That Rock Again

How are you at goodbyes? Bad? Good? I asked myself this question the other evening while sitting in the sauna, a cold season ritual begun ten years ago so that I could go to bed warm and be able to sleep, later continued as one more piece to the puzzle of putting Lyme bacteria into submission.

But about goodbyes, we have all heard of people who sneak away in order to avoid a painful or awkward goodbye. Maybe you know one of these folks personally. On the other extreme, we have Bilbo Baggins who made a big show of his departure. On his 111th birthday, he hosted the entire Shire for a party. When they were well and truly sated with every good thing, he gave the anticipated speech. Beginning with compliments to all of his fine friends, he paused and perhaps fidgeted a moment before continuing, “I, uh, I have things to do. I've put this off far too long. I regret to announce that this is the end. I am going now. I bid you all a very fond farewell. Goodbye.” Then, as most of you will know, he abruptly disappeared from their sight, leaving his nephew Frodo whom he had adopted to attend to the shocked neighbors.i

Friends, this is my goodbye.

When I rebooted the Fierce Joy & Hope blog in January, I did not know the shape it would take. Nor did I know who or how many would choose to read it. It was an experiment, and has been a good one as it propelled me to begin writing more regularly and on a variety of topics. And some people read what I wrote. Thank you for your part.

I don’t know what is ahead for me. Although I have often thought I was in charge of my life, I have never really known what’s ahead. Still, I am confident that the Spirit will guide me as long as I leave her an opening. I am sure God is not through with me. As I used to tell the church’s nonagenarians, “as long as we are still breathing…” Maybe longer.

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I am
      because you have been my refuge. Psalm 61:2-3

i J.R.R. Tolkien, “A Long-Expected Party,” first chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring which is the first volume of the novel, The Lord of the Rings, 1954.

What We Do & Why It Matters

Be proactive

Begin with the end in mind

Put first things first …

Since the Wausau School District made the decision to implement “Leader in Me” – a program for building leadership and life skills – a substitute teacher will find age-appropriate versions of each of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits posted in virtually every classroom and throughout the halls of every school, kindergarten through twelfth grade. We see “Leader in Me” t-shirts on the backs of children throughout town. When teaching suffixes to elementary students, we can reference “sharpen” from Habit #7's “Sharpen the saw” and the kids have an instant reference.

When Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was published in 1989, I was at first intrigued but was soon turned off by the hype. Everyone was referencing this book! Yet the products and material have endured. Countless lives have been touched. Clearly, I needed to revisit my opinion.

Although last week’s post did not reference 7 Habits – I wasn’t thinking of the book or its author – it does fit pretty well with Habit #3, “Put first things first.” Then, even before I went in for this week’s subbing adventures, “Begin with the end in mind” had been rolling around in my head. Looking into it, I find that Covey invites his readers to envision what those who someday gather for our funeral might say about us. Hm. Except for a youthful wish to be considered wise, I have given more thought to what I will think of my life in my twilight years. In either instance, having a vision for one’s life is what Habit #2 is about – whether one is six or sixty-six.

Do you have a vision for your life?

I used to, way back when I was a teenager and young adult, but I stopped thinking about vision once Jay* was born and I had a piano and a house. (I recognize now that I surrendered it in favor of my then-husband’s vision.) Although I’ve accomplished a number of goals in the last dozen years, I hadn’t thought about vision. Maybe it’s time.

I recall in an episode of the original Star Trek series, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” the Enterprise is caught in a battle between two powerful entities. The ship is placed in a super-speed loop from which they struggle to escape. Scotty, with his ever-quick responses, tells the captain that “at Warp 10, we’re going nowhere mighty fast.”

This may describe most of my adult life. Yours, too?

In Adam Leipzig’s TEDx talk about finding one’s life purpose, he speaks of the people he informally interviewed during his 25th college reunion. Distilling what was different about the happier ones, he asks listeners:

1. “Who you are;
2. What you do;
3. Who you do it for;
4. What do those people want and need; and
5. How they change as a result.”

He then points out that only two of the above are about ourselves. “Three of them are about other people.” Those happier people he spoke with were outward-facing. I found all of this interesting but what truly amazed me came toward the end of Leipzig’s talk. He said that when someone asks you what you do, after you’ve wondered about their motivation (or ignored it), just say your response to #5 above, about “how what you do changes the people you do it for.”

Wow.

I’m sure I don’t have this polished but here goes…

1. Who am I? Jayneann
2. What do I do? I teach, equipping and empowering people
3. Who do I do it for? School students, refugee women…
4. What do those people want and need? Someone to accompany them in their learning and who believes in them
5. How does what I do change people? They come to believe in themselves and their capacity to succeed.

Wow, again. I think this might have worked. The next time someone asks what I do, instead of saying, “Not much, I’m on medical leave” or some equally sad statement, I will say…

“I help people believe in themselves and their capacity to succeed.”


* not his real name

Knowing What Matters

What would you do if you found out you had one year to live? It’s an old question, one we’ve each heard countless times. Most recently I heard it voiced by a wise twenty-something. (Am I the only one who regularly is taken aback by the young sages among us?)

For the tenth or eleventh year, my daughter Kay* is working on a novel as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). The NaNoWriMo website describes itself as “a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing.” Kay has been a storyteller since she could talk. She began to believe in the possibility of a career in writing fiction when her eighth-grade English teacher said she believed Kay could make a living at it. (Never dismiss the influence you can have in someone else’s life!) Some of Kay’s NaNoWriMo months have been spent reworking earlier drafts but, yes, she really has quite a collection of novels that she continues to polish.

Last week, one of her characters was reflecting on her life. Like Kay, Cassidy refuses to fool herself about the amount of time she might have remaining. Even with decades of living likely to be in front of her, she evaluates her life rationally, the number of years she can expect to live, all that she hopes to accomplish before she dies. For reasons I will not go into (it’s not my story) some of those closest to her have not considered or do not need to consider the existential questions which Cassidy asks herself.

Having recorded this character’s deliberations only the night before, the topic was on Kay’s own mind when we got together for our evening phone chat. After talking about what had happened to each of us during the day, a headache that was relieved through attention to pressure points on the bottoms of my feet, a car that she had taken into the shop for repairs, she told me that she had been thinking about the question “If I found out I would live only one year…” After speaking her own truth on the subject, she invited me – if I chose – to share my own. Kay has shared the gift of her being with the people around her for twenty-six years but she has not yet shared her gift of storytelling except in classes or with those of us closest to her. She still has stories to write, polish, and publish. I am in my seventh decade and while I love life, I find that I have very little I would need to do. I’m aware that this response reflects the grief I’m experiencing these days. I suspect that it's also simply another facet of aging.

After Kay and I expressed ourselves on the topic as well as we could in that moment, I gently reminded us both that this question is significant precisely because it encourages us to take that hard look at how we’re living our lives right now. While a person might be enjoying how they spend their days, would they continue to be satisfied if they learned that they had only one year to live? Five years? Five weeks? Holding that idea lightly, we might ask ourselves if there is something else calling to us that we could be working toward. What is begging to be accomplished or celebrated? Who are we being called to love? 

What do we notice when we make room for questions like these?

Two years ago, I joined Kay and countless others in writing daily during November as part of NaNoWriMo. Wanting to process a knot of relationships which had emerged during my three years in Wausau I wrote a memoir. This writing was also another way for me to shut out for a few hours at a time the inaudible cries of the world during that first Covid-19 autumn. This month, I am writing and except for the fact that I sit at my laptop four hours each day, I find it satisfying. In recent months (years?) I have felt that there is a writing project awaiting me yet what thread I am to follow has eluded me. My hope is that in writing about a variety of topics, I will discover a theme that I’m drawn to follow. I’m still trying to find ways to work on a project and also accomplish needful things… I also want to be open for whatever that quiet inner voice might suggest.

*not her real name

Facing Baggage

In recent months, I had been feeling increasingly yucky, beginning in July when a surprising uptick in fatigue left me wondering if I would have enough stamina for the Boundary Waters canoe trip. Thankfully, I felt strong and healthy then and even for a couple of weeks afterward. By early September though, the fatigue returned with other symptoms gradually increasing as well so that by late October I was getting worried. What was going on?

Finally I realized that my systems were overloaded with dead bacteria that needed help in exiting. Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction (aka Herx) is the term for the reaction one experiences as harmful microorganisms within the body die away due to treatment. In the last three years, I have observed most of the long list of Herx symptoms I found online. Again thankfully, in continuing my searches I have found similarly long lists of ways to manage Herx reactions and I include a small few of them in my weekly regimen. The problem is that, beyond this, I forget to consider Herx when my symptoms flare, as they will from time to time. For weeks, or in this case months, it does not occur to me to consider this culprit. 

When I finally put the pieces together a week ago and started treating the Herx more aggressively, symptoms slowly subsided and I began to feel better. With my head clearing, I am thinking that I may be at a place in my healing journey where I need to shift the treatment balance. While continuing to battle bacteria (though perhaps less intensely), it may be time to work more intentionally on removing the dead bits of bacteria which I have learned can continue to do damage for years after bacterial death.

If your eyes glazed over with all of that, here's a different picture. In a dream on Saturday morning, the hose of my vacuum clearer – nicknamed the TurtleBug years ago by my daughter – was so jam-packed full of junk that it could not draw air. When I opened its access door, the bag was so full that it exploded, spewing colorful paper and plastic junk all over the floor. Notice a pattern?

So, here's my epiphany. This same sort of thing happens in other facets our lives as well, in our relationships, and in society as a whole. It’s no surprise that residuals from past disagreements can continue to interfere with our connections with others. We might talk it out, forgive, and think that we have let it go yet still be hindered by frustration, grief, or pain. (Our nation – if we can figure out how to heal the breaches that seem to have become insurmountable – will face similar challenges.) I use things like charcoal and clay, infrared sauna and Epson salt soaks to help my body rid itself of the bacterial byproducts that can leave me feeling sicker. Until last week, I had not made the connection that just as I will shift the balance of treatment for my mind and body, I would do well to apply this practice to other areas of my life. One, by working to dismantle the resistance that keeps me from accepting things I cannot change. Another, by trying to shift the balance in how I connect with other persons.

Even when we have no active conflict, I would like to be mindful of what is driving my part in our interactions. Relationships are really important to me. With friends and family, acquaintances and even people I dislike, I can walk away from our conversations feeling better about my part when I pay attention to the baggage that might be influencing me without my noticing. I’m going to try to work on this. Wish me luck!