Food for the Soul

On Sunday, Chickadee #1 received Holy Communion for the first time.  First Holy Communion is a BIG DEAL for Catholics.  The children have spent all year preparing for this sacrament (a sacrament is an outward sign of a spiritual reality -- in this case that the Lord is really present in the body and soul of the recipient of Holy Communion.)  Many Protestant traditions think of Holy Communion as a sign of unity between members of the church who are gathered in love for the Lord.  Catholics see the sacrament as an outward sign of Christ Himself united with the believer.    Chickadee #1 was very excited and happy -- she had the dress, the veil, the shoes, fancy socks. She attended a retreat last week in which she made a symbolic banner, constructed a rosary, and took a tour of the church in which she learned about the symbolism and history of the parts of the building (she told me that someone was going onto the ambo and I had no idea what she was talking about -- she informed me that it is the podium from which the lectors read the from the Old Testament and Epistles and from which the priest proclaims the Gospel).  We attended practices and sang songs at home, arranged for chairs and a tent, bought food, ordered cakes.  Her solemnity and beauty in approaching this moment was so gorgeous to observe.  As a parent, it moves me so much to be able to share this with her. 

I remember, a long time ago, someone related a story to me.  In it, the person recounted an unbeliever taking to task a parent for "corrupting" her child's mind with all this claptrap about religion, God, etc.  The unbeliever sincerely thought that religion was inherently bad and that parents should allow their children to "make up their own minds about all that stuff."  In response, the parent said, "When you have something really, really wonderful, the natural thing as a parent is to want to share that with your children -- to help them have this great thing that you have."  It reminds me of the question Jesus asked,  "Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?" (Matthew 7:9). 

And it occurs to me, since everything these days seems to revolve around the issue of my weight, that I am actually giving my children, and myself, a stone.  A millstone.  And I keep right on picking it up and passing it on.  How you can simultaneously carry a stone and pass it along is not apparent to me, but I acknowledge that this is what I'm doing.  This book I'm reading, Made to Crave , is wonderful in that it reminds us that we are supposed to be filling up our days with love of the Lord and reliance on His Word.  Lysa TerKeurst's slogan is "Satisfying Your Deepest Desire with God, Not Food."  For myself, that's a lesson I keep having to learn and, despite all evidence from previous times in my life, it appears that I'm not a fast learner.

At a recent mass, as I waited go to Holy Communion, it occurred to me that I was really hungry.  The prayer that welled up in me was something like this -- "God make me hungry for You.  Make realize that the places in me that need to be filled can only be filled by You.  Help me to distinguish the kinds of hunger I feel and to feed them with the correct food." 

And that is my prayer right now, as I sit up late (it's 2:13 am) writing -- my body is craving something (water and sleep, I am sure).  I'm tempted to travel into the kitchen and try that awesome ice cream cake I made for Chickadee's 8th birthday, or the even more awesome cake Costco made for her First Holy Communion party.  Instead, I'm going to have a tall glass of water and turn off the light.

Rejuvenate Me, Rejuvenate Me, Rejuvenate Me

Yesterday at just about this time, I was sitting on the beach in Monterey, California.  I'd found a nice "bench" of sand from which to survey the Pacific and, honestly, I only intended to bid farewell to an ocean which had overwhelmed me with its beauty and power in ways I had not expected.  I'm an East Coast girl -- to me, ocean means the grey Atlantic, which one approaches via miles and miles of flat, farmland and freshwater marsh.  It means the Boardwalk downeyohshun, saltwater taffy, suntan lotion, and seagulls fighting for scraps.  The Pacific took my preconceptions about oceans and turned them inside out -- instead of grey, it was the bluest blue.  Instead of marshland, mountains are its gateway.  Instead of the tackiness of Ocean City, MD, it breathed solitude and natural splendor. I loved it.  I loved me being there.  I achieved an important childhood dream on this trip and one adult dream.  Ever since I was a little girl, I had wanted to go whale watching -- ever since reading Nightbirds on Nantucket.  And I did do that -- I saw a humpback mother and calf (though I missed the calf breaching because I didn't want to get pitched overboard in the rough sea so was holding on tight to the railing in the wrong part of the boat) and the three killer whales which paced our boat and showed their dolphin-like natures by arcing through the water like arrows.  My adult dream was to celebrate ten years of marriage to a wonderful man who loves me with all his heart, soul, mind, and body.  And I did that too.  It was a wonderful trip.

So, why, on my last morning there, as I was bidding farewell to the blue Pacific and watching the fog roll away from the coastline, did I find myself fighting tears as I composed an impromptu prayer?  Looking at the Pacific, I rocked as I sang, "Rejuvenate me, rejuvenate me, rejuvenate me, rejuvenate me.  O Lord my God, oh please help me.  O give me courage, o give me strength.  Rejuvenate me, and please bring me to be the person as you want me. Rejuvenate me, rejuvenate me, rejuvenate me, O please help me.  To say no to myself.  To say yes to myself.  O please help me to choose wisely.  Rejuvenate me, oh come to me.  Amen." 

As I have gotten older and have gained more understanding of myself and the condition which I've imposed upon myself, I am trying to be kinder to myself and more loving towards the fragility of my own life.  Ever since Susan died, I've been thinking about the sheer sadness of death -- the loss of the light of this wonderful woman and all she had to offer to her family and friends and to the world at large.  Every once in a while, it pops into my own head that I'm closer to the end of my road than to the beginning, and I feel very tender towards myself.  I think that I'm a pretty cool person and I have a lot of interesting things going on in my mind, my heart, and my soul.  And I'm sorry that I won't be in this life forever.  And, at the same time, it occurs to me that I'm wasting time.  Wasting time hating my body. Wasting time being tired and sore and in pain.  Wasting time being overwhelmed by things.  Wasting time being out of control.  And that makes me feel very tender towards myself too. 

Hence the prayer, which I will sing every morning, perched on my bench of dirty laundry, regarding the ebb and flow of my family life. 

Physical

I had a physical yesterday which included me crying my eyes out in the doctor's office. I wasn't crying because I received bad news (yet), but because I am so incredibly frustrated with what is going on with my health. I don't feel like a normal 45 year old woman should feel (Yes, despite my unbelief, I am 45... until Sunday, when the clock slews back to 29). Even if my blood pressure is normal, as it is, and my cholesterol is stellar, which it usually is, I am smart enough to know that I can't go on skating by this way forever. Diabetes runs in my family and I did have gestational diabetes with both chickadees -- an indicator of possible diabetes later. I'm having all sorts of blood work done and the doctor referred me to a vascular specialist because of some specific things that are happening. She also prescribed a medication which is supposed to help with pain -- not a painkiller, but a medicine that works on the nervous system and how it perceives pain. I don't like the idea of taking a daily medication, but I also know that, if I develop diabetes or high blood pressure or heart disease, I will be taking medication daily anyway. If this medicine can help me not be in constant pain, it will be better for me in the short and the long run. On the upside (ha ha ha), the primary side effect of this medication is nausea, so I'm inclined to eat less. So, that's the update.

Hard day.

Last week, I was feeling so hopeful. Today, I'm in the Slough of Despond. I've been struggling with this weight problem for so long, and I'm in stasis. I'm trying, so I think, but I guess not hard enough. The immediate precipating factor is our trip to the zoo yesterday. The National Zoo is beautiful, but it's also on a hill. It's not designed for people like me, who struggle with pain on walking. My husband was concerned about me, and kept trying to cut our visit short, even though I was doing my best not to drag everyone down and hold everyone up. His tension, because of my pain, was rising; he broke out into hives for no reason; our children started being snarky and whining. Meanwhile, I was lurching along with a smile plastered onto my face which he said looked like the rictus of death.

I went to bed last night in pain, woke up in pain, and went grocery shopping, clutching the cart for support. I had intended to get up and do some free step for a half hour before the children got up, but that didn't happen (thank you Daylight Savings Time).

Sometimes I wonder why I bother. It's very frustrating and, honestly, I don't see a way out for me. I'm in a bad place today. Please pray for me.

Progress

Since my last post, I've taken two walks (two days were raining so I didn't walk those days) and done a few days of free step on the Wii. I also discovered that I'm better than my seven year old at Just Dance 3. I'm not saying I'm GOOD, just better than my poor child who has never been to a dance club. I've restarted logging every jot and tittle I put in my mouth in the Plan Manager of Weight Watchers Online. And I'm making kale chips as I write. [Update -- kale chips ROCK!]

My Wii Fit welcomed me back with a minimum of chiding, and I am starting to realize that I actually deserve to not feel crappy. I've been starting to think in ways I never have before - in my life. Ideas like, "I wish I could play tennis." "Wouldn't it be fun to go snowshoeing?" and "I wonder what snorkeling is like."

For me, this is progress.

Here we go again

I thought when I started writing this blog that it would provide me with inspiration and a public venue which would add the "shame" incentive -- I would somehow be more accountable to unkown strangers than I am to myself. The good news? I've discovered that I'm not as "other directed" as I might have thought. I guess the hell of middle school, when I craved the approval of the "crowd" and didn't get it, burned that desire right out of me for life. The bad news? I'm not as other directed as I might have thought. So, the idea that unkown others might be saying to themselves, "What a loser" (and not in the way I would have hoped) didn't really have much of an impact on me.

So, I'm starting again, rethinking this blog, and trying to salvage some good things out of this experience.

Here are the good things:

For the past few months, I've been seeing a nutrition counselor. Emphasis on the counselor. She is really nice, although the fact that she highly could be my sister-in-law's long lost twin kind of freaks me out. She thinks I am too negative (true), that I don't eat in the right way (true), and that I don't do things for myself (true). All of these factors contribute to the plateau I've been on for several years now.

After a longish hiatus, I thought I should sign up for Weight Watchers Online. I can't stand the meetings, which always seem to devolve into tips (if you only do x (usually involving buying WW products), the weight will just FALL OFF) or complaint sessions ("I just CAN'T figure out why I gained last week), or loving recitations of the wonderful, low cal concoction that tastes "exactly the same as pumpkin pie, I swear"). But WW Online has some useful tools and their concept of eating anything, in moderation, seems reasonable to me. I have always thought that the latest diet fad, whether it's low-fat, low-carb, no-meat, no wheat, no this, no that, is unreasonable. Human beings are omnivores and should be able to eat any kind of food. Eliminating whole food groups seems very counterproductive to me. I also know that a lifestyle that doesn't include buttered toast or mashed potates is not one I would willingly choose or sustain.

I've been working with my sister and my aunt on something called Made to Crave, which takes a spiritual approach to losing weight. As the author, Lysa TerKeurst says, it's about finding your "want to", not about "how to" lose weight. There are a series of video lectures she gives, then we work through daily assignments (which are tough, in that they require you to really be conscious of what you are thinking and believing about yourself and what you want), and then we meet weekly (lately it's been monthly) to discuss. It's been a really rewarding experience in many ways, especially since it has allowed me to grow closer to two phenomenal women, both of whom are so beautiful inside and out. The only dark spot is that my mother, who had been joining us before Christmas, is now in Florida for the winter, so we are deprived of her gentle and loving presence.

I took a walk this morning, after doing drop off. It was a small walk, but it was a walk. I went twice around the track at a local park. My goal is to do this every morning, and to build up to ten times around the track by the end of March. Then I'll go looking for more interesting walks.

This walking mania came about because, over President's Day weekend, a friend and I went to New York for a "mom's weekend away" minibreak. It was so much fun, and I walked and walked and walked. And I was in horrible pain. All the muscles in the backs of my legs were so tight and really painful, to the point that I had to stop my friend during our 8 block walk to Penn Station at the end of the weekend and ask her to hail a cab. It was awful. But, as I told my friend, if I can walk in New York because I want to see the 9/11 memorial or the Irish Hunger memorial or the Met, I sure as heck can walk at home, even if the scenery is not as interesting.

As I was walking this morning, I was thinking of all the walking I used to do when I was younger and healthier. I walked all over Rome, all over Dublin, all over Baltimore, and all over the District of Columbia. It occurred to me that, when I was in graduate school, there were times that I was so poor that I couln't afford the 85 cent metro fare from Ballston to Foggy Bottom. On those days, I'd get up an hour earlier than normal and walk the 6.5 miles from my apartment to school. It wasn't easy or fun, but I remember not giving it too much thought -- it was just something I had to do. I want to get back to that stage, when I don't have to think about the pain that walking any distance will cause me.

Now off to do 20 minutes of Free Step on the Wii. Whee!
Pray for me!

Dear Friend, Sadly Missed

My friend, Susan Niebur, passed away yesterday, after a five year battle with Inflammatory Breast Cancer, the deadly cancer that presents with no lump.

These are my words for Susan.

In 1st Corinthians, Chapter 13, verse 13, St. Paul writes, “And now abides faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Recently, I saw a commentary about this verse given by a priest who was, I think, recapitulating St. Thomas Aquinas’s explanation of it. The priest said that, when our earthly lives are done and we see God face to face, there is no longer any need for faith, because all of our questions have been answered and all of our searching for the Ultimate has come to a triumphant close. In the same way, there is no longer any need for hope, because when we see God, Creator of the Universe, face to face, all our hopes, even those we ourselves can barely acknowledge, are fulfilled. What then is left?

Love is left.

Love abides.

And when we see God, the Creator of the Universe, face to face, what we are seeing is Love distilled to its finest point. And, to the extent that we have loved in our lives, to the extent that we have habituated ourselves to this Love, then, to that extent, we participate in this Ultimate Love for all eternity. If this is true, and I know with all my heart and soul and intellect that it is, as I know Susan did, then at this very moment she is participating in this Love in a way that we can only dimly comprehend.

I think this is fitting, because if there is anything that characterized Susan Niebur, it is the love that she had for her husband, Curt, and their children, and all those who were privileged to know her in person and virtually. Susan was blessed with a mind both scientific and poetic. She could as easily explain how light is refracted by a prism, with the math to explain it, as she could write a sentence that carried such weight of meaning that it could transport her readers in profound ways. Ways that changed them. Ways that made our community a better place – indeed, ways that made, and are still making, the world a better place.

And yet, as the cancer that claimed Susan’s life progressed, those things were slowly stripped away, as important and as integral to her person as they were. And finally, things that we take for granted, like the ability to drive a car, to be in charge of our days, to walk from one room to another, were slowly taken from Susan. What remained?

Love remained.

Love abides.

Throughout the last several weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about Dante’s Divine Comedy. In this marvelous poem, Dante the poet travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, observing and relaying all that he sees there to his readers. In the final book of the poem, Il Paradiso, Dante moves in concentric circles (kind of like the solar system!) through the heavenly host, drawing ever closer to a final celestial vision. I remember that, when I first read Dante, I thought that Paradise was a real let-down after all the dynamism of the earlier two books, what with Sisyphus pushing the stone perpetually up the hill, illicit lovers burning with unrequited passion, Satan encased in ice up to his diabolical waist, and the myriad souls moving up the terraces of Purgatory, every fiber of their souls yearning to attain unity with God and drawing ever closer to Him as their earthly attachments and concerns fell away.

But as I have gotten older, it’s the final image of the Divine Comedy that comes back to me again and again. After his long and fantastic journey, Dante finally comes face to face with God Himself. And here, description does not suffice. He says, “Oh how poor our speech is and how feeble/for my conception! Compared to what I saw/to say its power is ‘little’ is to say too much./” And yet, he tries, imagining the Holy Trinity as three circles, the Father, the Son as reflected light, and the Holy Spirit as impassioned fire breathed out by them both. It is only with the help of a flash of Grace that he is able to understand the image of man inherent in the Son, the Incarnation. And he says, “For the great imagination here power failed;/But already my desire and will [in harmony]/were turning like a wheel moved evenly/by the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”

For me THIS is the entire point. The point of the Divine Comedy, the point of the Incarnation, the point of Creation, and, yes, the point of Susan Niebur’s life: Love – HER love, as a reflection and amplification, a reverberation, of the love of the Prime Mover. As my heart is breaking for Curt and the boys, for Susan’s family, for us all as we endure the loss of this great woman, I also am comforted by the sure knowledge that at this very moment, Susan is immersed in the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.