The UMC: Watching and Waiting ...

Years ago when I started a blog I titled it “Looking Out the Window” and that is just what I feel like I am doing as I watch what is happening in The United Methodist Church. I have been a United Methodist since I was born. It is the church that guided me, taught me, nurtured my faith and supported my calling. I went to a United Methodist Seminary and read through the sermons of John Wesley while sitting next to George Whitefield's thumb in The United Methodist Archives. I grew up going to plenty of UMC conferences (Explorations '98 and '00, Youth Annual Conferences, Youth Jams, etc.), I worked as a youth leader at three different UMCs. When I was serving in West Ohio Conference, I went to back-to-back annual conferences as my membership was (and is) still with East Ohio. And in June of 2009, a journey that began with a sense of call at age 13 brought me on stage in Hoover Auditorium in Lakeside, Ohio for one of the most meaningful moments of my life … my ordination as an elder (pastor) in The United Methodist Church. It is very much home.

And yet, here I am looking at it through a window. I am currently working at an Episcopal Church and have been raising my kids in The Episcopal Church since I went on VLOA- family leave status in 2013. Since then I have attended Annual Conferences, done supply work at UMCs and maintained relationships and connections in The UMC but I am not in the thick of things as so many of my UM clergy friends are.

Both churches where I served as pastor I would characterize as predominantly conservative congregations and there were moments of tension over various things The UMC did that were perceived to be in favor of same sex marriage or changing the language of the Book of Discipline regarding homosexuality. I remember the emotions, focus and energy those required of me. I thought of that as I was reading a post about support/counseling/care opportunities for clergy at the upcoming special session of the General Conference.

Perhaps I should back up a bit because not everyone has an inbox full of UMNS stories on what is happening. A special session of The United Methodist General Conference (representatives from every UM Conference/Area in the world) has been called to deal specifically with The UMC's stance on same sex marriage and the ordination of what the Book of Discipline would refer to as “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.”

I thought about offering my own synopsis of the three main plans (or 5 according to some sources) being put forward, but I am definitely no expert and recommend instead googling the work of “The Commission on a Way Forward” or the Council of Bishops' statements.

All of this is to say the church of my baptism, confirmation, first sermon, wedding and ordination may be breaking. It is quite possible that the institution will do what so many institutions do best which is nothing, but even that will not be without consequences, fractures and pain. I wonder what will happen to the churches I have pastored that I remember so fondly and hold in my heart. What will happen to the seminary that is so dear to me and my husband? What will happen to the conference I call home and the one I am currently living in? What will my future in The UMC look like?

Most of all I find myself thinking about those who do not have any distance from this right now. Those who are in the thick of things. Those who are loving and listening to those who have very different views and holding onto hope of unity. Those who feel angry and hurt by angry and hurtful words. Those who get into the pulpit with a pit in their stomach and trembling hands because while they know God is with them, the emotionally-laden words can become personal and it hurts.

Even though I may have a little distance at the moment, I can't pretend this issue is not important to me or that I have no investment in which way this goes. There is a reason I tremble when I talk about it. My convictions, passion and beliefs are so deep and so important to me. This is hard. So while I watch I am doing what I can to stay informed, being careful with my words and praying, praying, praying …

Bad Parenting

Last week there was no school on Monday. Tuesday we woke up to a blizzard outside and an email saying school was cancelled. My kids were thrilled, we love snow days. The day started great: I made pancakes and bacon and let them stay in their pajamas, but as the day went on it turned less fun. All three of us took turns being cranky and short with each other. One of the kids cried at least every hour and I was constantly getting blamed for their unhappiness (you won't let me have candy, why can't I do this, etc.). In a last ditch effort to save the day I bundled up with them and we had a snowball fight, but of course that ended in frozen fingers and sadness. My oldest kept saying he wished daddy was home and my youngest wished grandma could come over. So at the end of our cooped up bonus day home I felt like a terrible mother.

I often get stuck in my head second guessing and doubting but especially when it comes to how I am raising my kids. I just so badly want to do it right. I was a straight A student, always turned in my assignments on time, and followed directions well. I wish parenting could be as clearly defined as school. I would love to know exactly what I need to do, and when I have done it a gold star by my name would be great.

I let my kids have a piece of candy or a sweet every day, once a week I put a frozen pizza in the oven and call it dinner, I let my kids play video games or play on the tablet for an hour each day (more on Saturdays when I want to sleep in), I worry about them, sometimes I hover, sometimes I let them do things other parents wouldn't, sometimes I lose my temper and yell, sometimes I push them too much with my high expectations, sometimes I don't push them enough and enjoy babying them, I haven't devoted enough time to teaching them how to ride a bike, I say no when they ask me to play video games with them, I tell them about things happening in the world that might frighten or worry them, I give them processed foods for snacks and I only buy organic when it is on sale. Before I had kids I thought I would teach them a foreign language before they turned 5 … I haven't. Some of those things will seem like terrible parenting decisions to some and some will seem like parenting wins to others.

Next I could list things I am proud of, but who even knows what that is because every single decision can be criticized, picked apart and in hind sight seem like a bad one. Trying to always do everything right is very hard. On that snow day when the kids and I were all getting frustrated my oldest said “I get mad at myself because I want to be perfect at everything.” That crushed me. I felt guilty that maybe he picked that up from me. I also felt so much compassion for him and wanted badly for him to know how much he is loved unconditionally.

When my husband and I traveled to England for ten days last summer it was our first time being away from the kids and stepping out of my everyday situation gave me the opportunity to reflect on it. I was well-rested, relaxed and in the moment. I told myself “this is how I need to be.” This is who my kids want. They want me to be myself … relaxed and in the moment, not trying to predict all the mistakes I am making that they will tell their therapist about 30 years from now.

But life happens, we get tired, we get frustrated and we get caught up in trying to do everything right. The other day I was talking to a mom that I think is great. Her kid is kind, intelligent and well-spoken. In fact, everyone that knows him says these things about him. She is great at her job and a great mother. She casually mentioned a conversation she had with some other moms about how they all felt like bad mothers. It surprised me because of course she isn't a bad mother. I guess we are all just trying our best and then trying even harder to be ok with that.

I thought about that, went home, decided we were making our own pizzas that night, let the kids put pretzels and goldfish on their pizzas, carried dinner downstairs and let them watch tv while we ate. We left the mess downstairs to deal with later. And we were all happy …

Pita Bread and Family

     A couple of days before Christmas my brother and I decided to make a Lebanese feast from scratch using our great grandmother's cookbook and following all of the notes she and our grandmother added in the margins. There were some hiccups along the way. First we could not find everything we needed for our ambitious plan. My brother, now used to living in New York City was surprised at not being able to find any ingredient imaginable within one block. Nevertheless, we donned our aprons (I wore a bright red apron with giant cat faces and Santa hats while my brother got a handmade one with gingerbread people on it). We followed the directions carefully, except for that I don't eat red meat so ground turkey would have to do in place of lamb, and by dinner time the house smelled like Tita's and everything was ready to eat … except the pita bread. We did not account for all of the many phases of pounding, kneading and wrapping in various bedding that were involved. By the time the bread was finished my kids were in bed and we were slap happy as we pulled out a ridiculous number of round loaves from the oven. Our mom mostly watched from the dining room, but she did help fan the door when the smoke alarm went off.

     Some time later as I was throwing the hardened extra bread that never got eaten outside for the birds I wondered why we went through all the trouble. But I also smiled remembering my brother punching the dough, his twerking demonstrations/tutorial and the barrage of personal questions he was compelled to answer held hostage in my kitchen and it seemed like time well spent.

    My brother has changed a lot over the years as have I and we do not get to see each other often. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed by how little time we had to catch up on so much time. Sometimes I had to remind myself he is that same guy I used to carry on my hip and take for walks in the stroller because he has changed so much. Maybe that is why we wanted to cook from our Tita's cookbook. No matter how much has changed, no matter how far apart we live and how much I dislike talking on the phone- we have a shared story. We lead such different lives and yet we share this same history.

In addition to the time with my brother and mom I also spent a lot of time with my in laws this Christmas and it all got me thinking about family. Family is something that I think about a lot but do not write about or talk about much with strangers as it can be so complicated and it feels like I am telling other people's stories that are theirs for the telling. Of course I am referring not to my own two children, but the family from which I come.

     As I was unpacking the other day and reflecting on the great trip we had visiting family I took notice of my travel make-up bag. I thought about how much I have used it and what a great gift it was so many years ago, but I couldn't share that with the gift giver today. That is as far as I will go with details, but it got me thinking about how complicated families can be. People move away, they surround themselves with new people, have different experiences, learn different things, perspectives change and yet here we are in relationship with these people who knew us before all of that and who may now be very different from us. Over the years hurts can build up, resentments, secrets and assumptions, but also laughter, love, memories, shared trauma and gratitude. Sometimes I wonder if we all just want to know that we are proud of each other.

     Deep relationships are dangerous territory and yet the joy I feel when I see my children developing a brotherly bond with each other is indescribable. I love when my kids roar with laughter as my dad tells them his childhood stories, I love that when we arrived in another state with cousins they hadn't seen in a long time they immediately started playing together and wanted to be together every second. I love that my mother in law watches the Marco Polo videos I send her of the kids over and over and over again. I love that my sister in law and I never had a lull in our conversations. My heart melted when my youngest came into the living room and curled up on his great-grandmother's lap. And I love that my kids think spending time with my mom is better than Chuck E. Cheese.

     Like making pita bread from scratch, maintaining relationships usually takes longer than is convenient. And being family with another person goes through ups and downs … phases. Sometimes it hurts and doesn't seem worth it but then you realize that it was never about the end product, but rather it was about the mutual growth it took to get there.

Sermon from Grace and St. Stephen's 12/23/18

Monday morning is my time.  All of the other days are full of work, kids and other commitments, but Monday morning from 8:30-11:30 am my youngest is in school and I have some time to do what I choose.  So Monday morning was to be my time to work on this sermon.  I walked my oldest to school and as I am eating my breakfast my youngest comes to me coughing and with snot coming out of his nose saying he can’t go to school.   “Ok” I say “but if you stay home mommy can’t play with you because I have to work and you can’t have any sweets all day and we can’t go to see the Lights at the Zoo tonight.”  He agrees.  So I start digging into the scripture trying to focus and of course I am constantly interrupted by requests, questions and comments.  I can’t help but smile a bit when he only cracks the door and whispers as if that is less of an interruption.  But by the fifth interruption I was super frustrated. 

          As my level of frustration was rising with every footstep running down the hall, I was also sitting there looking at these scriptures for today and … quite honestly finding them to be super frustrating as well.  I mean I love the Magnificat or the song of Mary from Luke’s Gospel today, but reading it in the context of the other scriptures today I found it blaringly frustrating. 

          The Psalm today is Psalm 80 and the people are begging God for help.  They are begging God to please stop being angry and please hear their prayers.  It says that they are eating bread of tears with bowls of tears to drink as their enemies laugh at them.  It is raw, painful and honest.  It is also urgent.

         And then we read the passage from Luke, this beautiful hymn from Mary, which, like Psalm 80 is Hebrew poetry, a hymn in the same style- meant to allude to the ancient Psalms.  That connection would have been clear for the original Jewish audience.  It might be understood as a response to the pleas and prayers in the Psalms, a fulfillment of the hopes and dreams, an embodiment of the longed for salvation of which the psalmists wrote. 

          So, just to be clear, that means that basically God hears these pleas and prayers in Psalm 80 and is like “it’s ok, in over 1000 years a teenager of no social standing will have a baby and he will be hated and killed on a cross …. So take comfort in that as you drink your tears.”

          I don’t know if that was the answer they were looking for. When I pray I hope that my prayers will be heard right away and all the more with bowls full of tears and enemies encroaching.  So the seemingly distant and delayed response is frustrating.

          And then we have these words of the Magnificat- the mighty thrown down, the lowly lifted up, the hungry fed, the proud scattered-  these beautiful words, these words of justice and hope.  I hear them and I look around at what this world is and that justice and hope is hard to see.  I read these words of justice and hope in a world full of injustices and despair and it feels … frustrating. 

          Frustrating because what is on the news is not the lowly being lifted up and the hungry fed but rather the face of a seven year old girl, the age of my son, and she has died of dehydration trying to cross the border into this country.  And a story about how over 85,000 children have starved to death in Yemen.  And while we argue about who is to blame and the solution is unclear- what is clear is that the hungry continue to not be fed, and the lowly are not lifted up and it feels … frustrating.

          And if that is too distant than just outside of our doors are people struggling to survive these cold winter months.  In our own front yard are hungry people not fed, lowly people not lifted up and it feels … frustrating.  The scales are still tipped to the rich and the few waste food while the many go hungry and so these words of Mary, this hopeful song does not seem to match reality … a reality that is frustrating.

          With these thoughts wrestling about in my mind as I am working on this sermon I am interrupted again.  My four year old tells me that the mailman is here and asks if he can give him the chocolate covered pretzel we bought at the church bake sale.  So I open the door and he runs across the yard in bare feet and the mailman says thank you and my son bounces in delight and comes back with a smile. And I feel a little less frustrated.  Then my brother in law messages that he will be bringing my husband’s grandma down from Ohio to Texas so we can all be together after Christmas.  And I feel a little less frustrated.  And I get a message from two more people willing to volunteer at the school for the health screenings when I thought we would never find anyone who could help.  And I feel a little less frustrated. Then I get a call from the school asking if the special needs teacher can have a school shirt from the PTA because a kid threw up on her as she was caring for him and as I hand her the shirt I see her smiling face, hear her appreciative words, see how the sick child with special needs has been cared for and I feel less frustrated.  And I look around and see Christmas trees and twinkle lights and people all around me celebrating the birth of a savior born to lowly parents with a challenging message of self-sacrifice and deep love.  And all around me I see people who live in a frustrating world with frustrations mounting and yet walk the path of justice laid out by Christ.  And the frustrations fall into the background as signs of love and kindness become clearer.  I forget that I was frustrated as the sun goes down and sends a beautiful pink glow on a world full of people loving each other and serving Christ through their actions. 

          Being a youth pastor again has reminded me of just how much hope there is for the world we live in.  Often young people are characterized as uncaring, undisciplined, violent or weak and yet as I work with the teens of our church I find young people who care deeply, are thoughtful, intelligent, work hard and are generous with each other.  They have many frustrations and deal with a variety of struggles and yet their hearts are full of love and possibility.  It is inspiring and nurtures my hope.  It makes it easier to see God’s daily work toward justice and peace and harder to let the frustrations dominate my worldview. 

          Today we hear the words of an unwed pregnant teenager living 2000 years ago under an oppressive government and with few resources, certainly with her share of frustrations.  And her words ring out over the years, over the generations- her words of hope; her words of God’s acts of love, justice and mercy in the past, in the present and in the future.  She tells us who God was for those people singing Psalm 80 drinking their tears and crying out to a God who did listen, who was with them and who lived in relationship with them for generations.  She tells us who God is for us today in the midst of our frustrations, in the midst of our pain in the midst of our world and who God will be thousands of years from now.  And we call her blessed.

          Sometimes the work of justice, the work of God, the hope of the world is hard to see, sometimes it is buried under frustration, under injustices, under pain, under tears … sometimes you need to squint to see it, you need a magnifying glass to behold it and then when you do you recognize it as what has been, is and will be, what is all around us, what is in us and what knits us together.  And Mary’s song, Mary’s soul, magnifies the Lord, it is that magnifying glass making clear what seems hidden. 

          In her book Love Warrior, Glennon Melton writes about a conversion experience she had.  Her parents sent her to a priest after she told them that she was still an alcoholic with an eating disorder and had just had an abortion.  She goes to a church she has never been in and writes of her experience of Mary:

“I look up higher and see that I am standing beneath a huge painting of Mary holding her baby.  I look at Mary and she looks at me.  My heart does not leap, it does not thud- it swells and beats steadily, insistently.  My heart fills my whole chest but does not hurt, so I do not break eye contact with Mary.  Mary is lit up bright but I am in soft, forgiving light.  She is wearing a gown and her face is clear.  I am wearing a tube top and my face is dirty, but she is not mad at me so I do not bother to cover myself.  Mary is not what people think she is.  She and I are the same.  She loves me, I know it.  She has been waiting for me.  She is my mother.  She is my mother without any fear for me.  I sit in front of her and I want to stay here forever, in my bare feet, with Mary and her baby around this campfire of candle prayers … She is what I needed.  She is the hiding place I’ve been looking for.”

          Mary is a young woman of rebellion, courage and hope who can see God in the midst of frustration, who can sing joy even as she plays her part in a story of loss and death.  Her soul magnifies the grace of our God who looks at an imperfect people and an imperfect world and continues to plant seeds of justice, who continues to move our hearts to love and peace. 

          Christmas is almost here.  A savior born in a lowly manger to parents of no social standing is about to come.  A vulnerable baby with few resources laid in a feeding trough.  So take out your magnifying glasses because if you look closely, if you look past the frustrations and pain and sorrow you can see that this baby born to an unwed teenager is God made flesh.  Emmanuel.   

Life's Journey ... with Death

I'm tucking in my 7 year old and I can see on his face that something is wrong. I ask him what he is thinking about. The corners of his mouth start pushing down even though he is tying to hold back his sadness. When he gets tired the emotions tend to defeat his efforts at holding them back. After some questioning and encouragement the tears start to fall as he tells me he is scared that his grandma will die soon. His grandma just moved to our city and he is loving having her around. I want to push the emotions away so that he won't feel sad and can get a good night's sleep. I offer some feeble attempts: we need to enjoy the time we have with her here, she is doing really well and will probably live a long time, we don't have to be afraid of death, etc. Then I pause and get real. I say, “I understand. Death is scary. It is hard to love people so much knowing that they will die.” I explain to him that when I was a kid sometimes I would see my mom holding a photograph of her mother who died when my mom was sixteen and she would be crying. I used to get really scared that my mom would die and since it was the days before cell phones if she was ever late coming home from work I would be a wreck. So I get it.

This isn't the first time my son has had these kinds of questions and thoughts. He has two clergy for parents and so funerals are a common topic in our house, plus he goes to mainline churches which typically have a higher average age so he has known many beloved church members that have died. All of this paired with his deep thinking and intuitive nature means he has had some hard questions in his less than a decade of life. I so desperately want to say all the right things because I believe that our early understandings and perceptions about death have a big impact on our lives. I remember interviewing a candidate for ministry when I was on the District Committee on Ministry and he said that when he was young and afraid of scary things his mother said “you don't have to be afraid of death because Jesus is with us and we will be with God and it will be fine.” This brought him a lot of clarity and comfort and it informed his theology into adulthood. I want to be that mom that says the right thing that will give my child confidence, strength, faith and hope. But I also want to be honest and let him feel what he is feeling without shame or dismissal.

So I think over my own history with death. I remember funerals of great grandparents and grand parents. I remember when I was very young and the next door neighbor's son died in a motorcycle accident. Everyone was gathered together on her porch with tear stained cheeks and long faces and all the neighborhood kids were playing together with occasional questions and moments of sadness. It felt heavy and big.

I remember when I was in high school and got home from taking the ACT exam and my mom told me that my cousin died in a car accident along with her father and half sister. I remember how deep the tears felt, how weird it was when I went to work at the Dairy Queen some hours later and cars were still driving by … as if nothing had changed. I remember everybody packing up the cars and making a caravan to be with my aunt and cousins and prepare for the funeral.

Years later in seminary I did CPE or Clinical Pastoral Education, what is essentially a full time, twelve week internship as a hospital chaplain. My classmates talked about their first deaths on the hospital floor and I tried to mentally prepare myself. When it was my turn for overnights sometimes the pager would go off but it was mostly for spouses and loved ones overcome with emotions. Weeks into the program and I was one of the few that hadn't been with someone during or immediately after the last breath. It would be strange to say I wanted to and honestly I didn't, but I did think it was an important experience to have in order to be prepared for church ministry. Then one night I was awakened by the beeping pager as I slept in the hospital apartment bed. I threw on the clothes I had laid out, pulled my hair back and walked over to the floor that called. I got the information sheet with the stats: 89 year old male and asked if there were any family. There was none. I went to the room and waited outside while the doctor and nurses chatted over resuscitation efforts. They talked about a show they had watched, made casual conversation and got quiet when they saw me as they left. I walked in and here it was, death. It was not the heartfelt moment of movies or memories. It was a body that was no longer breathing. Some rerun of a crime show was on the tv, the lights of the room felt too bright and yet also too cold. I touched his frigid hand, prayed and silently sat there in case he wanted a presence on whatever journey he was on. Eventually I left, checked for family again and finding none went back to bed. There was no drama, no grand farewell and yet all these years later I can picture it with clear detail.

In church ministry I witnessed death many times. In fact, there was a summer when I was privileged to be next to several women as they took their last breaths and that was part of a re-prioritizing I went through which resulted in me leaving pastoral ministry to be a stay at home mom for a time. Then there was the time I sat next to my friend and looked into her eyes as they lost focus and her body stopped. Each of these moments plus many more have made an impact on me in deep and profound ways.

Still I am human and the anxiety, fear and harsh reality of death creeps in even when I try to shut it out. Last Lent I found myself thinking about death more than I wanted to. The Parkland, Florida school shooting filled me with sadness, despair, grief, rage, guilt and anxiety and as I walked the Lenten journey I let myself bring to surface all kinds of worries and troubles. So I decided to attend an adult forum at church about death. We read Tom Long's What Happens When We Die and it was great. I actually took a class in seminary called Death and Dying and we read some great books including Stanley Hauerwas' God, Medicine and Suffering but Tom Long's book was so concise, direct and honest plus it hit me at the right time so I put it up there with my top book recommendations. Even so, I would say what helped me the most during that class was the conversation. I loved hearing the older members of the class share their thoughts about death and through their strength, honesty and hope I found the clarity and peace I was looking for.

Of course that doesn't mean I don't have those nights when uncertainty, anxiety and fear creep in, but my abiding hope and faith get me to the sunrise. So maybe that is what I will share with my son. The fear, anxiety, sadness are all human and important to be honest about and express. He will have his own experiences and journey and hopefully he will teach me the wisdom and insights he gains along the way. What I can offer him is a place to process, a listening ear and a faith and hope to bring him peace and rest for a new day.

A Projection Project

The other day an email was sent to the church from a person saying they were leaving the church because of some things the priest said in his sermon. Two important things to note: no one remembers seeing this person in church in the last couple of years; my husband, the current priest, likely arrived after this person stopped attending, and he definitely never said the things this person believes they heard. This was a mere passing topic of conversation at the dinner table and not a major crisis or anything like that, but it did remind me of something that I really struggled with in ministry … and in life: losing control of people's perceptions of you.

At my last appointment (what we Methodists call churches where the Bishop assigns us) I remember going to a Clergy Day Apart a few months after I started, I had walked into a bit of a tumultuous situation at that church and so I was hanging on to every piece of wisdom, direction or advice I could get. So when Bishop Bruce Ough talked about perfectionists I was all ears. He said that perfectionists try to control the way others perceive them. Yes! That was/is/sometimes is me.

Trying to make sure everyone sees you in a positive light is incredibly frustrating and difficult in any role, and I felt this particularly in a public role as pastor. There was at least one person who would not even set foot in the church they had attended for years because there is an F instead of an M next to gender on my driver's license. The other thing that makes this even trickier for me is my need for honesty, being real. I am very vulnerable in sermons, newsletter articles, small groups, etc. For me sermons come from the places where I see Holy Spirit and life intersecting and often that involves sharing stories and feelings from my life. So sometimes I leave situations feeling weird, as if I overshared and lost sight of how I was being perceived by others.

There are times, when despite our best efforts at being likable people just don't like us. I have certainly had these experiences and I tell myself it doesn't matter, I tell myself it does not change who I am but it still doesn't feel good. There was a person in a congregation I pastored that said untrue things about me. I trusted this person and when I found out they were telling people these things about me it hurt. As a pastor I always try to love people and be careful with my words so I pushed away the temptation to talk badly about them right back or say the angry things I was saying in my head.

There was no happy, picture-perfect resolution to that situation as much as I tried for one and I have no idea how many people still think those bad things about me, but … I'm ok. There have been more personal and painful rejections in my life and in the end I survived them all. One day as I was driving home from work contemplating some church conflict or something I was listening to a book on CD by Eckhart Tolle and the thoughts spinning in my head came to a crashing halt when I heard these words “you are more than other people's projections of you.” I can't tell you how many times I have repeated those words to myself.

I am back in ministry now, although in a very different way. Now I am quarter time and not the person in charge of running the whole church, but I am so glad to have those lessons in my toolbox now. Especially in such divisive times.

I listened to this podcast the other day called On Being by Krista Tippett and it was a conversation (yes an actual conversation) between Sally Kohn, a liberal pundit, and Erik Erikson, a conservative pundit. It was the most refreshing thing I have heard in a long time. These people on opposite sides of so many issues were able to reveal their hearts, their experiences, their beliefs and find goodness in the other. They were able to shed all of the projections put on them for a moment and talk. So many times we think we know someone because of what they believe or how they vote. We project onto them all of our fears, our frustrations, our heartache and passion and under all of those projections the actual human person can no longer be seen. Maybe it is time to start throwing away the projections, the emotionally charged emails, the nasty comments and really try to see each other.

4 am

Suddenly someone in my dream is crying. My brain switches off sleep mode and it takes me a minute to realize I am in reality again and the crying is across the hall. Eyes barely able to open I stumble into my four-year-old's bedroom. He had a bad dream and he is shaking and sweaty. I climb into his bed and pull the puppy dog comforter onto both of us. He lays his head on me and wraps his arms desperately around me. I kiss his forehead and whisper reassuring words. His warm body nuzzles onto mine and his soft, fine hair tickles my chin. He lifts his sleepy head and gently places a tiny soft kiss on my cheek. After a whispered “I love you mommy” he stops shaking and I feel his body relax and sink into sweeter dreams. I enjoy a few minutes of snuggles before climbing into my own bed. Now I am awake. Often after one of my kids wakes me up in the night I can't sleep because my mind floods with things I need to do or remember, but this time is different. I look at the clock … 4 am.

4 am … that hour that has no sound, only the deep silence of a world lost in hidden caverns of the brain called sleep. The sun has not yet given signs of rising and yet the newness of night is wearing away. I find myself remembering other 4 ams in my life. I close my eyes and remember 4 am in the rocking chair. A baby nursing until sleep overcomes and the milk drips down his tiny chin that is red and bumpy from teething drool. I remember looking out the window at darkened windows and a still city, hearing nothing but deep silence. I remember softly setting him in his crib, pausing for a moment of marvel before going back to bed. I remember waking up and knowing that while the world slept I put a special memory deep into my heart.

Then I start to remember 4 ams from many years before. I remember walking down a different hallway into a different darkened bedroom, tapping my mother on the shoulder and the next thing I know I am scooped up and taken care of. She sits in the rocking chair, whispers assuring words and rocks me until the fever releases me into dreamland. I even remember that the old TV was on, it was that weird digital video of “Money for Nothing” and honestly that song still makes me nostalgic. I don't remember how long that sickness lasted but I do remember that love and care.

It's 4 am and I am walking down a different darkened hallway. A hallway just as familiar as that of my home. It is the church where I was baptized and spent Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. Where I cried when my mom left me in the nursery and played tic tac toe on unfolded offering envelopes in the balcony. My parents were the youth leaders which meant that even though I was still a small child I was at the youth group lock-in. After hours of running around giggling and avoiding Nerf darts I am tired. I turn the door handle. The room is empty except for my dad in a rocking chair watching Young Frankenstein. He was chaperoning the under used movie room which was a place of dark stillness in the midst of a church full of hyper teenagers. I climbed onto his lap, I remember being a little scared of the movie, and burying my face into his shoulder. I don't remember how much sleep I got that night but I do remember the way it felt to find a place of comfort and love in the dark stillness of night.

As my mind replays these images I tell myself to hurry up and fall asleep before my 6:45 am alarm goes off. But I have this pit in my stomach. The memories of love and warmth have not made me feel warm and cozy but rather some kind of deep ache in my stomach. My parents have recently turned 70 and I am now the age they were when they held me on those dark nights. Some day my boys will be on their own, out in the world and finding their own special 4 am memories. It is that ache that comes with the awareness of time, the sudden ability to see the vast space between our days and the knowledge of love so deep it hurts.

I picked up my son from school yesterday and he showed me a worksheet with apples, ants, alligators and the letter A colored green and red. My youngest is doing worksheets in school. More so than his first day of pre-K this made me realize how much he has grown. He is learning independently from me and preparing for the world. I start to feel that ache but I also feel such joy in seeing his confidence and abilities. Time is passing, but I get to watch and while I put away these memories deep into my heart I also get some souvenirs along the way. So I will keep that waxy worksheet and know that I have it, even at 4 am, as proof of this beautiful life I get to witness.