how the colors come together: grieving & celebrating the emptying nest

Posted on by March 8, 2024

The fog left its mark in hoarfrost on the trees along the Parks Highway, and we drove home from church with all eight of us in the vehicle. It was the last time I would sit crammed between two 6-foot-something men in the front seat of the Stagecoach; one of them has moved out and is on his own now.

how the colors come together: grieving & celebrating the emptying nest

I gave him the quilt I’d been working on for months, often right in front of him while he was oblivious because almost-18-year-old boys don’t pay attention to their mother’s crafty shenanigans. Two nights before, Iree and I spent several hours finishing it and the seams had “significant wonk,” meaning they veered and shifted in ways I didn’t intend them to because I’m still new at this and don’t know what I’m doing and it is hard to wrestle these giant things through a small short-armed machine.

As soon as Afton’s room was empty, Cham moved into it. We’ve started to fill her vacated area – which was his space not long ago, before last year’s rearrangement – with a table for spring seedlings and about 200 books that he didn’t want to take with him. There’s still room for the sewing machine, and once the space is filled and echo-less, I’ll be recording audio in there, too. So we have plans, just like he does, and plans are good.

I spent one evening shelving all the books in the new space and sorting through what to keep and what to get rid of: Nineteen books by Patrick F. McManus. Also, the ones on blacksmithing and leatherworking from those phases, and the manuals on knifemaking from that phase. And the first copy of the bread book he learned artisan bakery from – the one we have two copies of, because he used the original until the spine broke and pages fell out from his blissfully long but sadly abandoned passion for breadmaking, when we all learned terms like poolish, pan de mie, and bâtard.

On the day he moved I was fine until that night, making dinner in the kitchen, and suddenly felt the gentle wrench of his absence. Some of his things were missing because he’d taken them, and others of his were still there, discarded because he didn’t want them anymore. I searched the cabinet for a jar and found his collection of cheesecloth from the cheesemaking phase.

He won’t be back for dinner tonight, I realized. Not that he’s been eating with us; he’s been raiding the kitchen late at night when he gets home from work. He’d ask, “What’d you guys have for dinner?” and, depending on whether or not he liked the answer, he’d respond with “Is there any left?” or bored dismissal, and make his own thing.

And that song was playing again – the same one Iree played all last year before she moved, the anthem of the hatch. But this time it wasn’t her, it was the station playing Einaudi like it knows the soundtrack of our home.

I thought to myself that day, Oh, this is easy, I must’ve done all my grieving last summer when he left for fish camp, because I didn’t even feel like crying, all day I was fine. But then it was dinnertime in the kitchen that was so often his wheelhouse, and I still wasn’t crying, but now I knew for sure it would come later.

The song was finishing and I sat on the couch and filled three scraps of paper with grief, tearing sheets from the pad as I went, surprised at how many words and feelings were still pouring out.

I started this quilt not knowing what I was doing, just following the process, just trying to make something beautiful out of the materials on hand. Some of the fabric was good and new, some was old and recycled – pieces of one of Vin’s shirts, some old sheets, other scraps salvaged from an abandoned project. I was just running the machine, just doing the next thing I knew to do to patch things together, snipping ends and threads that stuck out in the wrong places, making pieces line up, and when they went wonky, I’d go back and seam rip and make them square again.

I got so frustrated with all the ironing because it felt like it was such an interruption to forward momentum – stop what you’re doing, iron these panels. Stop again and iron these other pieces. It wasn’t just to smooth things over, though; I realized at the end when I flipped the whole thing over that when you iron seams open, it covers a multitude of wonkiness and uneven lines. The areas I thought might go astray and slant off to an angle looked fine.

I was afraid it would be ruined, or ugly, or a disaster, but it was fine. Beautiful, even.

He smiled when I gave it to him and seemed to know what kind of gift it was.

Here, I made this for you. I hope you like it. I hope you don’t notice or mind all the flaws; I know it’s not perfect. I worked hard on it, but could have done better. I wonder if you’ll look at it more closely later and recognize some of these pieces, and realize where they came from.

We leave our marks on each other just by proximity and relation, and sometimes they are uneven lines and empty spaces we don’t know what to do with. Sometimes when we move away we do whatever we can to rub those marks out for a while, as though they’ve taken up space without our permission and we want to see what’s underneath without their influence.

Here, this is part of me, take it – and we pluck the feathers from ourselves, and thrust them onto our young men and women as they take their own flights, hoping they won’t cast our affection to the wind.

I paused, tore another sheet from the notepad, looked at all the words. Folded the papers in half, stared at the highway traffic out the dark window, the headlights going north and south.

Unfolded the paper, flipped it over, and kept going.

We miss their presence when they leave. But also, as they’ve been longing to leave – which we remember and relate to and rejoice in with them – we realize that we’ve already been missing them because part of them has been gone for a long time. They’ve changed and emotionally moved on already in many ways. The grief has been sneaking up on us, slipping in and surprising us at random intervals for over a year now.

This is not summer camp, or youth overnight, or fish camp. This is launching. And he’ll be back, I know he will; there will be dinners and barbecues and birthdays and it will be better. We’ve done this twice before and we know there’s a stretching distance for a while before the elastic springs back and things reach a new equilibrium. And it will be good. Really, really good.

But it won’t be the same. And that’s the thing we grieve most: It will never be the same. We cannot get that time back. The binding is on, the quilt is finished, there’s no time left for seam ripping and rearranging colors and redoing those panels.

Jesus redeems and leads and saves, and Holy Spirit continues doing the work we can’t, couldn’t, or didn’t. But still, we want to do better and wish we had done better — and I think this is the sign of a good parent, rather than one who’s perfectly satisfied with every aspect of their parenting and confident they’ve made no mistakes — and I’m grateful to still have little and younger ones to keep doing better with.

But it’s not over with the older ones, because we have new time that’s different from before. This time looks like broad, new conversations, and tentative efforts to bring buried things into the open, and a willingness to let spaces stay empty that aren’t ready to be filled. It looks like hilarious confessions and new levels of respect in both directions, and inside jokes filled with a vocabulary that only our family knows. It looks like mutual appreciation and recognition and repentance, and a whole different level of starting again.

Here, this is yours. I love the way some of these colors come together, and I regret not trying harder to make even lines in some of these places. But I hope you love it. I hope it keeps you warm, I hope you remember your mother and your family and your childhood and where you came from…with warmth, and fondness, and gratitude. I hope you know you are so loved.

It might be a while before they realize they didn’t notice all the things we did right in front of them, trying to make something beautiful out of the materials we had on hand.

It was so imperfect. There was significant wonk and things veered and shifted in ways we didn’t intend them to because we were learning and didn’t always know what we were doing. It is hard to wrestle these giant, complex souls to adulthood and keep our lines even.

But it was good, and warm, and filled with pieces of ourselves as the colors came together, and that is even better.

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dying into life: what will be well is even now well

Posted on by February 22, 2024

A gloomy, grey, windy day. It’s finally warm and that’s the silver lining; at forty degrees, we are eighty degrees higher than a few weeks ago when we had the coldest cold snap I’ve ever known. The water melting off the roof flies sideways in the wind, and soon there will be hopeful patches of bare ground, but not today.

It was one of those weeks; the grey bleakness seemed a little in-your-face as it collided with exhaustion and PMS and the loss of three birds in one day. All the noises were louder and I was overstimulated and hypersensitive, on edge over little things like the grating sound of rattling tin foil, the shrieking of a kid, and the frustration of not being able to finish a task. But it was big things, too, like medical situations with two sons, and the transition of another son moving out. And the ache all over.

dying into life: what will be well is even now well

The best prescription is to go to bed early. That sounds simple but what it really means is take vitamins, check on boys, turn Kav around so he doesn’t roll off his bed, spray the couch with pet deterrent, brush and floss teeth, and finally go to the shower to have a good cry.

The next day was better, and this is how it often goes, these slumps: downward frustration, level out in rest, rise upward again. It was still windy, though; the ravens lifted at odd angles, caught themselves on extended wings, and drifted back down. Another gust and they did it again, choreography above the highway. Their fight with the wind makes the storm visible.

We were forecasted to get a big storm but it must’ve stalled out because the highest gusts were overnight and even then the stovepipe wasn’t as shrill as normal. And that’s encouraging, because it’s a picture of figurative storms, too – situations often seem dire but end up petering out into a threat that was just used to prepare and strengthen you.

Which brings me to our latest medical drama.

We saw a surgeon this week about Andrey’s cyst; he said a lot of unhelpful and unhopeful things about future needs, current dilemmas, and the catch-22 of money solving everything if only we were billionaires. But since we aren’t, things are “difficult,” and apparently not being a billionaire is called a “social problem” in condescending doctor-speak. In real English though, three front teeth will need to go and bone mass is missing; something about food moving into the nasal cavity if things aren’t reconstructed fully. Seattle was repeatedly mentioned. And even though the latest CT scan shows no change to the area in the last few months (an answer to prayer), the surgeon said “the situation has changed” – meaning, last fall he thought we could easily take care of this in Alaska, and now he realizes he was wrong but doesn’t want to say so.

“I don’t know if you’re able to consider liquidating some resources…” he says. “Of course you want to do what’s right for him.” As though we need a pep talk to make the right choices, and also as though we don’t have other children who need a roof over their heads and food to eat. We need to do what’s right for them, also, and this young doctor doesn’t understand the legalities of guardianship or the fact that Andrey’s medical expenses are no longer in our financial jurisdiction. He doesn’t know we’ve emptied our accounts for this kid before; it’s how we started this process. And he has no idea we drive a 25-year-old vehicle. My bag of tricks is running pretty low right now.

“Have we to die again?” I asked.

“No,” he answered, with a smile like the Mother’s; “you have died into life, and will die no more; you have only to keep dead. Once dying as we die here, all the dying is over. Now you have only to live, and that you must, with all your blessed might. The more you live, the stronger you become to live.”

– George MacDonald, Lilith

And I think we must be growing stronger, because it’s a battle to keep the wind at bay when it’s trying to fly right in your face, flinging words of weighty responsibility that aren’t ours to really be concerned about. The storm may turn out to be nothing. And the storm isn’t the end-all-be-all anyway, although the enemy wants us to think so. The storm answers to the same God we do – the difference is that God gave us authority to speak to the wind and waves like He did.

For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

– Galatians 2:19-20

The more we live, the more we understand that the storm doesn’t command us. We command it.

Which doesn’t mean we don’t (or shouldn’t) grieve as we face it, because oh, the wind is terrible sometimes. Parenting can rip you wide open, and whether it’s done badly or done well, it leads to pain. The only safe place is in the lukewarm middle where nothing matters because you willfully hold yourself back, refusing to let grief touch you, and I’ve been tempted there before. But that’s not trusting God or dying to self; that’s protecting yourself while everything dies around you. And that protection is a lie that leads to the wrong kind of death.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”

– Matthew 16:24-26

How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

– Romans 6:2b-4

So there are two kinds of pain, just as there are two kinds of death – one side is fruitful and leads to healing and restoration and life, and the other is pointless, just leading to more pain and death.

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

– 2 Corinthians 7:10

Over the last week I’ve grieved over a dead chicken, a distant child, and my own selfishness and imperfections. We grieve our inability to be all things to all people. We grieve the lost time and gained absence and the increasing gap between things that should be close instead of far apart.

But just because a situation is not what it should be doesn’t mean it won’t be what it ought to be later – either in the near future, or on the other side. And this is what God keeps reminding me.

“I told you, brother, all would be well!—When next you would comfort, say, ‘What will be well, is even now well.’”

– George MacDonald, Lilith

What will be well, is even now well. That doesn’t mean the pain or sickness or wrongdoing or sin was God’s will. It means He makes all things new.

So we don’t need to protect ourselves from the grief or the storm, because we get to command in the middle of it – and sometimes what we need to command is ourselves, and remember it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. We are keeping dead, staying low, so we can live with all our blessed might. We have not lost our lives, but found them.

“But shall I not grow weary with living so strong?” I said. “What if I cease to live with all my might?”

“It needs but the will, and the strength is there!” said the Mother. “Pure life has no weakness to grow weary withal. The Life keeps generating ours.—Those who will not die, die many times, die constantly, keep dying deeper, never have done dying; here all is upwardness and love and gladness.”

– George MacDonald, Lilith

I feel that will, commanding it when an enthusiastic little guy hugs me but also inadvertently pulls my hair, and again when the huge blond tabby wants to cuddle but his claws drive through my jeans. Pain all over, amplified, but the strength is there, and so is love and gladness.

Celebration and grief mingle confusedly amid these new phases and stages, and fear threads its way into the unfamiliar. But we live dead and have done with dying, and I remind myself that all is upward from here.

Soon there will be hopeful patches of bare ground, and green life sprouting. New chicks peeping.

We’ve made it through the hardest part of winter, through the cold snap, through the grief and the storm. We’ve seen past the unhelpful and unhopeful things into the truth beyond, that all that will be well is even now well. Some things still hurt, they still matter, many of them still should’ve been different, but it will be well because God is redeeming all things, so even now it is well with my soul.

I don’t know: confronting confusion with equanimity (and satire)

Posted on by February 1, 2024

Our seventh attempt to get through to a hotline. You are number 120 in queue, your wait time is 45 minutes.

Thirty minutes later: You are number 97 in queue, your wait time is one hour and twenty-eight minutes. Wait, what?

Almost two hours later: A noise that sounds like someone picking up the phone to answer. And maybe they did, but we’ll never know, because the call was disconnected.

[OH EXPLETIVE]

I don't know: confronting confusion with equanimity (and satire)

Have I complained about government paperwork enough already? Too bad, here we go.

If you’ve never heard of it before, let me introduce you to the concept of the “Circumlocution Office.” You’ve probably experienced it many times, just not by that name.

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office.

– Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

The Circumlocution Office is where All Things Bureaucracy and Paperwork go to die. But they don’t just die – they relocate, then circumvent, then redirect, then dawdle sluggishly toward some oozey pit of phone lines, paper-stuffed cabinets, and stale TicTacs in a room like a giant coffin with apathetic lighting until all papers within have disintegrated from the erosion of procrastination.

Thanks to the guardianship process for two of our kids, we are in the middle of applying for multiple programs for both of them. (This is required, not optional, don’t even get me started.) I’ve mentioned before that paperwork and administrative duties are my hate language – as opposed to actual love languages like coffee, memes, and good sushi – and the process of navigating this system has challenged all my efforts toward healthy self-medicating, including prayer, staying up too late reading, and a slightly addictive obsession with Sudoku.

If you’re not familiar with Sudoku, the instructions are precise: Every row, column, and square must have only one of each number (or in our case, color). Even at the higher levels, it’s hard but not confusing. When you feel stuck there’s always a solution if you consider it long enough. The rules are simple and they don’t change.

In spite of being in the guardianship process for over a year, we have yet to find a single corner of this arena where experts agree on how the process is completed, and none of it has been streamlined for ease and efficiency.

It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

– Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

Enter Paperwork Saga, round two: Day of Phone Calls.

Paperwork requires phone calls because applications and government websites are designed by mystical regulatory leprechauns in such a way as to give you only a third of the information you need to fill them out. The rest is a riddle of precision guesswork spiked with threats of legal retribution if you forget to cross a T or you accidentally double dot an I.

It turns out though, there are some wonderful people whom you can call. Most of them admit the system is a mess, and none of them actually work for the government.

Unfortunately, none of them know the same things. For example, I have asked approximately fourteen people if we could apply for a particular requirement for our kids before they turned eighteen, and every answer without fail has been “I don’t know” until one person finally said, “Oh, absolutely. In fact, it takes about a year for it to go through. So you should’ve applied a year ago.”

*headdesk, headdesk*

But here’s what I’m learning: Most of the things we dread are not as bad or hard as they seem. And when they are, you get writing material out of it. (Also, the extraneous forms and duplicate paperwork can usually be composted as bedding in the chicken coop.)

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen…Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.

– Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

One government website says “You can try applying online.” (Try? Try? Like it’s one of those ball-throwing games at the State Fair?) The instructions continue with this disclaimer: “Depending on your situation, it may be hard or it may be easy.” Um. Greeeat. Turns out, if the website craps out in the first thirty seconds every time you try filling out the forms, it’s definitely hard.

Two people told me, “Call this office. They will definitely be able to help you get this waiver.” They had to tell me repeatedly because, at this point, you can see how skeptical I am of anyone’s surefire solution. But I finally called the office and left a message. The following week, I heard back.

“No, sorry,” the guy said, “we only do this waiver, and you need this other waiver. There are actually five different waivers,” he admitted, “and I know it’s really confusing. But you need to call this office, in Anchorage.”

How are we supposed to get anywhere when even the professionals who are supposed to guide you through this don’t know what they’re doing because the system is so bloated?

…The Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it…

– Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

After that blunder, someone assured me, “You can call this number for help, these people definitely know what they’re doing, they do this for a living.” Thereupon I called the number and an answering machine picked up; it said they may (What? May?) return my call within ten business days.

But hey, to their credit, they called two days later and got my voicemail. It was a woman whose first language was definitely not English, and her message directed me to the same website that was unnavigable in the first place.

Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office…Boards sat upon them, secretaries minuted upon them, commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered, entered, checked, and ticked them off, and they melted away. In short, all the business of the country went through the Circumlocution Office, except the business that never came out of it; and its name was Legion.

– Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

Among the many things we don’t know about this process is that all these people (the ones we’ve dealt with, at least) are actually kind, respectful, and encouraging. Maybe I was prepared for otherwise after two years of officials behaving like Gestapo who wouldn’t even respect a person’s right to breathe freely. (Those protocols really brought out the worst in humanity, didn’t they?)

Had they used their faces, not for communication, not to utter thought and feeling, not to share existence with their neighbors, but to appear what they wished to appear, and conceal what they were? And, having made their faces masks, were they therefore deprived of those masks, and condemned to go without faces until they repented?

– George MacDonald, Lilith

The difference is that during the plandemic, those officials demanded that you wear a mask, too, and they turned into freakish banshees if you refused – and ironically, instead of covering ugliness, their masks revealed what was really inside and made them more hideous than ever.

“How long must they flaunt their facelessness in faceless eyes?” I wondered. “How long will the frightful punition endure? Have they at length begun to love and be wise? Have they yet yielded to the shame that has found them?”

– George MacDonald, Lilith

But it seems like most professionals have come back to just being decent people, truly trying to help. And we need help, because the system is a convoluted mess.

It’s such an intimidating process. Court documents flooding my inbox, meetings with lawyers, interviews with court visitors. It all seems very official – and it is – but it’s also very human. And maybe this is a secret, but the formality is a cover for an extremely informal, fluid process. It, too, is just a mask.

We want to walk through the process correctly. The problem is that there’s no correct way to do it, and all the experts tell you something different (unless it’s “I don’t know,” which is alarmingly consistent).

And honestly, I would rather hear “I don’t know” than a bunch of misleading information. So this is a good step – a cultural willingness to admit humility, to let go of pride and ego, to acknowledge we’re all in this together, needing answers. How else do we make sense of the things that don’t?

Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

– Titus 3:1-3

Of course, cooperating with a system isn’t the same as capitulating or conforming to that system, just as being “submissive to rulers and authorities” isn’t the same as sucumbing to tyranny. So we work the problem in front of us, sitting in the discomfort of not having immediate solutions. The answers are there, regardless of how ambiguous they look right now. Time will either bring the solutions to the surface, or they just won’t matter because we will have bigger things to deal with.

What I’ve really needed to hear from someone is, “Yes, it’s a mess. Yes, it’s confusing. You’re doing fine.” And praise God, the Lord brought someone who said that very thing, and it was such a comfort. (She still didn’t know how to file for SSI…but I digress).

So friend, if you are walking through something hard and complicated, and there are no clear answers and lots of confusing directions, let me tell you: Yes, it’s a mess. The world is a cleanup operation, and these are confusing times. We don’t have all the answers but Jesus does, and we have the mind of Christ so we are able to discover Kingdom solutions. We can wait for the revelation while we sit in the mystery. You’re trying and waiting and trusting? You‘re doing fine.

There’s another number sitting on my list that I’ve been referred to multiple times. Overcoming my jadedness, I finally call and a woman with a smoker’s voice answers.

“You have access to the internet?” she asks, and directs me to a website with a big yellow button to apply.

Short form, easy. Now I feel reckless and brave, and ask if she can help me navigate this other arena.

“Yep, that’s the Something-something-aging-something office. Their number is –”

“Wait, that’s the office I need?”

“Yep. Their number is…” and she gives me a local number with real people who live here in Alaska and actually answer questions.

Miracles abound.

I called the lady and she was so nice. The person with all the knowledge and resources and answers will call us next week and help us through the whole process, she said.

“Of course, you don’t have to go through our office, we’re just here to support you. You can go directly to the federal government website if you want.” And it was all I could do to not scream, No! I need you, please don’t leave me! (Of course, she hasn’t called me back yet, and it’s been over a week. So I guess that’s on my to-do list again tomorrow.)

But something that keeps recurring to me is that many of these things that seem like such a big deal – so time consuming, such hassles – end up being nothing in the long run. I don’t just mean that in perspective they are small, but that they often just dissolve into nothingburgers, distractions that just took up too much brain space when we could’ve been cultivating peace and productivity elsewhere.

The Spirit reveals what we need to know when we abide. And often we don’t need the answers as soon as we think we do, so resting in the mystery of His timing is an exercise in growing in trust and equanimity. It’s easy to slip into intimidation and pressure, but taking a step back means we won’t allow the enemy to magnify that stress in or around us.

Instead, we can counter that stress and confusion with prayer, compassion, Sudoku, and mockery of inept government systems as we expose the mask and move toward a more transparent, healthy, and secure culture. We will try and wait and trust. My big situations, your big situations – will they even matter in the big picture? I don’t know; it’s a mess out there. But you’re doing great.

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