Tag Archives: pain

Obstacle Course

Posted on by under Mess & Place

Dirty towels are stacked on the seat of my walker. An empty coffee mug, water glass, two rolls of toilet paper, and a bottle of Windex are perched on the top towel. The walker is equipped with handlebars; brake lines run from the handles to the wheels. After releasing the brakes, I roll from master bathroom to bedroom. Books, file folders, and black garbage bags, fat with fifteen years of receipts to shred, occupy a corner. I sweep a lonely group of monthly bills ready to be paid from my dresser into a grocery bag, loop and tie it around a handle.

Steering with one hand and steadying my load with the other, I turtle down the hallway. Bath tissue goes to the guest bathroom. I roll past the den into the kitchen. Coffee mug and water glass join the breakfast dishes in the sink. Sticky spots on the floor cause me to cringe, but cringing is followed by dramatic sighing. In my best Scarlett O’Hara voice, I say aloud to nobody: Tomorrow is another day.

Curving around the corner, I enter the laundry room, only to become entangled with my ironing board—it’s the kind designed to store in the wall, but never stays stored in mine. I encourage the walker to duck under the board, pulling, pushing, jerking, and yelling. I’m stuck. Blue liquid spatters from the fractured spray top of the Windex bottle as it smacks the hardwood floor. Like a basketball player trying to hit multiple shots, I hurl the towels one by one toward the rim of my top-loader washing machine. I’m zero for ten.

FullSizeRender(41)*****

My orthopedist glances down at the floor as though he’s taking time to gather his thoughts to convey unpleasant news. He looks up and says: “There’s nothing else I can do for your back. Curves greater than sixty degrees (off center) will most likely deteriorate one degree yearly, so in ten years, you can expect greater pain and disability.”

My S-shaped spine glares at me from an X-ray film illuminated by light. He continues, “I don’t do adult scoliosis surgery, so I think it would be best for you to see the neuro man here in town who can follow you and determine if you need surgery now. And help you better manage your pain.”

Since I was twelve years old, I’ve had multiple visits—visit sounds pleasant and benign—to orthopedists and physical therapists. After forty years, you’d think I’d be used to hearing state of my spine speeches. Today, all I hear is finality: “There’s nothing I can do for you…”

*****

“Your spine is curvy,” says this short, curly-haired neurosurgeon dressed in a coat with buttons straining over his paunch.

I can’t suppress a giggle. “My husband says I’m curvaceous.”

“Oh, that’s a good one.” We hit it off like two vaudeville comedians.

While looking straight at me, he asks about the severity of my pain on a scale of 1-10. He takes my hand and helps me descend from the exam table. I stretch and try to touch my toes as he runs his fingers along my spine, tracing from top to bottom, a squatty, fat “S.”

“If you are functional, I prefer not to do surgery until you are well into your sixties. You can’t fool around with the spinal cord. We must ask: when do the benefits outweigh the risks?

I nod, listening. He continues, “I could make you straight—straight in your coffin.”

*****

I sit on my walker to rest after preparing dishes for our Thanksgiving meal. As I stare across the kitchen island’s glossy, black surface, I think of my grandma who had a holiday menu a mile long. My menu has shrunk from feast to famine: one meat, two vegetables, rolls, and store-bought dessert. I feel deficient. My dead grandmother is disappointed in me.

I am a mess. My vertebrae are like a stack of plate-spinners’ china: swaying, unbalanced, ready to crash. My body will not move like I want it to. Thoughts are scattered in my mind. My prayers bounce between Help! and Thank you!

I can, in most moments, stash negativity in a dark corner of my mind and will myself through the messiness of life. But, today, I am depleted. I’m taunted by sunlight streaming across the floor, highlighting dried splats of liquid. Crumbs fill cracks between the floor planks.

Then, I glance up and see light and shadows dancing with the colors of glass in my kitchen window. I laugh at myself. Oh, the absurdity of letting specks of dirt impair my vision.

FullSizeRender(42)Images by Lisa Taylor Phillips

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The Pain and Beauty in Goodbye

Posted on by under Guest, Out of Place

Now far removed from the 9th floor Korean apartment I called home for nearly two years, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve taken away from my time in South Korea. I’ve come up with quite a list.

I’ve learned about graciousness, and about understanding. I’ve learned patience and learned to wait for the full story before casting my final judgment- there is always a reason behind even the strangest cultural customs. It’s proven true that living in another culture has become one of my life’s great teachers.

The more I worked through lessons learned, (and trust me, there were many) there was one particular lesson that separated itself from the others; my changing understanding of the beauty and importance of saying “good-bye.”

suitcaseWhile living in foreign countries, expats make friends with natives and other foreigners alike. It’s possible, or probable, that as foreigners we will become friends with people soon to leave us, and so, we say “good-bye.”

Eventually, our time will come. Whether that time is after 30 years or 30 days, we inevitably will leave and call a new place “home.”  Maybe we’re really heading home (the place of our birth), or maybe we’re starting a new chapter filled with new scenery and with new people. No matter the situation, it all ends the same way, with us saying, “good-bye.”

I, like most people, hate good-byes. Separating oneself from those who learned and grew with you is a difficult and painful event. When we leave, we are leaving behind part of our self, and with us we take a unique mark; a mark penned by the culture that took us in.

But, since my journey back west, I’ve come to a few realizations.

Good-byes force us to start a new chapter. 

Life often will take the form of a story. We live our lives in phases, or chapters. We grow during chapter 5, we fail during chapter 7, and find hard fought redemption in chapter 14. During our story we live, breathe, love and cry. The chapters of our lives are different lengths and they are filled with a wide range of emotion.

It’s important to remember one thing, though. Like the chapters in a book, our life’s chapters never last forever. We are not defined by the mistake we made in chapter 3. What defines a person is what he chose to do with the number of chapters he or she was blessed with. Do we choose to accept what happens and allow chapter 3 to propel us  into chapter 4?

Since my time in Korea, I’m learning that “good-bye” is often the final period on that final page of whatever chapter we are currently writing. The act of saying “good-bye” lets us start again. It allows us to grow. It allows us to leave unhealthy situations in search of healthy ones, or it allows us to leave healthy situations in pursuit of a dream.

Good-byes help us to realize what we had, and to appreciate it. 

I’ve got a confession. I don’t think I ever fully appreciate people or places when they are part of my life. I take them for granted. But, as soon as I am about to leave a place, the ordinary, everyday buildings that inhabited my world (buildings that I’ve passed hundreds of times without notice) are filled with color and I find them remarkable. The people are revealed for who they are, which are friends that I am going to deeply miss and who had a lasting impression on me. I think this is human nature, though. We rarely appreciate the things right in front of us. “Good-bye,” though, forces people and places back into their proper place; their place of high honor and importance. The act of saying farewell is the great equalizer.

Good-byes help us to hope that beauty is possible again. 

The fact that saying “good-bye” is so incredibly difficult speaks to what our experiences were: beautiful and important. This pain is the living proof that we cared and that we loved. It is the frame work that defines the art that was created during our time. It’s not easy to end something of eternal importance. It’s not easy to leave friendships that altered the course of your life.

It’s important to remember that the pain, the memories, the beauty, the lessons learned all come down to this: As bad as it hurts, our act of leaving is a statement of faith (for without faith, we’d never leave) that in our act of going, there is a belief that there is more art to be created and that there is more beauty to be discovered. There is justice to be done, and lessons to be learned. There is hope to be given and there is love to be given.

“Good-bye” is a hopeful sending, and in our going, we are granted permission to go find and create again.

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Michael“The Pain and Beauty of Goodbye” was written by Michael Palmer. Michael is a Midwest transplant residing in Northern California, a pastor, proud father of two little ones, an avid St. Louis Cardinals Fan, and a lover of cultures, travel, food, and theology. He’s published numerous articles on theology, art, and life, and is a contributor to Renovating Holiness (SacraSage Press, January 2015), a theological re-imaging of holiness. You can also find him at michaelrpalmer.com and on Twitter: @michaelrpalmer.

 (Suitcase photo by Elitatt.)

Pizza on Thanksgiving

Posted on by under Food & Place

When I was 21, I was a college dropout living on the floor of a friend’s apartment. I was estranged from my family because I chose not to be around them, and I was completely lost in myself.

During that year, I spent nearly every day alone. Over the previous two years of my life, I had slowly slipped into myself, away from friends and any purpose to guide and drive me beyond the most present satisfactions.  I lived in a cage of self-absorption. For Thanksgiving in my 21st year, I missed all of my family’s activities, including our goose-hunting trip and the Thanksgiving Day meal at the ranch house. Instead, I chose to cut myself off from communicating with everyone, seeking desperately to avoid seeing another face that might recall me to my own lonely heart.

I have always been content alone. My mother often told me I was so easy as a child because I needed no attention—I had my own mind to get lost within—yet this also rightly worried her because I did not seek others out, especially when I was hurting or feeling shame. By the time I was 21, after two years of burying myself in the shame of not living up to who I could be as a student as well as a pile of addictions and self-hatred, I was even more intent on fleeing others; they awoke in me an awareness of just how lonely and lost I was. I could hide my heart’s aching loneliness from myself with a series of addictions and distractions, but the face of another person was a mirror to me.

Thanksgiving day for my family usually consists of turkey, stuffing, endless rolls, a goose, pecan pie, football, and thanksgiving. The central focus and culmination of our meal is our giving of thanks where, with a solemn yet joyful procession around the table, we offer up our gratitude for family, friends, and all the goodness of life. This is one of many sacraments my family practices around the dinner table on special occasions. For birthdays, my family intentionally sets aside a time at the end of the meal to tell the family member who was born that day why we love them. These moments recall us back to joy, thanksgiving, and shared love. But for that Thanksgiving, I was a prodigal so desperately mired in the muck of myself that I could not handle love, joy, and thanksgiving. When we turn in upon ourselves and seek our satisfaction from only what we desire, our hearts can shrivel up to the point where love and joy become painful for us. Right then, love and joy were painful for me to encounter.

Instead of community and celebration, I spent that Thanksgiving alone. I locked myself up in the apartment and wanted no one to come near me. Because I was so afraid of seeing another face, I did not leave my room until I became hungry. Around mid-afternoon, I finally decided to order pizza (which to my surprise was still delivered on Thanksgiving) and waited in my cavern for it to arrive. I was watching football, just like my family was likely doing, when the pizza arrived. When I opened the door, I found a young man, probably my own age, looking at me quizzically. I immediately wondered: Why was this young man working on Thanksgiving? What had led him to the point where he wasn’t at home with his family, eating a joyful Thanksgiving meal? Was he without a family or friends to share joy and love with today?

Then, I saw in his eyes the same questions being asked back at me. Beneath my armor of distractions, the desperate beating brokenness of my own heart pulsed with billowing pangs into my consciousness. In this pizza delivery boy’s face, I saw my own loneliness.

Driving through a small town on I-45 the other day, I saw a big billboard, the type of sign you only see in a small town in Texas, which read: “Lost? The map is in My Book. ~God”. When I saw it, I was struck by a realization: When I am lost, the map back to where I need to go has not often been written on a page but in the face of another person. When I was lost that Thanksgiving day, the face of a pizza delivery boy first woke me to how lost I really was. Now, every time I attempt to escape back into myself to hide from the constant reality that I am lonely, broken, and in need, I find myself face to face with another broken heart. I writhe to run, but the God whose face is always seeking mine will not let me turn forever from my own brokenness. I am recalled back to the place of my own poverty, where I am unable to live without another living within me, beside me, and for me, and where in turn I am called to live for others outside the ruinous cavern of myself.

Where I Am: Four Houses, Four Turning Points

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

I live in Urbana, Illinois, a city I didn’t want to move to in the first place. My opinion on the matter was weakly based on the handful of times I had driven by the Champaign-Urbana exit on Interstate 57. From that vantage point it was just another flat, cornfield-edged town with predictable, treeless suburbs and chain restaurants.

But in 2001, when my youngest daughter was still in diapers and I was finally admitting to myself that my marriage was falling apart, it felt like God was urging us to move. More precisely, I thought that moving—and my husband’s new job—would somehow save our marriage.

In the 13 years since moving to Urbana, four houses have been home. I don’t know if it’s by design or coincidence, but it seems that each significant Act in my life here has demanded a new stage, as if the inner transitions couldn’t be complete without the leaving of one tangible place and the arrival at another.

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Our first Urbana house caught my eye because—if you could see beyond the birdhouse and ivy wallpaper—it reminded me of the beloved house we sold in Michigan before moving here. Both were 1920s-era Mission style, with sturdy stucco exteriors, generous wood mouldings inside, and plenty of tall windows paned with thick, wavy, antique glass that creates mottled patterns of light when the sun shines through.

During the three years we lived in that house, our toddler and pre-school-aged daughters were at that kill-you-with-cuteness stage of life, busy choreographing dances, creating elaborate plastic feasts in their play kitchen, and layering on the most unlikely costume combinations.

But in spite of those bright moments, I think of that first house the House of Pain. Yes, I know it’s overly dramatic (and also the name of a nineties hip-hop band), but for me, the house was the scene of much yelling and crying and despair. Ultimately, it was the place where I gave up—not just on marriage, but also on my long-held childhood belief that God had plans to prosper me, not to harm me.

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If I was drawn to my first Urbana house because it reminded me of a house in my past, I was drawn to the second Urbana house for the opposite reason: It was nothing like the House of Pain. It was one-story not two; 1960s not 1920s; brick not stucco; and straight-forward, not “full of charm and character.” Most importantly, I was bound to it only by a 12-month lease, not a mortgage. I signed the lease after my divorce was final—after the House of Pain was sold and our marital collections of books, CDs, artwork, and kitchen appliances had undergone a necessary but unnatural process of division.

This second home can best be described as the House of Rebellion (clearly a perfect name for an angry metal band). Just like music that serves to numb the mind, the House of Rebellion provided an escape hatch from the life my ex-husband and I had shared. It played into my desire to be tied to nothing: not a marriage certificate, a church membership, or a mortgage. I devoted myself to my daughters when they were with me, and on the weekends they weren’t, I did whatever I pleased.

Like many rebellions, however, this one led to rock bottom, not freedom or enlightenment. One day about a year after moving into the rental, I knew it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and start claiming my place. Maybe if I chose to live here—decided to put down roots on my own, in a house of my own—that whole sob story about “following my husband to save a marriage that couldn’t be saved” would lose its power over me.

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Buying house number three happened amidst a flurry of change: I ended a bad relationship, decided to try church again, went to a new counselor, and generally began figuring out who I really was.

This was my House of Healing (yep, cue the cheesy eighties CCM band). It’s the house where I learned to sit and just be in the moment, and where I learned that God wants me to find myself, not fix myself.

I worked in my garden, pulling out weeds with deep roots and planting perennials, and I invited new friends to sit around my table and share the meals I cooked. My daughters grew in those sunny rooms, writing stories, learning to play my grandmother’s piano, and forging great “wilderness” adventures with friends in our large, tree-filled yard. Along the way, as I mowed, painted, baked, and parented, I recognized this truth: I have more power to shape my place than it has to shape me.

And then I met Jason. We eventually got married, blending our families in that House of Healing, all five of us crowded in, watching and learning in awe (or at least the grownups were in awe) as redemption was worked out in one surprising way after another.

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Finally, last spring, as our three girls (and their groups of friends) grew bigger, Jason and I sold “my” house and bought “our” house: The House of Hope (or Truth)? The House of Second (and Third and Fourth) Chances? The House of New Creations? I’m not quite sure yet, but that’s OK—I don’t feel the need to pin down the life that’s unfolding here or the God who works in so many places, in so many ways.