Not Your Average Christian

Growing up in my family meant being involved in church. Actually, that’s an understatement. Our lives revolved around the church. My paternal Grandfather was a Presbyterian Minister and both my paternal Grandmother, who passed away in her mid-50s, and my “GrandMary” whom he married when I was about 10, were devoted to whatever parish he happened to be ministering to at the time. On the flip side of that, my mother’s side of the family were all (emphasis on “all”) born-again, evangelical, fundamentalist Christians. My own parents “defected,” as it were, to Quakerism when I was still a toddler. My father taught at Quaker colleges, my mother was not only the music director for our meeting for worship, but ended up becoming an ordained minister at the age of 60.

I, myself, never fit in. I went to church every Sunday. Even then I was a loner. There were cliques at church as well as at school and I was a rebel and an outsider. Summer vacations would find me attending Bible School with my cousin in Pittsburgh. She was only six months older than me and I looked up to her as someone who had a sense of belonging. Both sides of my family were so tight. Their respective families were unified and the siblings were all very close. In the meantime, I took out my aggression on my only sister and my parents felt distant…removed. I wanted that close bond but I came to resent the harsh, judgmental attitude that rained down on me from those that felt they had the ultimate knowledge of a higher power.

As time went on and I got older, it became clear that I was not only the black sheep, but an absolute pariah. My path in life veered in a completely opposite direction. While my cousins went off to Christian colleges, I set off for art school. I lived a rather Bohemian lifestyle. I lived in the moment. Impetuous. Unrestricted. Loud. My cousins got married and had babies. I left my fiancé and entered into the lesbian community with abandon and acceptance. My cousins went off to faraway lands to convert the unholy to Christianity and I moved around to NYC and Boston, a liberal set free in my own territory.

Through the years, though, I always felt something missing. I felt a hole in my heart that was left when I walked away from the centering that had come so naturally to me during the golden silences of my Quaker meetings for worship. I wanted my God. Not someone’s idea of God, but my own personal relationship. I would never be able to attend a church where someone else told me what to think, what to feel. I often felt lost, but didn’t know how to connect to my God.

In 1997, my partner and I decided it was time to bring a child into our lives. I wanted so very much to have a biological child and we embarked on a three year process to get pregnant through alternative insemination. I finally conceived and happily settled into my growing belly, our plans for the nursery, and our hopes for our child to be. Sometime during the summer months when my stomach was ripe and round and my heart skipped a beat with every kick, I received a note in the mail from my eldest cousin on my mother’s side. It said a lot, but the words that stuck with me were “Since you have chosen to abandon the familial path set forth in the Bible, you are no longer under the protection of God’s umbrella.” I was dumbstruck. Here was the proof that I was not worthy of God’s love. Because of the way I had lived my life and the choice I’d made to have a child in a lesbian household, I was being told that great misfortune would be my lot. Perhaps not immediately, but at some point, I would pay.

From then on I blamed myself every time something went wrong. My pregnancy became an endless series of complications. No protection from God. My son was born two months prematurely. No protection from God. My relationship fell into unrecoverable disrepair. No protection from God. I lost my job and wound up seeking welfare. No protection from God.

My mother finally convinced me that my cousin’s words could no longer hold any power over me. She asked me to build a fire and burn the note. Cleanse my soul of the hole she had worn in it with her words. Her words had become a self-fulfilling prophecy and I had to admit to myself that God didn’t make these things happen. My God wouldn’t punish me. My God loved me anyway. My God brought me through it all, was there all along, and I came out stronger for it on the other side.

Over the years, I have begun to rebuild my relationship with my Lord. I still live an unconventional life. Others may shun my ways and call me heathen, but I know that Jesus lives in my heart because I talk with him on a daily basis. A constant basis. I have found my own call to ministry through music. I may not have the voice of an angel, but when I sing in praise to the Lord, my heart soars beyond that which I ever dreamed possible. I’m never going to be part of the right-wing moral majority. I am left of left and my minority is a tightly knit community of love and caring for each other. It is a family of friends who love unconditionally and that, to me, wraps up God’s love in a nutshell.

I am not your average Christian. I’m a Christian who just happens to be average. But then again, maybe I’m a phenomenal person who happened to finally realize that I am so worthy. So very worthy.

Liver Spots

While channel surfing the other night, I happened upon my new guilty pleasure: Bridezilla. After Don proposed in June, I immediately bought up every possible bridal magazine, started scouring the net for venues, made our honeymoon reservations (actually, I did that first since we’d already set our minds on the Boston to Bermuda cruise), and started a huge file of dresses, flowers, and cake ideas. At any rate, Don wound up playing Scrabble on his laptop while I laid into these horrible women who were demanding such things as $18,000 first class tickets to Bora Bora (and that was just for the flight!). We actually watched a woman gather her bridesmaids the night before the wedding and give them instructions on the exact shade and type of nail polish (pink on pink french manicures), how they should wear their hair, and (can you get over this?) which ones should stuff their bras to match her silicone prow-of-a-ship bustline.

I spent the evening punctuating the Bridezilla marathon with a lot of “honey, I promise I won’t do’s….” At some point the subject of makeup came up. It had to do with the aforementioned reigning queen of bridal bitches who looked as though she used a trowel every morning to layer her foundation. Well, guess what? Evidently, I come across the same way! Don suggested, as I could feel even the hair on the back of my neck bristle (yes, I’ll take care of that, too), that I have a professional do my makeup on the morning of our wedding.

“Why? What’s wrong with the way I do my makeup? I’ve been doing it myself since I was 16!”

“Yes, but maybe it’s time to do it differently.”

“Why? What’s wrong with it? Is it because you like a lighter shade?”

“I like it lighter.”

“The color?” I persisted, feeling extraordinarily defensive about my carefully applied face.

“No. Ummm…just lighter. Okay, sometimes I can see it caked here,” as he points to the area around his nose, “and sometimes it looks orange.”

GASP! I had visions of old ladies with powdery makeup that laid like a mask against their faces and ended in a significant line pf demarcation along their sagging jaws. All I could think was “get thee to an Estee Lauder counter and fast!” It’s pending, trust me.

The next morning I was in the middle of my daily ablutions when I suddenly stopped and really took a look at my face. Fuck, I’m going to be 44 years old in a scant few weeks. And I look it. For the first time in my life, I look my age. I’m a middle-aged mother with a tramp stamp on her lower back and a nose ring. I got up closer to the mirror. I’d always prided myself on my lack of wrinkles but actually attribute that to the fact that I come with my own built-in fat pads and don’t need my ass fat injected into my face. But there they were, a tiny network of lines criss-crossing the perpetual fluid filled pockets under my heavily charcoaled eyelids. And my laugh lines didn’t disappear when I stopped laughing. Crows feet. My gaze landed on a darker spot on my left cheekbone. Is that? Nooooo…it couldn’t be. Oh. My. God. It’s an age spot. And there’s another one near on my chest! Which really offsets those lovely skin tags on my neck.

So I run naked to the full-length mirror. Not a great idea. I stood there and looked at this stranger looking back at me. 160 lbs. of flubber. Whale blubber. Dubble dubber. My always perky breast were definitely riding a little lower this year. A C-section and hysterectomy had graced me with a pouch that I could raise a Joey in. My ass bore a Cabot logo. Whole curd. My thighs make a swishy sound when they rub together. In warm weather, they actually chafe.

I am very self-critical. I always have been. For the first 2/3 of my life I weighed about 103 lbs. and ate everything in sight and never exercised. Then my metabolism decided to ditch me. Just took off and left me with the luggage to carry around. I could wax on this subject forever but it gets boring and narcissistic to everyone but me. So, here’s the thing. I’m a middle-aged mother. I’m not going to turn back the clock and I don’t have the money to just stop by the plastic surgeon and say “could you just tighten up these jowls, inject a little botox into my perpetually frowning forehead, and slice and dice the folds of my eyes so that I can see a bit better? And perhaps a breast lift. A little liposuction here and there and there and over there and oh yeah, right here. How about a butt lift?” Really, why not just turn myself into a barbie doll?

Because. I am a middle-aged mother. I’m still reasonably attractive and my FHTB (future-husband-to-be) loves me regardless of my lumps and bumps, my wide load, and my orange makeup. So, I’ve got about nine months to get to the gym regularly and at least tighten up some.

In the meantime, I’ll be heading to the Estee Lauder counter. And the dermatologist. It’s the least I can do.

It’s not from Hallmark

Don and I have been doing some premarital counseling. We have a tentative date of August of ‘09 which seems a little far away but since we’ve lived together for about a year and a half, we have some, uh, communication issues to iron out. I haven’t read the book about men being from mars and women being from venus but I’m pretty sure we hang out on really different planets. Here’s what happens: we argue. don leaves the room and wants space. i go after him and want to talk. he goes to another room to find some space. i track him down and want to talk. he runs. i run after him. pretty soon it escalates into something notsopretty.

So we’re doing therapy. Our first day the counselor, Carolyn, said that she really looked forward to working with us because she could see we had a great dynamic and were very funny together. I was actually kind of stunned into silence. Rare, but true. I mean like, wow, maybe we were meant for each other after all! It hasn’t taken long at all for our communication styles to change. He REALLY works at it. Now everything that I might misconstrue as being criticism (which is basically everything) is prefaced with “honey, I love you, but…” and so my feelings are tempered even before I find out I left no toilet paper in the bathroom, a sink full of dirty dishes, and a week’s worth of unopened mail is sitting on the counter. Or whatever. It truly is usually something that mundane that makes me feel like a worthless pile of kaka.

So this past week I’ve had this horrible insecure “moment.” For me, insecurity wraps around me like a vise and doesn’t let go until some neuron finally transmits an a-okay signal for me to chill out and accept myself as I am. At least for a little while. Anyway, this week I started mourning the fact that Don doesn’t really “do” words. After our initial “courting” session was over and I moved myself and my eight-year old son and all of my emotional baggage into his world, he stopped buying flowers (okay, there WAS the dozen red roses that were on the table after he proposed to me) and really doesn’t do the card thing unless it’s mandated. Like Celebrate Bird Flu Day. I actually, and I gag to admit this, asked him earlier this week if he thought I was “pretty”. *insert stomach roiling* Don says, in his plain, matter-of-fact way that he has, “Yes. You’re pretty. There are times when you aren’t nice and then you aren’t pretty. But I wouldn’t be with you if you weren’t.” Okay then.

So I bought him a card. Sappy. Sentimental. Lovey. Mushy. I left it on his pillow and it stayed there unopened all day. Just this clean, white, crisp envelope on a brown suede throw pillow. Not like it screamed “Hey! Look at me! I’m a card meant for you to pick up and read!” or anything. He read it, I guess. Anyway, it was open the next morning. He hasn’t mentioned it. So I took to mourning some more. And then I sat down to work yesterday and got slammed upside the head with this heartbreaking “aha” moment.

Slight backtrack: when I started freelancing full-time, I had no desk on which to work. I had always worked at a computer and now I had reams of hardcopy to proofread or copy edit. I needed something wide enough to spread out at least four sheets at a time. We set up the card table but I developed a callous on my elbow and a really bad crick in my neck from bending over all day. I also worried about early onset widow’s hump. So Don set out to make me a desk. He asked me what I needed and I explained that an angle would help and that a smooth surface would be great. We talked about height requirements and colors and shelving. He spent long hours over the next couple of weeks in his dad’s shed. And then he came home with this desk.

He designed it himself. The top is made out of a white dry-erase board. It has a lip so that my papers don’t fall off, and the height is adjustable. It has steel legs and a drawer in it for the highlighters I am currently using. He installed a shelf above it so that I can put my in-box and stapler and stuff just within reach. Every time I sit down to it, I sigh in relief at having such a luxury.

And when I sat down to work yesterday, I realized something. This was my card. This was my vase of flowers. This was my “hey, I think you’re pretty.” This was his love. And you know what? I would have lost the card, the flowers would have wilted, I still never believe I’m pretty but he loves me anyway, and I’m gonna have that desk forever.