Parenthood

On Weirdness of Body

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

I have been working most of the day with the exception of a personal errand this evening. I have been battling technology for most of the day and annoyed at least one person by putting the wrong link in an email. It has been a very stressful day and there’s still absolutely no progress on the car. Over seven days after the accident there still isn’t even an appointment for the insurance company to look at the car.

To be entirely honest, I am a bit frazzled tonight as I look over what rests on my docket for tomorrow. Bible study, worship, and leadership are the start of the day. The afternoon and evening are marked with taking care of personal needs and then volunteer service in my recovery program. When the sun has long set tomorrow night, it will be with a whole week of needs obligations ahead of me even without the car dramatics.

It is going to be a week, but I am honestly stuck in the last week. A friend sent me copies of pictures of my children and they appear happy and well fed. Honestly, I am so grateful they appear happy and wellfed. It makes me really happy even as I am struggling with the opposite situation. I was lightly lectured by a doctor this week because I haven’t had enough protein. It is significant enough that it showed up in my bloodwork as a form of malnutrition. Yeah, to a certain extent, my body composition is changing partially because of nutritional deprivation.

The day after I had that conversation with my doctor I was looking in the mirror while I was putting another set of holes into my belt. The muscles looked good, but the skin drooped strangely. The shoulders looked great and my jawline was sharp, but the skin around my belly was loose. Although others don’t often see it, I can see it every single day. I’ve long since left behind the moments of absolute and sheer joy to a slight grimace when I look in the mirror.

Still, what can a person do? Do I argue for less child support and risk my children going without? Do I advocate for myself knowing that the kids may need a father who hasn’t gone without protein for so long that it is having an effect on his health? Do I even speak honestly about it with people like my father or my brother who might see this as one more area where I fall short of the ideal by which I was raised to live? Do I even let my elder children know what’s going on if they knew all those shiny toes under the tree and those brimming pots full of food that they share with their mother are systemically related to my weight loss?

Do I even remain silent because it is embarrassing to the church? I can tell you that they’re more than generous, but when 36% automatically goes to child support and your partner won’t pay her portion of the insurance, things are tight. It isn’t the church’s job to be more generous than that kind of burden. It isn’t the church’s job to bail me out after I married the woman I married. Do I remain silent because it is bad enough their minister wears baggy clothes and won’t go to Thursday breakfast at the falls because the cost is too great? What do I do when they read this which will lead to another round of “Why won’t you go to the food pantry we hold in our church?”

Do I remain silent because I do have a role to play in all of this? I know one person in particular loves to say I don’t own my part in things. Yeah, I exercise a lot. Yeah, I weightlift. Why? I do enjoy the way it makes me look but I also realized a while back that all of that weight loss was coming at the expense of musculature. Yes, I hit a use it or lose it point a few months back and that’s why I am working so hard to build muscle. All of that means I need more calories, but the honest truth is that I buy meat maybe once or twice a month because that’s what I can afford. Yay for tofu and beans… I don’t get extra visits in part because I don’t feel safe in Springville but also because some of the visits come with the choice of paying for gasoline or paying for groceries. Still, I could just let the muscles go, exercise less, and need fewer calories. I could choose to sit home more, read more, and just let my body shrink down to a level I can afford to feed with rice, beans, and whatever greens I manage. I guess I could do that and I guess I’m guilty for not making that choice.

There’s all sorts of stuff I could do and there are reasons to remain silent, but should I stay silent? A lot of harm is often done by good people staying silent. Am I the only person going through difficult times? Do their stories matter less because they do not have the same privileges as me? Is it, in fact, a disservice to remain silent when there are so many people struggling without a voice? My words echo a lot of people’s experiences and I know many of them have no space, place, or voice to say what’s happening in their lives. Some of those people are good people who just cannot share. I would know because I come across those people often in recovery, in ministry, and as a person who actually enjoys and even loves the people at the edges of society. Do I do a disservice to them if I remain silent?

In the scriptures, the stories of God’s provision are told time and time again. There are stories where God shows up in the midst of the wilderness to provide for the families and prophets in need. A widow is given enough to survive by Elijah in the midst of 1 Kings 17. She has enough, but what of the people who live under the rule of a wicked ruler? Were all of those people wicked? Did they all deserve to go without? Probably not, but one of the sad realities of scripture is that the world presented reflects reality instead of the utopia we all desire.

Time and time again, through the scriptures the faithful people and even the innocent bystanders go through life without the very things they need. Do you know those videos of people overseas struggling? Those “for a dollar a day” videos? For generations, even the lands of the faithful looked like those videos when famine and drought came through the land. Sometimes deprivation is simply how life works even within the scriptures. As our society continues to shift, it sadly seems as if the sad reality of struggle told in the scriptures is increasingly apparent in our days as automation cuts the bottom rung of employment out here in the name of profits.

Even as we acknowledge that truth, do we lose hope in the midst of deprivation? We could, but I have always leaned into stories and words of hope from books like Habakkuk. There’s no grain in the field and the barns are empty, but we praise the Lord anyway. Things don’t look great and the choices are both dire and sad, but we praise the Lord anyway. Faith isn’t faith if one knows everything will work out perfectly. It is faith precisely because we do not see the way forward. We have to trust it is there.

So I believe. Lord, help me in my unbelief.

“For everyone born, a place at the table…”

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

I went to bed humming in my heart last night. Just before I drove away from my girlfriend’s house, we posted a picture together for the first time. I had brought a delicious acorn squash pie with gingersnap crust for dessert and spent the day getting to know her family a bit better. I met her mother, sister, nephew, and niece. Her kids were a riot to be around as usual.

She’s in a different space than me in her life with grown kids, but we share a lot of things in common. She knows what it is like to go through a troubled marriage and a divorce. She knows the value of having space at the table. She let me be there with her through all the Thanksgiving stuff that every family has and even let me kindly invite her to simply be in the moment with me and her family.

In other words, I felt like I belonged yesterday. As I wake up on the sixth birthday of my littlest turkey today, I know that I won’t see her for over another month at this point. I had to ask her sibling to have her call me as the phone number I have for my child is never answered when I call. J says the tablet has power issues and barely works. I can’t help but think of the new tablet sitting on a shelf here that I bought for her months ago only to be told that the broken tablet she has is good enough even though I can’t contact my child through it. I asked her while I talked with her if she received the postcards I sent my kids while traveling. I sent six. Their mother let them see one of them. I can’t even write cards to my kids with the expectation they will receive them. Joint custody apparently means I can’t even write them…

My eldest still won’t talk to me and the answer remains: an hour a month for virtual therapy to rebuild a relationship is too much time in his busy schedule even as he applies to a foreign exchange student program. He has time to travel the world but not time for an hour a month with his father.

I’m thankful J still obviously loves their father and takes the time to talk with me on occasion, but it shouldn’t fall on a thirteen-year-old to be the adult in a family of a single mom, a fifteen-year-old, and a six-year-old. It especially shouldn’t be so when there are grandparents and other relatives around who should be able to speak reason to power. It would be wrong of me to ask J to be the conduit for conversation and J shouldn’t have to be put in that position. Unfortunately, when you can’t even write the other kids with the expectation they’ll get their mail, the option seems to be to put your child in an impossible situation or lose a relationship with all of them.

There’s a difference between what I experienced yesterday and my experience even of married life. The feeling of actually being accepted and having my girlfriend’s mother ask about my children was heartbreakingly kind. I mean, there are two Halloween gifts waiting for them on the shelf upstairs from my girlfriend’s mother who decided my kids deserved love before she even met me. They welcomed me so warmly and all I had to do to belong was just be me: someone who cared for someone at the table who also cared for me.

It is such a different experience than getting phone calls about church members being concerned that I was being yelled at in a gas station or hearing complaints about my partner arguing with PPRC members in a local restaurant when they said something she disagreed with. It is sad that it took me years to see they weren’t just complaining about someone they didn’t like: they were scared for me. In hindsight, I get it. I wish I had understood then.

People tell me to keep trying and to not give up, but that’s pretty hard advice to actually follow. Perhaps someone would understand if they were actually in my shoes. I’m exhausted and tired of pretending everything is fine. Heading down south recently on the Civil Rights pilgrimage and seeing the evidence of people who knew what was right and who were willing to get in good trouble… I wish I knew how to advocate for myself and others in the way that they did with such power, presence, and moral authority. I wish I could change things, but that’s a long journey I don’t know how to travel. It is literally easier to walk thousands of miles in a year than to know how to handle things. I can say that one from experience.

In the meantime, yeah. I baked a pie, I shared space, and I allowed my cold heart to open a little more to actually living life. Is the “cold still in my bones?” Yeah, they’re cold and brittle, but there’s also something else: that faintly glowing fire… (Yes, that’s a Five Iron Frenzy reference: “Blizzards and Bygones (All Frost and No Thaw Version)” is a gem that has been my unofficial soundtrack while walking the wintry woods over the past few years).

Original recipe: https://www.thekitchenmagpie.com/acorn-squash-pie/
Adaptations: For the filling, I used fresh ginger and grated nutmeg into slightly larger pieces than the powdered stuff. For the crust, I processed the gingersnaps through a grinder for uniformity and then melted a little more than the specified butter (2 extra TBSP) in the glass pie dish in the oven. I then poured the butter into the crumbs and brown sugar only after swirling the pie plate so that the entirety of the crust had a buttery layer to keep the crust from sticking. That process also made certain each bite had a touch of buttery goodness. I also used a dough blender to uniformly break up any buttery clumps and to make certain the brown sugar spread throughout the crust instead of being in chunks.

“The Stretching Poem”

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

The other night I was stretching after a long day. We had spent the day with my wife running a garage sale while I helped to clean up the garage. My feet ached, my shoulder hurt, and I needed a good stretch for the Whole Life Challenge. I wrote this poem while reflecting on the events which took place while I stretched out tight joints while my wife washed up behind a closed bathroom door after a hot day in the sun.

Stretch your arms to toes
While your crying toddler wails
As her mom showers.

Stretch your sore shoulder.
Call to your lonely toddler
Who wants her mother.

Stretch your angry calf
As you pray she'll let mom be
After a hot day.

Rise to reach for her
As the door opens for her
Then closes on you.

Drink some cool water
As toddler storms the shower
With love and gusto.

“The Stretching Poem” from the Distracted Pastor, 2019

“Prepared” Photo-A-Day Haiga

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

Today’s Rethink Church prompt is “Prepared.” I know that it is Holy Week, but after writing all of these haigas, I cannot help but use this prompt to recommend to all new parents that they either buy baby wipes by the case or invest in a lot of hand towels.

Be prepared for it.
Your child will make a big mess
Every chance they get.

“Her forehead” Poem

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I sat with a sick infant in the depths of night. Wet cloth cooling a fever from the now rare chicken pox. I rocked and contemplated what we would do if the fever spiked again. It was dark in that room in more ways that one.

A few weeks ago I sat with a parent in grief over an upcoming surgery. A sweet child in need of care. I contemplated her struggle and prayed for more than just the child. I prayed for my own forgiveness because I was grateful my child was not the one in need of that care.

A few weeks ago I sat and ate elementary school spaghetti. It was exactly how I remembered it. We sat, laughed, talked, and even danced as we tried to support some friends’ family in their hour of need. I could stomach school spaghetti far easier than letting my friends feel they were alone after caring for a baby who spent a lot of time in the NICU.

Yesterday I saw the ash on her forehead and I realized that she was mortal too. Today she is well but one day she will be in God’s hands. My heart broke as I realized a truth that had been walking through the edges of my soul.

On the day of ash
We contemplate our own path
Down through our life’s end.
Easier to see your own
Than on your daughter’s sweet face.

“Her Forehead” by The Distracted Pastor, 2019