Peace be with you

Last week I attended my first yoga class. Like real deal at a studio with a real teacher. Walking in felt a lot like walking into class on the first day of kindergarten. Which is not necessarily the best feeling when you are dealing with fear. Which in all honesty, is why I found myself there to begin with.

At the beginning of class, the teacher encouraged us to let our mind settle on a word, our intention for that hour. What we came there seeking, what we needed. I very quickly settled on peace. Throughout the class when positions became difficult (and boy, did they become difficult) she encouraged us to call on that word. She also reminded us to breathe. With every motion, she instructed us to inhale and exhale. This seemed a little silly at first, but when things quickly became difficult, I found myself forgetting to breathe. When I found myself in a bind, the first thing I did was stop breathing. I cut off my own oxygen and made it even harder.

I thought a lot about this on my way home that night. Today marks one month until my husband's surgery. A surgery that will tell us whether or not he has cancer. Until now, I had also thought of it as the event that would let me finally be able to breathe again. One more month is a long time to hold your breathe when you have been holding it since Christmas. It is a long time to never feel the deep cleansing breath of being fully engaged in the world around you. It is a long time to want for something desperately, but to have to wait for it. But I'm learning that waiting feels a lot less like a spectator sport and a lot more like yoga now that I'm learning to breath through the hard parts. It isn't easy, it takes practice because it is a practice.

The Waiting Place

This month, in celebration of Advent, our Sunday morning conversations have revolved around the theme of waiting. So far, specifically, what it means to wait with hope and wait with peace. It is a sticky subject, this idea of waiting.

These past two Sundays have brought forth memories of specific moments in my life when I have had no choice but to wait. And "the waiting places" as Dr. Seuss calls them, are not always happy places. I know what it feels like to wait with hope when my brokenness tells me I should be hopeless. I know what it feels like to sit very, very quietly when circumstances scream chaos. I'm not saying these were my finest moments, moments that prove me to be the woman God calls me to be. I'm just saying I kept breathing. And somehow found people and moments in which I could find great beauty. And I held faith in a God who was keeping me alive for something I couldn't quite see yet.

I had a conversation with some students tonight about why my husband and I don't have children. I've learned that conversation is just a natural occurence when people are trying to get to know me--us. Tonight, it went much differently than it often does with adults. These young people sought to understand--the process of how I got to where I am today--sharing hope and peace with them--after reconciling myself to the fact that I would not be a mother. Hear me say: They simply sought to understand.

I wish I had a dollar for everytime an adult thought I misjudged the meaning of hope when we were unsuccessfully enduring surgery, treatment, physical sickness, debt beyond our capacity to pay without damaging our financial future, and heartache and disappointment beyond our capacity to share verbally outside the privacy of our home. Enduring those things and being sad, scared, and confused, yet still moving forward was nothing if not an act of hope. Prayerfully deciding to stop subjecting ourselves to those same things was not an act of hopelessness, although many people said they were sorry we gave up hope. There are people still saying that. I choose to think of it as a tremendously hopeful act. It was an act of hope with a heavenly perspective. When we stopped waiting to see what the next month would hold, we started waiting to see how God was going to heal our hearts. That is a faith healing of the miraculous sort and I find that it many ways, it is still happening. But while I wait, I do so with hope, and by sharing peace, I am receiving it, as well.

You see, I know what it means to wait. I have known season after season of waiting. Weeks that seemed like months, months that seemed like years, and years that seemed like one long, painful, unending present. I have waiting down to an artform. But tonight, I knew that without learning to wait with hope, I would not have been standing there among beautiful young people who are learning what it means to live a faith that is so new for them. A faith that will be challenged. A faith that at some point will teach them about waiting with hope and peace. A faith that can be damaged when someone tells them the wrong story about their own hope. I told them a little bit about my story and then later, while waiting at a redlight, I thanked God for keeping me alive.