Migraine Rejoicing

A day of dizziness, of increasing pain, of eyes shut against light and ears aching against overwhelming noise, leaves me emotionally crippled by night.  Tears are quick even when I see the comedy in them.  When the pressure lifts and my head is no longer pinched, the feeling is indescribable.  I will try to describe it anyway.

Relief from a migraine opens floodgates of joy and thanksgiving.  Dizziness departs and my eyes can look once again painlessly towards windows.  I have noticed time and again how beautiful the world is right after a headache finally eases off of my brain.  Colors sparkle, light flashes, the world sings unbidden, and usually unnoticed, but for that day.  I try to hide my laughter as I walk alone down a bike path to reach my church on Sunday morning.  The bikers passing on my left and the joggers avoiding eye contact might think something's wrong with me, when in fact it has seldom been so right.  My appreciation for Mr. Magorium bubbles to the surface in an excess of minute delight.

"Now we wait," says the assistant.  "No," returns Mr. Magorium, "We breathe.  We pulse.  We regenerate.  Our hearts beat, our minds create, our souls ingest.  37 seconds well used is a lifetime."

I wonder, as I note the careful dispersion of glowing morning on sheltered leaves, why my attitude towards all of life lacks the sheen of post-migraine jubilation.  When God lifts the spiritual migraines from my soul, why do I not break into singing as King David?  Where is my daily zest for all things when the Cross, always fresh with Christ's blood shed for my daily guilt, hangs over my now white soul?  Salvation is every day.

"Depression is apt to turn us away from the ordinary commonplace things of God's creation, but whenever God comes, the inspiration is to do the most natural simple things--the things we would never have imagined God was in, and as we do them we find He is there."  ~Oswald Chambers

All of me becomes light when my physical body finds relief. My eternal soul is granted relief every day.  Ought I to take it any more for granted just because it is all the more common?  I hear cicadas hum, and feel cool wood beneath my feet, and my pen scratches across the page.  My head is dizzy again, but I still sing praises because my soul is set free.  Paul, in seven chapters of Romans, reaches a painfully acute dilemma.  "Wretched man that I am!  Who will set me free from the body of this death?"  His words scream.  I hear a pause before his next hushed sentence:  "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"  Chapter eight is victory.  It is relief from the migraine.  It is ice on the back of Paul's head, peppermint on the temples, Excedrin taking effect, eyes wide open toward the light.  It is life, and the life is the light of the world.

We breathe.  We pulse.  We regenerate.  

"Bring my soul out of prison, So that I may give thanks to Thy name; The righteous will surround me, For Thou wilt deal bountifully with me." ~Psalm 142 

Comic Unawares

If I were a joke, I wouldn't be an elegant, dinner conversation remark that causes sophisticated people to smile smugly in acknowledgement of the witty banter.  I would be the kind of in-your-face punch line that makes five year olds giggle in church during the pastoral prayer.

Today I walked in to town via my normal jaywalking route past street lights.  There is a Starbucks being built, to go with the quiet restaurants and business offices that line this little shopping center.  Lost in my thoughts, and growing rather warm in the sun, I thought at first the noise I heard was accidental.  Then I heard it again: a breathy, feeble, distant kind of whistle.  It is a man.  It is a man building a place where pretentious upper class people will get their daily dose of caffeine and have business meetings with prospective interns, and where poor college students will splurge during finals weeks in order to study off campus for a few hours/days.  This man, busy in his important work, was taking a break to acknowledge my existence, however briefly, in his world.  And he was doing it poorly.  Perhaps his lips were dry, or he didn't know how to whistle very well, or he was trying too hard.  Whatever the case, the noise was almost unnoticeable. 

I walked on.  Ignoring the compliment, I realized all too late the opportunities I had missed.  I could have thanked the young man for the compliment but explained how his notice of my physical attractiveness actually  does my overall personhood no favors.  I could have looked confused before asking in a surprised, bemused way if he was trying to whistle.  I could have waved and given him the number of the local Jimmy John's.  I could have shown him how to whistle.

I was given the cue for a joke, and I never picked it up.  How often does that happen in my life, and I never notice?

Today I crouched low over a bridge covered by excrement in order to take pictures of ducks that wanted Saltines.  I got drooled on while sunbathing by an enormous dog who still has weight to gain before adulthood.  I cried over a dying horse in a children's book, and briefly considered whom from my college years I would invite to my wedding, were there such a thing.  I bought bananas, grapes, peanut butter, and Saltines from Harris Teeter and traipsed them across a parking lot, four lanes of traffic, and a small college campus.  I got impatient waiting for my bananas to freeze and made a peanut butter banana split smoothie without peanut butter on accident.  I cleaned the blender twice because peanut butter is important.

On a daily basis, I sleep with a fuzzy green Seuss bird that I named Leroy.  I write "I like my men like I like my __" jokes in a little notebook.  I break out in songs that I don't know the words to, and end up mumbling or humming most of the way.  Sometimes I give up entirely on words and sing songs in solfege.  I take every possible opportunity to make a pun, and sometimes laugh at puns that people make accidentally.

My whole being is unintentionally comical, and in the typical fashion of a comic straight man, I am unaware of it.  I wrote a status today about the whistling man, because I thought it was funny, then half an hour later deleted it because I was suddenly concerned that it sounded like I was bragging about someone whistling at me.  Gross.  I found a bowl of watermelon rinds that I hid from my roommate, because I wanted to feed them to the chickens instead of letting her throw them away.  I threw them away, because they've been hidden for three days and I gave up.

Here is where I fail too often, in refusing to accept awkward situations as Divine gifts.  All too often God sets me up perfectly for a great joke and I just leave His cue in the grass, where it sits until it gets stale and I can't use it anymore.  In this stand-up comedy relationship with God, I am the straight man who is laughed at because of her very unwillingness to get the joke.  The fact that God wastes so many hilarious situations on me is clear evidence of His love for me.  My cup overflows.

Placing the Counted

I can usually tell when I'm getting a migraine.  Some of them come quickly, but usually mine are slow in advancing.  A morning of sleepy daze slowly wakes up to an ache in my neck and behind my eyes by afternoon, and evening brings worsening aversion to light and sound.  A smell may also bring a migraine faster.  By an early bedtime my eyes hide from the lit lamps and I flee (very slowly and stiffly) to my bedroom in a vain attempt to shut out the world.

It was on such a night not long ago that I mused silently about the hypersensitivity of a migraine.  Curious, how lifelike it is.

Bitterness works the same way, doesn't it?  The same way, in fact, as gratitude.  They both count moments.  As I lay in bed that night I heard clearly each whisper, cough, sneeze, cleared throat, creaking door, kitten's thump.  I could list each grievance with poetic accuracy while holding my dully throbbing temples in an attempt to still the pulsing annoyance, to no avail.  Life was whirling dizzily around me as I lay in the dark, but all I could feel was the nausea of light and sound.  My moments of grace escaping without thanks~because my eyes couldn't see them?  No.  Because my soul refused them.  

It's not just food that you refuse when you're in pain~it's the every moment.  The treasure is no less valuable when I refuse to give thanks for it.  When, in fact, I prefer refusing it altogether.  The complaints can be counted as minutely as blessings, and always more naturally, because my heart is always deceptive.  The Old Sin in me hides my eyes as effectively as a headache.  I shield myself from grace, because who can handle its blinding light with such a throbbing behind their eyes?  

Then here is Jesus to gently open my eyes and take the disappointed bitterness from me.  Isn't that the beauty from ashes redemption of a broken world, that He promised so long ago?  Always new mercies, even when I refuse to open my eyes.

Oh, to have numbered my complaints that night with my blessings.  To have given thanks in all things and grasped the every moment grace with both hands, freely taking and giving of the blessing surrounding me, for such is Christ.  To let go of the acrid soul and reach for the better things. 

718. brother fighting sickness hard

719. closeness of bedrooms

720. sound of yawns across hallways

721. show tunes whispered nearby

722. dog asleep noisily at foot of bed

I can usually tell when I'm growing bitter.  Sometimes it comes quickly, but usually it is slow in advancing.  I guess the difference comes in where I put my counted moments.

Chocolate Chip Expectations

I bit into a chocolate chip cookie today that had no chocolate chips.  I did not realize it at first.  I thought there would be at least one, somewhere, if I kept looking.  But no, no chocolate to be found.  Just cookie.  The cookie tasted good, of course, and had it been called a "Chipless Cookie," or "Vanilla Bread Cookie," or...something, I would doubtless have enjoyed it.  However, I put it on my plate with the expectation of chocolate chips, and was therefore disappointed.

Sometimes life is like that.  I was given the impression that my life would be different now--that I would be confident in my direction, or have an entirely different purpose.  Life is still good, but not what I expected.  It was sold me under a false idea.  Certain relationships were supposed to be wonderful, but ended up being forced and unnatural.  Classes that I looked forward to ended up being ugly. People I expect to like are disagreeable.  Life at home may not be as sweet as I hope.  All the time the world sets up expectations for us without following through, and all the time we let ourselves put hope on things that may not come true.

As a child, I was given some very profound insight: "When you give a mouse a cookie," explained the author, helpfully, "he's going to want some milk to go with it."  How odd to realize, all these years later, that the author was actually being satirical!  Mice.  We are mice, my friends, who have been given cookies.  Never really satisfied with what we have, always expecting a little more than we have been given, always returning, in the end, to the cookie.

For some reason, we like to think God owes us things.  As if we earned something better than He gives us.  As if Grace is only what we want, not the every moment He gives us.  As if grace upon grace is only figurative for the times we have everything we want.  God has given me life, and I complain that He hasn't given me my chocolate chips.

God hasn't promised us the chocolate chips.  But He did give us cookies.  And more often than not, out of His abundant lovingkindness, He even gives us milk to go with it.

I munch the next cookie, contentedly.  I have found chocolate once again, and this coffee is delicious.

Seventeen Syllables

Whole stories to tell,

And seventeen syllables

Are more than I need.

When it comes to communication, I lack brevity.  A sentence, were I able to form it, might say as much as three of my paragraphs.  It is this concise writing quality that I find myself practicing when I scribble in my book of counted blessings.  With only three inches to ramble, I have to say what I mean immediately.  Yesterday, considering this, my eye fell on some old Chopin preludes.

317. delicate notes their own language

A single line of small letters can contain a great deal, I thought.  Inspiration seized me.

These delicate notes

Like their very only language

Music on a page.

There is something refreshingly simple and sweet about a form of poetry as short as the haiku.  I write more.

319. nearly ten years of life in pages

A row of journals,

Ten years of life on pages,

Looks into my past.

320. poetry spilling

Counting my blessings

A door into stronger life

Poetry spilling.

Like oil from the widow's jars, poetry spills out of thanksgiving.  Out of blessing.  Out of the grace I choose to behold.  I look at Miriam, after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea on dry ground--or at Hannah when Samuel was born.  I listen to how Mary sang of her promised child.

My own poetry is humble, imitating the short lines of my 3x4 notebook.

"Jesus wept," it says,

Sadness of the Son of God.

Two words, much meaning.

Whole stories can be known in three short lines.  If I want to write to touch lives, perhaps I must first learn to thank, fully.  If I want to write to touch lives, perhaps I must first learn to put my own life into three verses.  Seventeen syllables may be just short enough to do it properly.

Thanksgiving calls forth

Words from my pen to sparkle

Grateful, the heart sings.

While the Coffee Brews

The last thing I want to do when I am angry is be thankful.  Today, breathing flames, I sat down at the table and opened a small Mickey Mouse notebook, less than the width of my hand, and resolutely wrote, "freckles on a nose," next to the circled number 83.

It was hot.  The day was long.  There had been too many days of too little to be done.  This particular brother and I were beginning not to see eye to eye, and we finally had it out about the vacuuming that was not being accomplished.  I cleaned (because that's what I do when upset) while he finished his task, and when I was sure I was of clear mind, I assigned the extra work that he would not want to do.  He collected the eggs that I required, then ran upstairs to put off the rest of the chore.  I began brewing a pot of afternoon coffee, then sat at the kitchen table with my miniature notebook and one of my favorite pens. 

84. a mind of his own

85. grace to extend

86. temper as red as mine

With those numbered lines came memories of a fiery redheaded girl who, like one young brother years later, said things in hot haste and fought long the imagined injustice of her world.  The coffee maker gurgled peacefully.

87. quiet to soften heart

88. coffee as black as ever

89. memories of my own childish temper

The silence of a summer afternoon fell around me.  I got mugs off the shelf.  I called up the stairs to the boys that I had coffee done, warning them not to bounce too hard off the walls when they drank it.  The first thing that my brother said as he walked into the kitchen?

"I'm sorry I was a grouch to you again."

I told the boys my story about not wanting to do a task, about the temper of a ginger child when she thought she was wronged.  We understood each other.  The tension was gone.

Then one boy used a quarter cup of honey in his coffee and moved extraordinarily fast, the other drank his entire mug before I sat down and said his eyes couldn't focus on anything, and we all three laughed very hard.  I continued to sit at the table after they left.

97. relationship restored until next time

98. coffee hastily swallowed

99. caffeinated young brothers

Redemption doesn't just happen once.  Sometimes, it seems like nothing I do or say is right.  That most of my words in relationships are apologies.  But redemption in relationship is grace upon grace.  Thank God for redemption.  For reconciliation between brother and sister.  For all the emotions of relationship, happening while the coffee brews.

Blessed, and Laughing

I laugh a lot. I worry sometimes that it's annoying, but somewhere along the way I decided that if something is actually laughable (and so many things are), I should be able to laugh at it unrestrictedly.  One of my brothers pointed out once that he could tell me outright that I laugh at everything, and that I would react by laughing.  I laughed before I could stop myself.  
Right now, you may start laughing about how you have read the word "laugh" so much in these opening sentences, that it doesn't even look right anymore.  You should definitely laugh at the way you have to google words like "laugh" sometimes, just to make sure they exist.  But back to my point.  I laughed a lot before last summer, but a year ago when I read about counting blessings, I began to laugh even more.  When I started to see how surrounded by blessings I was, my joy became fervent.

Blessed.

Ah, what a scrumptious word.  It is, in fact, a word that reminds me of the word "scrumptious."  Blessed is like...a cake.  A gooey cake with warm filling that melts deliciously over your tongue.  It's a different kind of word than "Grace," which is a delicate, beautiful, strong word, hard as iron and soft as a cloud--the meeting of all the Christian extremes that Chesterton has told me so much about in the past two years.  "Blessed" is a word you can bite into.  But they are often much the same kind of thing.

Blessings are like comfort foods, and toast with honey, and a cat sleeping on your lap, and sitting around a fire with friends, and watching both Sherlock Holmes movies with your mom when the boys are all away.

I was back at school last fall, and it had not been a good week.  As I trudged to class, I gave myself a talking to, and concluded by saying sternly to my newly repentant self, "You need to be grateful for what you have.  Look around you."  I looked up to the building I was passing, where funky architectural decisions had been made many years ago.  I pronounced my sentence upon the building firmly:

"Thank you Lord, for triangles in windows."

And, I kid you not, I couldn't help the smile that followed.  

Sometimes, we ask the Lord for good feelings, and joy, and peace, but we don't act like we really want them.  And sometimes, when we just put our feet down and refuse to be dragged into the piteous and miserable, but insist upon gratitude, the joy is certain.  

Blessings are like summer evenings on the front porch, and Red-Winged Blackbirds whistling, and a happy young brother looking like a lost boy in surely the worst clothing he could find in his closet, and a dog that always waits for you to come back home, and old reruns of Adventures in Odyssey while the flower beds get mulched.

The blessing is always there, waiting to be seen.  And I guess that's when you know what you really are.

Blessed.