankful to those who love me enough to continue knocking upon my hard head until I finally answer. I am thankful that my ER reality check was not as serious as it could have been.

What remains is to do the work of doing less work. If I figure that out, I will let you know.

A Change in Thinking

I have loved preaching ever since I started. Researching, meditating, writing, teaching, storytelling, connecting with a congregation, and all the other pieces of preaching are things I truly enjoy.

I am coming to realize that my preaching has changed over the past few years.

When I first started, I wanted to give people a message, and have them receive it the way I intended it. I wanted control over the message I was preaching. I would work hard to craft a well-turned phrase, and try to deliver it "just so" to move people to see things how I see them.

Now I am more interested in inspiring people. I am letting go of the futile effort to insure that the message is received as transmitted, and trying more to deliver something that will spark the faithful imagination and creativity of those who hear.

Where this is leading, I cannot tell yet. But it is enjoyable to see a difference in how I am walking this journey.

Quoting Uncle Walt

Found amidst the Interwebs, thanks to Wedgewood Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC:

We are, all of us, children of the biblical text. We have been conceived and birthed, generated and summoned, given life, by this text and none other. This text keeps having its say among us, by translation and interpretation, by commentary and proclamation, by study and enactment. We must always again, always afresh in every circumstance, come to terms with it.

We spend our life struggling with this text, sometimes struggling for the text, sometimes struggling against the text. The text always has its say among us; it will not go away. Its voice is a haunting one, sounding promises, uttering commands, voicing stories, proclaiming oracles, ejaculating pain, authoring hope. The voice of the text haunts us because we know very well it is a human text filled with endless critical problems—and yet we hear in
it the very voice of God: majestic sovereignty, awesome holiness, passionate grace, weakness made strong.

Because of this text, which will not go away or finally keep silent, we live haunted lives, filled with yearnings for what is not in hand, promises not yet filled, commands not yet obeyed, desires not yet granted, neighbors not yet loved. The old text becomes new text; old story becomes new song. For all those reasons, in gratitude and awe and fresh resolve, we celebrate the new, revised translation, made freshly aware by it that we are indeed haunted children of this haunting text.

And because the text will not go away or be silent, we are destined to be endlessly haunted, uneasy, restless, and on the way.

-Walter Brueggemann

Advent moments

Mary Oliver is a poet who has won national awards as well as my own admiration. At one point I had heard she had passed away, and was greatly saddened by the news, but now discover that such news was premature and "greatly exagerated," as Mark Twain would say. My relief is bested only by my gratitude.

In a recent collection, called Red Bird, Oliver writes the following

Of The Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

I think she has much of the state of our current situation well in hand. Similarly, Luke had the situation well in hand when he wrote in his Gospel

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

And it is into this Empire, then and now, that Christ comes at Christmas, with a message and a life beyond that which empire can handle.

Thanks be to God. Amen.