by Christie Purifoy | Oct 4, 2011 | Faith, Family, God's promises, motherhood, Waiting
Taken yesterday by Yours Truly. Ok, it was six years ago. It just feels like yesterday.
I read tall, teetering stacks of parenting books when I was pregnant with my first. Not one told me how much it would hurt.
Oh, sure, they talked about childbirth. The pain of it. I read a lot about that, and I was prepared. Well, as prepared as you can ever be.
But not one of those books prepared me for the pain of loving.
To love a child is to hurt. Desperately. They seem to grow and change by the minute, and this growth is both a good thing and a terrible loss. Every day you are saying goodbye: to the baby you held, the toddler who made you laugh, the brave one who left for her first sleepover. And on it goes. They’re relentless, these goodbyes.
I have never looked at old photographs without an almost physical pain. Of course, there’s pleasure too. But you expect that. It’s the pain that feels so strange. It’s the pain that seems to demand some sort of answer. God, does love have to make us cry?
There’s a song by the group Mumford and Sons called “After the Storm.” My favorite line is this: “There will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears and love will not break your heart.”
Do you believe that? Do you believe that one day love, like everything else, will be perfect and whole? That one day there will be no more goodbyes?
Peter told us that “[Jesus] must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything” (Acts 3:21). And I can’t help but wonder: when he says “everything,” does he mean everything? Will God restore everything that we seem to lose in this life?
Will there come a day when love will not break our hearts?
by Christie Purifoy | Sep 27, 2011 | Family, Grace
I can still hear my paternal grandmother: “Bless her heart,” she would say. It was one of those Southern-isms that fascinated me as a kid. I may have been growing up in Texas, but my own San Francisco-born mother never said, “Bless her heart.” She never said, “over yonder” or “back forty.” Neither did she serve biscuits every morning or insist on only drinking Dr. Pepper that had been bottled in Dublin, Texas (still the only Dr. Pepper made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup). But Grandmother did.
I’ve been hearing her voice because I read an interview in Southern Living magazine. This country singer mentioned that her favorite thing about the South is women who say “Bless her heart.” Personally, my favorite thing about living in the South is being able to justify a subscription to Southern Living magazine. It’s good for me to remember this, because the list of things I do not like about living in the South is long (Curious? My top three are heat, humidity, and mosquitoes.).
Though I miss Chicago desperately, I do love Southern Living. It reminds me to look past the strip malls and remember that this place really is unique. And I love women who say “bless her heart.”
Regretfully, these three little words do conjure a common stereotype of Southern women. You know, sugar-sweet on the outside but with a deep vein of mean underneath. As in, “Poor thing looks like she got dressed in the dark, bless her heart.”
Yes, I’ve heard comments like this one (though never, ever from Grandmother), but, for the most part, “Bless her heart” isn’t used to sugar-coat the ugly.
Rather, it’s always sounded to me like a precious way of viewing other people. When we remark upon someone’s trouble, pain, or folly with a “bless her heart,” we are emphasizing that which is child-like in the other. Bless her heart (‘cause she can’t really help it). Bless her heart (‘cause we’ve all been there.)
At its worst, “bless her heart,” is infantilizing. At its best, it reminds us that we are all unfinished works-in-progress, generally trying (and frequently failing) to do our best.
To say “bless her heart,” is to notice what’s gone wrong but then . . . to extend a little grace.
by Christie Purifoy | Sep 26, 2011 | Family, grief, motherhood, Poetry, Seasons
This comes from one of my favorite poets, the Irish writer Eavan Boland.
Reading it again this morning, I remember that myths are some of the truest stories we tell. The myth of Persephone is not merely a way of explaining the change of seasons before our age of scientific discovery. More than this, it is a story of loss and restoration. This poem reminds me that I have been Persephone. It also reminds me that my oldest child is swiftly becoming Persephone. I say, with Boland, that I will not deny her her own unique life story, though no good story is without pain.
The Pomegranate
The only legend I have ever loved is
The story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
A city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
An exiled child in the crackling dusk of
The underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
Searching for my daughter at bedtime.
When she came running I was ready
To make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams.
And wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
Winter was in store for every leaf
On every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
It is winter
And the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
My child asleep beside her teen magazines,
Her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
And ended the story and all
Our heartbroken searching but she reached
Out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
The French sound for apple and
The noise of stone and the proof
That even in the place of death,
At the heart of legend, in the midst
Of rocks full of unshed tears
Ready to be diamonds by the time
The story was told, a child can be
Hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.
The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else
Can a mother give her daughter but such
Beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend must be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold
The papery, flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips. I will say nothing.
– Eavan Boland
by Christie Purifoy | Sep 23, 2011 | Family, motherhood
She leaned forward, looked right into my eyes, and said, “You’re a good mother, aren’t you?”
Yes, she really did. My jaw dropped a little, and I said nothing but “Ummm.” Then I watched those inarticulate sounds hang there in the air between us.
Fortunately, she was a talker, and she barreled right ahead, “Well, of course you are, but my own mother now . . .” and she was off, telling me her life story. We were strangers making small talk in a Starbucks, though our talk (or hers, at least) quickly ballooned.
At least a decade older than me, she was beautiful. Like a model for hip, expensive yoga-wear. She was also honest. I heard all about her many failed relationships, failures for which she was quick to accept responsibility (though not without some wickedly funny anecdotes about her exes). And when it came to her children, she was confident. She had always, she was sure, been an excellent mother. Nothing like the alcoholic who had raised her.
Our conversation took place more than a year ago, but I still marvel at the certainty with which she announced: “I am a good mother.” Not “good enough” (to use the psychoanalytic catchphrase I learned in graduate school) but truly, thoroughly good.
In the radiance cast by her lovely, shiny blonde hair, my own self-doubt emerged as if spotlighted. For that’s exactly what her bold question had done: shined a light on my weakness.
I don’t think that I will ever say with confidence or certainty that I am a good mother. I love my kids. I love being a mother (though I don’t always like it). And I’ll even admit that if you lined up a cross section of the world’s mothers, I might show up somewhere near the top, at least according to superficial, measurable factors (I kiss them, I say “I love you,” I feed them organic as much as possible, I make them brush their teeth).
For whatever reason, I tend not to focus on the things I do well. Instead, I see the failures: from lost tempers and angry threats to my consistent refusal to play Legos with my son (I’m just not good at that. Why don’t you wait till Daddy’s home?).
Over the years (well, eight years, to be exact), I’ve made peace with my weakness. I cannot stand up boldly to claim the title “good mother,” but today I’m okay with that.
Mothering is now so much less about me and so much more about Grace. The more impossible I find this role, the more room there is for God (and for His presence, His love, His power, His many good gifts).
As my friend Courtenay recently told me, all that hard, cannot-possibly-get-it-done, certainly cannot-do-it-well stuff on your horizon? Well, that’s what grace is for.
“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
(2 Corinthians 12:8-10)
by Christie Purifoy | Sep 21, 2011 | Family, poverty, prayer
I’ve always had a tendency to let the mail pile up unopened (which means that we have realized, on more than one occasion, that we’re driving a car that may no longer be insured).
We put systems in place. For instance, a basket for recycling junk mail sits by the front door just beneath a tray for bills. I vow to do a better job, but I never quite keep up with the flurry of paper.
One particular unopened letter had been troubling me for weeks. The return address said Compassion, and “a message from your sponsored child!” was splashed across the envelope. I knew as soon as I pulled it from the mailbox that it was a note from our new Compassion child (I picked him from the lineup because he reminded me of my middle boy). He isn’t the only child we sponsor, so I knew the drill. I would need to write a letter introducing him to our family, and I remembered that it was customary to include a family photo.
It’s the photo’s fault. At least, that’s what I’d like to think.
As soon as I open this letter, I told myself, then I’ll have to add “take and print a family photo” to my to-do list. I felt tired just considering my to-do list, yet my perfectionism wouldn’t let me send a year-old photograph (because our baby boy has changed so much).
And so, I let the letter sit.
I kept spotting it. I noticed it every time I added a few more bills to the now-teetering pile in the tray. The guilt grew with the pile, but I couldn’t get past the need for a photo.
Until yesterday.
I shook my perfectionist, procrastinating self and opened the letter. Immediately, I noticed a small box with the prompt “Please pray for my family.” Within that square were these dictated words: “Please pray that my father finds a job and stops drinking.”
I was devastated. My chest hurt.
A heart-cry in a handful of words: how could I have let it sit unread?
Adding another Compassion child to our monthly giving was a financial stretch for us. However, I’ve found that opening my eyes just a little bit to the rest of the world makes it much harder to justify the ease with which I buy books. Or new boots for my daughter. Or another weekly dance class.
It’s about money. God has his eye on the poor, and I see them too. We both know that He’s given American Christians more than enough to wipe out mountains of misery, if only we would share what has never been ours to begin with.
Yet, believing it was just about money made it easier to leave that letter lying on the tray. Now I know: it’s about money (I say I care about the poor, so I better put my money where my mouth is), and it’s about so much more.
It’s about a small boy. One precious life. Only five years old, and yet he knows things that my own kids have never even imagined. I’m still trying to figure out how to share this prayer request with them. I don’t think that they have ever even heard the word drunk. Let alone seen it.
But this boy . . . oh how my heart aches when I consider what he has seen. What he is seeing even now as I type.
So, I’ll keep writing the checks. But now my checks go out dripping with prayer. Simple, nearly wordless prayers:
Jesus, Carlos, Jesus, Carlos’s daddy, Jesus, Carlos’s mommy, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
by Christie Purifoy | Sep 6, 2011 | Faith, Family, Religion
I spent most of this Labor Day weekend sitting by the pool and feeling the spray of splash after splash after splash. My children don’t swim so much as hurl themselves repeatedly into the water. Even the two-year-old, with a grip on his inner tube that looks entirely too casual to me, gets in on the action. Run . . . jump . . . Splash! Repeat.
I tried it once or twice myself, but even that small drop from side of pool to bottom of pool makes my stomach flutter. Once upon a time, I could jump from the 7 meter diving platform for fun after swim practice. Once upon a time, I pretended to like the free-fall rides at the amusement park.
I have nothing left to prove. I would rather avoid stomach flutters. And so I generally ease my body into the pool one concrete step at a time.
But if a bodily free fall is something I now avoid, I find myself pursuing spiritual free falls with much more regularity. They don’t make my stomach flutter – only my heart.
I don’t think you will find the phrase “free fall” in the Bible, but it seems to me the best way to describe the experience of following God into unknown terrain. To hear His voice calling, to move in His direction . . . well, it often feels like falling.
There we are – in midair – and it is not at all clear that we will be caught, that we have in fact heard rightly, that we will not fall all the way to the bottom of an empty post-Labor Day swimming pool.
I could tell you that He never lets us hit bottom. That our free fall of faith is rewarded every time. But I’m not sure if it always looks like that. Or if it always feels like that.
Sometimes we might just find ourselves at the bottom of the pool, picking up the pieces and trying to make sense of it all. Asking, “Was I wrong to jump?”
Occasionally, we are tested like Abraham, and we are privileged to see, without a doubt, that we have aced the test. Abraham knew that he would have sacrificed his son. God knew it too. Abraham passed the test and was rewarded with God’s provision and with a faith that had been refined by fire.
Abraham made the leap. He landed with both feet on the ground and eyes that had witnessed God’s goodness and glory.
Yes, God tests us, we have read, in order to know what is in our hearts (Deuteronomy 8:2). But even if we find ourselves heart-bruised at the bottom of the pool, we are given this good thing: we have seen our own souls in flight.
Whether we call it falling or flying, it is good to know what we are made of. It is good to know that even the least thrill-seeking among us are capable of leaping after Him.
“. . . acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you . . .” (I Chronicles 28:9).
I hope my kids keep jumping. It isn’t safe, but I’m convinced that it’s the only way to live.
