A Lesson Learned in Time

Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong.

I often try to preclude every problem that can possibly arise in a situation. While I feel that planning and preparation is a necessary part of executing anything, I'm learning that problems are part of life. They are the challenges. They are the little mistakes or maybe not. They are what you didn't expect or couldn't control. They are the stuff life is made of. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do our best, give our best or put our best foot forward. But our human plans on the best day will only go so far into the realm of reality. Plan, prepare, but know life happens and you're not in control of that.

My granddaughter and her husband traveled to see my 101 year old mother last weekend. We took my daughter and her other daughter and met the family there to take five generation pictures. Knowing time would be short and understanding the workings of a small room, bad lighting, and such, I tried to figure out how it would all go and made the best arrangements I could for when we got there.

There were so many good ideas in the mental making. The visit wasn't what I envisioned at all. The warm and relaxed family interchange visiting around tables didn't happen. It was a rushed visit with tired people and a baby who was out of her comfort zone after traveling for hours in a car seat. We all got there later than I originally envisioned, though my daughter and my other granddaughter, my husband and I had some visit time in the afternoon. The nursing home where my mother resides was totally gracious. My family had the best desires and intentions, but in the end, we just did it.

Time squeezed together frantically. The baby girl was not happy. That created a slightly edgy atmosphere. My mother had not been in the family room where we met to take pictures and visit for a year-and-a-half, so she was somewhat disoriented. She just knew if they'd give her that baby that she could make everything better. The fact that it wouldn't work the way she thought upset her a little more and her already 'agitated by the unfamiliar' condition left her in less than an amiable mood. But the love was there and the pictures happened and that was the best of our hope. The pictures tell the story. You can see the love and the effort and the generations of living that have brought much good with them.

I wish my granddaughter could have spent more time visiting with her great grandma. But life didn't make that happen. In fact, I couldn't either. In my perfect world we would have gotten there mid-afternoon at the latest, gotten acquainted with the room, set it up so it was great for pictures and visited for a while before mom went to supper. The rest of us would have caught a quick bite together and made it back for another visit and picture taking session. Everybody would have been relaxed, in a good mood and ready for the event.

Did it matter that things didn't go the way I had planned? Not really. What mattered was that three families made the effort to come together and love and record the event with the matriarch of the family who's days are changing and narrowing quickly. I'm learning that my plans are not infinite or flawless. It's really better if everyone enjoys a failed plan.

I used to try to force plans to materialize. Luckily, children are resilient and they don't really care about my plans. And they have a sense of humor about it. Adults all have their own plans generally speaking and those probably aren't going like they thought they would either. After it's over, the memories live. No one cares what you really had in mind as they look through pictures or call up the memories.

I don't think I've ever had an event go exactly as I envisioned it. When I gave piano recitals, someone would forget their music, get stage fright, or act silly during a serious piece. Sometimes the cream puffs melted and got mushy before we actually ate them. Sometimes I didn't have time the finish everything I started. Sometimes the decorating didn't get completed. You hide the box, smile and walk into it aright.

Sometimes people interfered or had their own agenda, or came up with a sudden really cool idea that washed my plans right down the sink and out into Never Never Land. Sometimes there's more than one element involved and it's not about my planning at all. Angry stares or sharp words do not make the memories better. Explanations do not make the memories better. But a smile and a quick change of direction make the memories as good as they can be.

It's a lesson you learn in time.

I Choose Love

  I have chosen love. Love doesn't always feel good to the ego. Sometimes our sense of human justice doesn't appreciate love. Sometimes the pain of love feels like hate. It's interesting that the Bible doesn't say “perfect love casts out pain.”

   “Choose love, not war” was a slogan I grew up with. We had no clue back in the late 60s and 70s. There was this idyllic feeling that love would fix everything. Love meant living stress free. If we could all love we would live perfectly. Then we had to grow up-really grow up.

   Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.    Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 

   Most of us have read this “definition” at some point. It's how we all want to be treated and how some aspire to treat others, but this doesn't address the pain of loving.

   There are many things about loving that bring pain, but rejection and loss are perhaps the greatest. When you purposefully choose love, you choose to live through rejection and loss.    From the first time a denied toddler defiantly says “I hate you” to the denied teen shouting the same words, mothers feel the sting of a rejection they must accept for the good of the child and perhaps the home. Some will reply wittily, while other may get angry and reply out of sorts, but in the end, love will stay -along with a small wound caused by the words.

   Rejection takes many forms. Sometimes rejection is imagined in a glance or a tone which ties to a deep inner need or a point of self-consciousness. Sometimes it is tied to harsh words or denial from others. What parent hasn't felt the sting of a superior look or a sharp reprimand from grown children who have no clue that our ways were as sure and new as their own and that we managed to raise them to that elevated superior state without killing them intentionally or otherwise?

   Sometimes friends who have moved up a strata in social or financial status will begin curbing their interaction with those who they feel are not as desirable or upward mobile. The eventual end is loss, but it begins with a time of growing rejection that brings pain. We feel anger, then we feel devalued. It is first at this point of rejection that we must examine our choice to love. In social media I see so many statements about leaving behind anyone who makes you feel less wonderful than you want to feel, anyone who slows you down or lets you down. I am slowly learning to see rejection as a part of the process of loving unconditionally. It is risky. It is painful. But it is the way God has chosen for himself and for us.

   That said, I will interject a disclaimer. Love does not mean that I become a punching bag, a cursing wall or a target for disrespectful treatment. Sometimes love walks out of the room, disconnects the conversation, calls the authorities. Sometimes it feels the gnawing pain in the other and endures, for a time, the onslaught of venomous words. Wisdom is also a gift from the God who gives supernatural love. But love is never really about how it makes me feel.

   Some will be tempted to rescind and perhaps there are times when we should consider whether the issue is supportable before stubbornness sets in. But early on in the process of friendship or parenting or mentoring or managing, there will be resistance to good and right principles. It is there that love takes a stand for integrity, honesty and personal belief while continuing to love aggressively. It is there we learn that a person cannot be argued into submission to our values, standards or belief, but we may yet love. If this moment, if this day, if this life is all I have, I can show extravagant, unconditional, ridiculous love from the heart. In this I become most like my spiritual Father who gave beyond human extravagance because of love. And that creates hope where otherwise there would be no hope.

   Another pain in loving that cannot be avoided is the pain of loss. What mother hasn't looked at her child traipsing off for Kindergarten and ached for the small dependent baby she held close to her side. Sometimes loss is gradual, sometimes it is catastrophic, sometimes it is intentional. It is always painful because of love. The more love, the more pain must be endured in the loss. 

   There was a time when I built secure emotional walls against loss. Some loss I never expected and I agonized for days or months building bitter sores on the inside while creating distance on the outside. I have asked myself “How do I love when the curtain of death has split my heart?” “How do I love when those I love most have walked out and moved on?” But then the 'more excellent way' crowded in and the Father spoke “love.”

   But how? I cannot say that answers come easily. You can't trick yourself into a “happy place.” I know that what has worked for others didn't really work for my life. I have shown 'love' stingily, assuming I would get no return. I have given 'love' lavishly, expecting it to change how other people see and interact with me. In the end, the principle of giving applies as much to love as anything else: I give because I should -period. Once a gift goes out, it is no longer mine to control or assume upon. That moment of loving without limits has to be enough.

   To truly love ridiculously is to love without regard to the cost or the effect. If I love to get love, I can never go beyond the power of the other person. Others will determine the value, the success, the future of my loving. But when I can lay the result at the feet of my God and accept the challenge to love as he gives me opportunity and power, then the reward comes from the one who commanded me to love. Once the expectation is laid aside, the exhilaration of loving is enough. Sometimes I do have to remind myself that true love is never unrequited -even if the return is not from the one you have shown love.

   And so I choose Love – love with all its sappy, funny, painful, emotion. I choose extravagant, crazy love that does not envy, does not boast, is not arrogant. I choose love that does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, keeps no scoreboard. I choose love that does not delight in evil but celebrates the truth. This love looks away from myself to always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere. The human in me may fail, but the Spirit of God in me will show that love first so that I can see the way.

   And perhaps when I look back from the path which love has created, I will see others who followed. That is hope. But regardless, I choose love.