The alarm is going off at 5:30 a.m.  I am quietly trying to wriggle free from my sheets, slip out of the room before my 15-month old roommate hears my rustling and wakes.  I sleepily pad into the kitchen and prepare my coffee.  Steam rises from my mug and I am trying to wake my body, my soul so that I can hear life and promises to carry me through my day.  Thirty minutes in, I hear my little one stirring.  His growls begin as his eyes adjust and he sees the picture of the lion above his bed.  I lay my head back on the sofa, clutch my mug tightly, and sigh.  Thirty minutes does not seem like enough time of communion to last through the day…

There’s always enough.

The day unfolds with deadlines, reports to be written, people to be seen, tested, counseled.  Eight hours of thinking of harm reduction techniques, HIV services improvement and community outreach.  By 4:30, I’m racing out the door, power walking the two miles to pick up my son so that I get in my 30 minutes of cardio.

The evening brings tickling, laughing, chasing, dinner, bathtime.  My other roommate comes home.  My 82-year-old neighbor comes down.  I pull up chairs in the hallway outside the bathroom.  The three of us talk while my son splashes exuberantly in the tub.  We drink wine and eat cheese, crackers and hummus.

There’s always enough.

After my little one has been brushed, cleaned, and cuddled, he gives his kisses and goes to bed.  The three of us make dinner and catch up; listening to humdrum stories from the day…an irritated boss, a strange call, a husband at the nursing home who still cannot communicate with words, but always perks up when the young, pretty nurse comes in.  Soon, leftovers are packed and sent upstairs with my neighbor.

There’s always enough.

After the kitchen is cleaned and the toys are picked up, I look at the clock and see that it is 8:00 p.m.  I marvel that 15 hours have gone by since I last had a moment to stop and be still.

I’m reminded of when Jesus heard that his cousin, John the Baptist, was murdered.  Jesus was trying to get away to a lonely place to rest and to grieve, but the crowds kept following, begging, demanding, needing.  And his friends said, “They are hungry.  Send them away so they can find food.”  And Jesus replied, “You give them something to eat.”  And they answered, “We do not have enough to feed them.”  And Jesus showed them that they did indeed have enough.  He took what they had, multiplied it, and after everyone in the crowd (around 5,000 men) had eaten, there remained 12 baskets full of food.

How often do I feel that way?  Someone is tugging on my hem, another is knocking at my door, and my spirit grumbles, “Send them away.  I do not have enough to feed them.  Let me rest.”  And He says, “Take what you have and feed them.”

And when I do, there remains.

There is always enough.

Photo by Brooke Huskey

To write bravely…

To enlarge the place of my dwelling…

To savor each moment…

To take risks…

And to forgive and be forgiven…

What about you?

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,600 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The morning the contractions started, the man whose sperm met my egg on a cold morning in December walked with me for over 6 miles.  Meandering through the Emerald Necklace, reading aloud from Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, we laughed and dreamed and reminded the other to be brave.

Dusk brought more silence, more focus, and more pain.  I paced and moaned.  My baby’s spine grinded against my own as he eased down into the birth canal.  His father pushed on my back with enough force to break bricks.  My mother kept time.

We knew it was a boy; a son.  Jude August George Payne would be his name.  Two middle names because his Daddy wanted something with cadence when announced at graduations, after book titles, in newspaper articles, and as head-of-state.  We kept his name a secret, but I whispered it over and over under my breath as my body writhed.  Finally, my mother signaled that we needed to leave for the hospital.

Once we arrived, I immediately stepped out of my clothes and into the shower.   My arms, free from tubes holding drugs, pressed against the cold tiles.  Scalding water poured down over my swollen breasts and protruding uterus.  My skin burned bright red.  The steam enveloped me.   The soon-to-be Daddy stood, fully clothed, inside the shower with me.  His tired eyes closed.  His head leaned against the door.

An hour passed and the nurse told me it was time.  Time for what?

Time for unquantifiable and unimaginable pain to course through my entire body.

Time to experience more vulnerability than I have ever felt in my life.

Time to fully embrace my rite of passage into the mystery and essence of womanhood.

“I can’t do it,” I screamed.  I was standing on the bed.  “I have to get out of here.  Saw my body in half!  Let me leave!”*

I was quickly brought back down to my hands and knees by an animalistic desire to push.  “You can do this,” the almost-Daddy whispered.  “He’s almost here.  I can see the top of his head.  He has beautiful hair.”

I had to cross over to another planet to make him come; a planet void of inhibitions, glamour and time.  There was no past or future.  Only the moment, the actual second, the millisecond…breathing in and out of every contraction as it tore through my insides.  Feeling my naked body contort, strain, bear down.  Hearing the wildness of my voice as I screamed, “Oh, God!  Oh, Jesus, help me.”  My mind flooded with images of Joan of Arc burning at the stake, Perpetua being ripped apart by wild beasts, Jesus dying on the Cross, and I found courage on the faces of my fellow sufferers.

My son was brought into this world with the piercing shriek of a wild animal and he echoed my greeting with a wail of his own.  My exhausted body fell back on the sheets soaked with sweat and blood.  The new daddy came close to my face, “Look into my eyes.  Look at me.  We have a son.  You did it.  He’s perfect.”  I looked over to where Jude was being weighed and saw my mother leaning over the side of the scale, whispering into his ear, greeting the new generation of life that came forth from my body.

After a few moments, Jude was placed on my chest, his bare skin touching mine, his whimpers quieting instantly as he recognized the familiar drumming of my heart.  I stared down at him, overwhelmed with wonder, unaware that I had crossed over into a foreign land that would soon become more intimately known than the world I was leaving.  Both of us finally surrendered to sleep, our poignant journey dually embraced, capturing the very pathos of motherhood.

It was summer time and I was at camp.  I had been attending this camp for three years and had become extremely close to a camp counselor named Doug.  Even though he was the boys’ counselor, Doug and I had bonded in a way that I can only describe as familial.  He was extremely protective of me and I regarded him as an older brother.

During that particular year, I had become entranced by Jonathan Martin.  Jonathan was two years older than me and had gorgeous black hair and cerulean eyes.  He was regarded as one of the coolest boys at camp and I was elated when he asked me to be his girlfriend.  This basically meant that we would sit together and hold hands during the nightly movie, evoking fierce envy from all of the girls Jonathan had indirectly spurned by choosing me.

One of the things that made Jonathan the cool kid in everyone’s eyes was that he rejected authority.  He was an insurgent and was often in trouble with the counselors.  I began to realize that Jonathan hated Doug.  He would often roll his eyes when Doug got up to speak or give instructions.  He would deliberately ignore rules that Doug was attempting to enforce.  These deviances began to evoke something extremely unsettling in the core of my existence, but I could not identify what that thing was.

The unearthing came when Jonathan and I were on kitchen duty together.  Doug was in charge.  Jonathan was shirking his responsibilities and Doug publicly reprimanded him.  Jonathan was wildly embarrassed.  I went over to see if he was okay, and he spouted, “Doug is an asshole.”  Suddenly, indignation welled up in me and I felt loyalty for the first time, bringing with it a fierce conflict that I was unable to articulate with my meager life experience and even scantier vocabulary.  All I knew was that I could not be Jonathan’s girlfriend if he did not like Doug.  This realization made me cry, and with a tear-streaked face, I told Jonathan it was over.

At the time, I had no idea that what I was feeling was a moral conflict within a contemplative heart that was only a decade old.  That event pioneered a litany of life experiences where I was compelled to choose what I believed to be right even if it was not understood or favored by others.  And I give full credit for this ability to my parents, who still live a life of radical devotion to unpopular convictions, which they believe to be true.

One of my mother’s greatest talents is enchanting an entire room within moments of coming through the door.  Countless occasions have warranted men, women, children and dogs to look up from what they are doing and either stare, smile, run or wag into her magnetic presence.  Is it her raspy voice that always remembers and calls by name the person to whom she is speaking?  Is it her wild story-telling capability that leaves you feeling like you just read the back of a riveting novel?  Is it the direct and profound questions she asks you, jarring you out of an otherwise ordinary day?  Anyone who has ever met Janis Katherine Hoskins George has trouble deciphering which one of these, if not all, are the real reason why they would consistently name her as the person with which they would hope to be stuck inside an elevator.

When I was a teenager, my friends would come over and spend hours out on the porch with her.  They would spill secrets.  They would swear.  They would weep.  They would sigh.  And she would hold and comfort and her tears would mix with theirs as they swung back and forth, back and forth on the rickety porch swing.  And she would pray, deep prayers, full of faith and compassion, asking the God of all peace to blow His sweet breath over their weary souls.

During family gatherings, you will see her in the kitchen preparing at least six dishes with Josh Groban singing in the background.  Yet she somehow manages to simultaneously hold the smallest grandbaby, feed the dog, and participate in the conversation in the adjoining room.  Needless to say, before the last person is finished with their meal, the entire kitchen is completely spotless and she is sitting on the sofa with at least eight children gathered around her reading a book aloud.

She is the definition of “matriarch.”  The sun of our universe and all of us completely revolve around her.  

Deciding.  Problem-solving.  Confessing.  Deliberating.  Ruminating.  Healing.

Words and pictures flash through my mind like clips from a surrealist film from the 1920s.

–

A boy and a girl stand on a tower overlooking a city.  ”If you could take me anywhere, where would you take me?” she asks, reaching out to grab his hand.  He turns to her, his face illuminated by the fullness of the summer moon, “To the future.”

–

A  woman kneels next to my bed, her eyes full of the tenderness that can only come from motherhood.  She lays her crinkled hand over my heart and says, “He’s coming for you.”

–

It is after dusk.  I stand naked in a swimming pool.  There is someone sitting in the shadows on the porch.  I see the orange tip of a cigarette and hear the squeaking of the swing.  A low, raspy voice sings, “As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longs after you.”

–

I lay next to a man in a twin bed.  His face is illuminated in blue light.  His eyes are closed.  His shoes are on.  He’s not going anywhere.  He wrings water out of my hair.  The water falls to the bed and makes purple beads.  I string them on a strand of his bleached hair.

–

“I buried them,” she says.  ”Where?”  I ask.  ”In all the places where you told me he loved you.”

–

All of these things are remnants of things I have seen or heard or experienced while awake and then they burst with vibrant color on the surface of my sleeping mind.

What does one do with these things?

Where do the great writers of old get their inexhaustible supply of adjectives and verbs?

And time?

And courage?

The post from Tales of the Hood is entitled “Wanting What You’ve Got” and can be found here.  This post comprehensively depicts the inner conflict that many of us face when attempting to fulfill the personal and professional desires of our hearts.  Enjoy!

I had mixed feelings when I heard about the allegations.  My first reaction was disappointment.  Not necessarily because it could all be a lie, but because if he was going to fabricate a story, he could have made it much more interesting.  Reading a dictionary would have been more exciting than reading that book.  However, it somehow managed to have an amazing effect on the general public and I read it to help me come up with ideas for raising funds for non-profits that I found much more inspiring, like Touch A Life Foundation.

Secondly, even if his story was a lie, it doesn’t change the scene in Pakistan.  The country still has immense need for improved infrastructure and policy surrounding their education system.  Mortenson did build schools there; that has not been discounted.  If they are empty or being used to store hay, the blame cannot fall completely on Mortenson.  Accountability for the way aid is being used falls directly on his board of directors and support staff.  Not to mention his donors.  If the guy has not produced an annual report in years and people are still throwing Nobel Prize money to him, he cannot be solely blamed.  Obviously, his donors did not care enough to demand an account for where there money was going.  Which brings me to my next point.

Humanity has an overwhelming desire to hear a compelling story and Mortenson gave that to us.   Here’s a guy, just like you and me, who built hundreds of schools in Pakistan after failing to climb K2.  He could have wallowed in self-pity for not reaching the top and returned home to train for hours and hours to ensure victory at his next attempt, but that would have only benefited himself.  Instead, he believed that the failed attempt opened a wider door for him to find success on a global level by helping those in desperate need of education.  And he did it.  And he wrote a book about it.  I guarantee that most of his readers and donors do not care if the story was a lie or not.  It does not change the inspiration that was evoked inside of them when they heard the story.  Everyone is looking to be part of something bigger.  People long to find an organization to pour their money into so they can put pictures up on their fridge of children in Pakistan reading books in a school that their money helped build.  This feels good.  So, whether or not Mortenson really had this experience after failing to climb K2 is extraneous.