The Pursuit for Joy

These last couple of weeks have been difficult. One of our relatives is fighting COVID on a ventilator. It feels so surreal because Christmas still happened. New Year still happened. Celebration still happened. Yet, there is this heavy waiting that feels long, hard, and dark.

Now, what was familiar and manageable is unfamiliar and overwhelming. What got us through is no longer an option. We cannot be at the hospital. We can not be with him. We cannot be together. Now, we wait. Separated and alone.

Even before COVID, we were pros at keeping vigil when a loved one was hospitalized. There was one particular difficult year when we were hit with six hospitalizations at three different hospitals. We were so familiar with the staff at the various hospitals. We became so used to something that was abnormal. We planned it out so someone is always at the hospital. 24-7. We were always there. We knew the rounding schedule by heart. We were right there as the doctors examined and talked with us. We got to know our nurses. We shared the burden with each other as we waited. We sat in silence. We cried together. We cracked jokes. We talk about anything and nothing. We broke bread with hospital food. We were together. Like I said, we were pros.

Two days after he was put on a ventilator, the nurses told us that he could still hear us even though he was completely sedated. So, the hospital set up a Zoom call for the family. It was the first time since he was hospitalized that we all saw him and each other. Through Zoom, we spoke to him. We prayed over him. We told him how much each of us loved him. We encouraged him to fight. We encouraged him (and ourselves) of the hope we have for the day when he will come home. We reminded him of all the good things yet to come. We sat with each other’s tears. That brief hour, though painful, was a touch of grace.

The kind nurses whose faces we never saw held the iPad so we could see him during our virtual visits. They gave us our time. Just quietly holding the iPad for us. Afterwards, I wondered what it was like for the nurses to be part of these intimate moments of pain. Their decision to remain there, to not walk away, was another touch of grace.

For brief moments this past week, these touches of grace made the heaviness feel a little lighter. For that, I am grateful.

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it had gone through to achieve that beauty.” – Maya Angelou

This blog was started last year as a way to find joy in the mist of the mundane, ordinary, and challenges of life. And then 2020 happened. I’ve neglected this blog. The reason? Simple survival. With all that happened, there was just no space in time and emotional energy to sit down and process life.

In March, like rest of the country, we went into lock-down. My two elementary aged boys started virtual school. My husband and I started to work remotely. Thankfully, my mom lived with us to help with childcare while we worked. I remember how naïve I was. I really thought the shut-down was only going to last two weeks even though I have been following the news of months-long shut-down in other parts of the world. Maybe it was not me being naïve as much as me in deliberate denial.

Then April happened. My husband lost his uncle. Then, my otherwise young and healthy uncle was hospitalized along with his in-laws with COVID. He was a front-line medical provider. My uncle ended up in the ICU for a week. Thankfully, he survived. Unfortunately, we lost his father-in-law. And today, with two days left of 2020, we are waiting for news as another family member is in the ICU with COVID. It is strange when we go through these moments of crisis, time seems to stand still and move too quickly all at once. While we kept busy with demands of life, there is this heavy stillness as we wait and hope for good news. Unlike the past when we can gather together around a sick loved one, we are all separated, waiting for small trickles of updates. Anything to re-assure us that it will be ok. I have never felt this level of helpless as loved ones suffer. I never realize how much of a gift it is to be physically present both for the ones suffering and the ones bringing comfort.

Time seemed both gracious and cruel in how it just keepings ticking away. While it felt like normal ways of life was frozen, life kept going. Holidays happened. Work’s deadlines came and gone. My kids grew taller. We welcomed new life. We mourned those we lost. The inability to be to together to celebrate, suffer, and mourn makes it seem like time was robbed from us. There were moments I just wanted time to freeze like how everything else was forced to a standstill-just so we have a do-over. Except there are no do overs with time. It just keeps going. This year I finally came to appreciate the old wisdom that time really is the only most precious commodity-once it is gone, it is gone.

This year, more than any other year, I lived in that weird tension of pain and joy co-existing together. While, there was a lot of pain for us, there were also a lot of joy. Sometimes, both existing in the same time and space. The mundane and ordinary seemed more beautiful this year. These last few days, even though I try to think about 2020 and all that happened personally, nationally, and globally, I found myself distracted. I think it will take some time and space away from 2020 to let myself process 2020. I do wonder, what it would look like to transform the pains of this year in the days ahead. If it is like anything I have learned, it is I need to walk through it. I cannot walk around it. So, unlike previous years where I think about all the different new goals and possibilities of the upcoming new year, I’m thinking about looking back. I’m preparing myself once again to be still and quiet as I start walking through this past year so I can experience the beauty of seeing its pains redeemed and transformed.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love recently, specifically love in mist of suffering. I keep thinking about my friend Sharon.

I met Sharon my freshmen year of college. She was my pastor’s wife. She was petite, had a childlike giggle when she found something particularly amusing, spoke softly but with power. She became a dear friend. Sharon moved back to California with her family during my senior year of college. We stayed in touch but life’s busyness kept that sporadic at best.

I can’t remember the day or the year when I got the email that Sharon was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. All I remember was telling my husband that I needed to see her. We booked a flight and arrived on a Sunday a couple of months later. My sweet mom took care of our son so we could make this trip.

I had all these expectation and anxious thoughts of what my visit would be like. How do one prepare to visit a dying friend? The visit, like most things in life, was not like anything I expected. I expected our visit to be somber and heavy. It was filled with laughter, good food by her bedside, good nature bantering and teasing of our husbands, and soul-feeding conversations about people and things that mattered. I don’t know how we dreamed about the future in the face of death but we did. We talked about her young daughters (9 and 5 at the time), about my son (my second was my born yet), about our husbands, about how her funeral will be a celebration of the live she lived (no black permitted), about what heaven would be like. I expected to be the one who would comfort her. She comforted me. I expected to be the one who would encouraged her. She encouraged me. I expected to be the one who would listen. Instead, she listened to me babble on and on about the most trivial of things. I went with her to every appointment. I sat with her while she rested. We laughed so hard that we cried as we recounted silly past memories.

On our last day, she talked with my husband privately. I learned later she, in her quiet but stern way, told him to take care of me like she did on our wedding day. I learned later she wrote letters to those she left behind. I learned later she made recordings of herself for her daughters and husband to comfort them in their grief.

We returned home that Friday. Sharon passed two days later on a Sunday. She was 40. In her dying, she loved me and taught me how to love well even in suffering. I will forever be grateful for the gift of that week with my friend.

I’m writing this post on the eve of My oldest birthday. Today is the last day that he will be a single digit age and I am feeling all sorts of feelings. So I started to think about things I learned from my boys. So in honor of My oldest turning 10, here’s my list of 10 things my boys taught me.

1. If you ever thought you have your s*** together, being a parent will quickly dispel that silly notion. I have gone toe to toe against skilled, intimidating opposing counsels and held my own. I have been intensely questioned by legislators and survived. I have been in rooms full of executives, partners, etc. and been able to hold a decent conversation. Yet, with my 4 year old toddler? I have never lost my cool so quickly. I have never fell so quickly into a puddle of tears as my emotions swing from righteous anger to pure shame. How did I just yell at my child like that? I would lose my ability to put together any coherent thought. I would lose my ability to say no because the energy and will power it would require is just too much. Popcorn and ice cream for dinner? Sure. Who knew such a tiny little human could wield so much power?

2. I have never doubted myself so much until I became a mother. In every other areas of my life, I felt somewhat prepared. My confidence grew with time and experience. This does not seem to apply to parenthood. No matter how prepared I thought I was, I was never prepared. Moments when I felt like I got the hang of this parenting thing, something will inevitably happen that will remind me that I don’t. My mind is constantly filled with “What’s the right thing to do here? Is there a right thing to do? How should I handle this situation? That situation? What should I say! Not say?” Sometimes it feels like I’m just throwing darts with my eyes closed and praying that somehow I’m hitting the mark.

3. If you somehow thought you had control over things…then you have never experienced potty training. As adults, we think we can control our lives, our situations, and people in our lives. Sometimes, it takes something drastic and unpredictable to shake us out of this false sense of control. Other times, it is potty training. There is nothing I or anyone else can do to make this little human take a dump in the toilet until they decide that is what they want to do. I am not God. I never was.

3. There is really nothing sweeter than having your baby nozzle against your neck as they sleep. This is especially true when it’s right after a bath.

4. I literally feel like I am walking around with my heart outside of my body…all the time. When they hurt, it feels like my heart is literally breaking with them. I wish that somehow I can shield them. But I can’t because I am not God. (Thanks potty training). So I do my best to bandage up the scars. Sometimes I can keep it together as they cry. Other times, I just sit on the floor and cry with them.

5. Forgiveness doesn’t have to be complicated. It can simply be “It’s ok mommy, I forgive you. Everyone makes mistakes.” It is really one of the most precious and healing gifts when you receive your child’s forgiveness.

6. You learn about things you never knew existed liked the giant squid. By the way, it is a beautiful and fascinating creature. That and octopuses. Did you know octopuses are one of the smartest animals in the world. They can open a jar! Look it up on YouTube. It’s pretty amazing.

7. I have never thought about someone so much and so constantly. From the moment they were born, my days have been filled with constant thoughts about their needs and well-being. I also have never thought so much about another person’s poop. I mean, there’s an app to document your baby’s poop.

8. There are very few things more joyfully contagious than hearing your kids’ deep belly laughs.

9. Being a parent led me to relived and re-evaluated my childhood and my parents. I always knew they were not perfect but I became appreciative of some of their imperfections. I made conscious choices of what of their parenting I will copy and what I will discard. That process has been both painful and liberating. I hope when my boys go through this process, they will keep more than they will discard.

10. Being their mom and being entrusted with their little hearts is truly a sacred gift.

Before the start of this Advent season, I prayed for this year to be different. I was tired of holiday seasons filled with exhausting busyness, feeling of failures at getting the perfect gift or creating the perfect holiday memory, feelings of missing out, and frustration that this magical season never ever feels magical. So, I prayed. I asked for some “magical” experience. I expected this Hallmark experience where I would be overwhelmed with feelings of peace, joy, and love. Instead, I felt emptiness.

So, I do what I always do when I’m faced with emotions that are hard for me to sit with, I find ways to chase them away by distracting myself. Given that the 2020 was approaching, I decided New Years resolutions would be the solution. There will be no room for emptiness when there are clearly defined, measurable, specific goals to focus my attention on.

I searched Amazon to find something that will give me a sense that I can control this process. If I can control the process, I can calm this growing emptiness in me. I found a journal that promised to help me accomplish my “great achievements.” Bingo! Emptiness cannot co-exist with accomplishment, right? I started out with my typical new year resolutions, e.g., eat better, workout more, spend less money, save more money, pay down debt, develop a new hobby, learn a language, read more books, etc. However, each resolution felt like a pair of ill-fitting jeans. The emptiness hits me harder. This was not working.

I soldiered on. You have to give the process a chance, right? On one of its pages, the author asked this question, “What is the cost of not achieving your dreams?” This question stumped me. I have no idea. I can’t even figure out a goal. How can I figure out the impact of my failures. The question and my inability to answer it frustrated me. This process was suppose to leave me feeling excited, inspired, in control. Instead, the emptiness continued to grow. The frustration turned to anger. I just started to write not sure where my thoughts would take me.

My answer: “I’m afraid that five, ten, fifty years from now, I will realize that I pursued the wrong things at the expense of what really mattered. I will realize I build a kingdom for my ego rather than something eternal. I will realize I spend hours building a career that fights for children while neglecting my relationships with my own boys. I will realize I missed out on the most true thing about myself and the purpose that God had for me. I’m afraid that I will wake up and realize that I have been living my life asleep rather than awake.”

The answer shocked me. I stared at my answer. I read it over and over again. It was painful and uncomfortable to sit with my answer. I was uncomfortable because I realized my answer was not how I will feel in some distant future but it is how I feel now. I passively filled my days and mind with hurried busyness and noises. Unnecessary appointments, kids activities that my kids don’t actually love but they keep them “well-rounded”, get-togethers that drain me, attempts to live up to advice from every corner about how to be the best wife, mom, friend, boss, Christian, woman, and every other hat that I put on myself. So much busyness and noise, there is little space for what actually mattered.

Sitting there with my answer, I realized my prayer was answered. The emptiness was the truest part of myself trying to get my attention. In that space, a desire was stirred up to be still and quiet. It stirred up a desire to stop absent-mindedly pursue busyness and noise so that 5, 10, 50 years from now, I can say I lived.

I came up with a goal at the end. It’s not a SMART goal. It’s simple. I will create regular spaces and rhythms to be still and quiet.