boring bodies

My best friend Amanda, who in many ways has taught (still teaches) me the lessons that a mother or a sister might have, made this declaration during my sophomore year of college, as we sat around the table with other girls on the brink of womanhood at our beloved Columbia Cottage, drinking boxed wine in carafes and eating Chinese string beans until late into the night:

"Can we not talk about our bodies?  It's just so . . . boring."

Prior to this, I had suffered from some garden-variety body dysmorphia.  Nothing unusual or extreme.  I don't have the will power to starve myself or exercise excessively, and I really can't throw up to save my life (when I have had the flu, I have often actually wished for the ability to gag myself so that my nausea could pass).  But, like most women, I didn't like the way my body looked.  I wished for many things:  rounder hips, smaller waist, more petite and arched feet, thinner fingers, more symmetry.  These were things that would never be "fixed" by losing weight or working out harder.  In fact, the list of complaints I had about my appearance never shrunk, even as my size ebbed and flowed over the years.  And Amanda was right:  oftentimes, when women get together, we fill the silence with complaints and accusations toward our bodies.  If you don't want to participate in this kind of conversation, you risk being left out.

But the one thing I wanted more than for my body to be perfect was to be not boring.

So I decided that body shape and size would not be a pressing topic of discussion for me anymore.  I would own my body and how I felt in it, even if it sometimes felt uncomfortable.  Of course, this was 19-year-old me, still light years away from the drastic things that childbearing and nursing, depression and neglect, trauma and heartache, would do to my body.  And this was also still a judgmental me, now turning that laser beam of criticism away from my own appearance and onto others, compared to whom I was now allowed to feel superior (because they were still over there boringly hating their bodies).  It really wasn't much of an improvement.  I still never felt beautiful, even if I wasn't boring.

But a funny thing happened to me when I began practicing yoga seriously a couple of years ago.  I began to feel beauty and grace emanating from my hands and feet, then from my legs and arms, and finally, over time, from my core - back and belly and chest.  Certain poses were almost too lovely for words, as I watched myself in the mirror.  Who was this lithe creature, whose body seemed to just know what to do?  Who was this woman, whose comfort in her own skin was so amply evident?

I began to love my hands and feet as their ropey sinews gripped the earth.  Then I began to love my arms and legs as they grew firm and strong from supporting me well.  And then I started to love my middle, last of all.  That took awhile.  But that same middle that grew babies and then grew crepey and soft is the middle that can now hold me up in uddiyana bandha.  The back and ribs that are "too wide" can hoist my legs into a playful headstand.

These are the strong hands and wrists that hold my daughter.

And these are the sturdy, strong feet that carry me around all day and play with my son.

And sometime after I started feeling all this gratitude toward my body, something else amazing happened.  I began yoga teacher training five weeks ago, and it has been an intense experience for me so far, both physically and spiritually.  My physical activity has really ramped up - I'm practicing yoga probably four times more often than I was previously.  I was anticipating this, and thought I might drop a few pounds.  Instead, what has happened as I gain strength is that I am constantly hungry!  I feel like a marathon trainer, or like a woman who is pregnant and growing something inside herself.  I think I've gained a few pounds, even.  But, without even forcing myself to, I don't care!  I feel like a gorgeous, functional machine that is having its controls and dials turned.  More output means more input.  I have also become one of those jiggly ladies who takes her shirt off in class and truly doesn't care.  I'm naturally a very hot and sweaty person, and hot yoga classes make a shirt a total inconvenience.  I strip down to my bra and the shirt is better used to mop my face and neck.  As the kids say these days, IDGAF.  Not only that, but I feel lovely!  I have become a person who starts making videos of myself doing asana practice:

And what's more astonishing is that I watch that video and feel love and attraction toward the person I see.  It's thrilling.  It's something that, in 32.5 years of life, I have never felt before.  

"are you happy?"

I stood on the slanted, uneven floor in the doorway of my stepfather's mom's house.  Grandma Gaye is in her nineties now and still lives alone, in a tiny yellow cottage in what was once a hard part of town.  She cherishes her independence, but willingly gave away her truck keys when she knew it was time to stop driving.  She raised seven children (including surprise twins as the last two) and now she cares for the many cats of East Lawrence.

She doesn't hear that well anymore, and we hadn't come for a long visit anyhow.  We were just stopping by after a day at the municipal pool and public library of my youth.  My kids were hot and tired and wanted to touch her many knick-knacks.  Vicki kept finding "treasures" and trying to convince Gaye to let her take them home (this girl has taught me the meaning of "don't ask, don't get").  I was starting to get anxious to get back onto 40 Highway - the long way to Topeka for the evening, but the way without turnpike tolls.  I just didn't feel like spending $1.40 to take the interstate.  I had stopped working for the year and knew that every penny counted.  That $1.40 could buy a bomb-pop at our corner store back in East Nashville.

My tolerance for chatting was low, and I made ready to make our exit.  In the doorway, Gaye grabbed me gently by the upper arm and looked me right in the eyes.  She is quite short, so this meant she was gazing up at me.

"Are you happy?"

The question came out just like Gaye:  straightforward and simple and unveiled.

I was a bit caught off guard by it.  I knitted my eyebrows for a moment, then said, "Sure.  I'm not having the very happiest time of my life, but it's not like I'm miserable.  I sleep like a baby, in any case."

"Okay," she answered, "just as long as you're happy.  That's the most important thing."

No follow-up questions.  No deeper thrust to the conversation. That was all she had wanted to know.  She wasn't trying to make any kind of other point about my life or her opinion of it.

We piled into the car and the kids were asleep before we got to the highway. I continued to ponder her question until we pulled up to the curb in front of Charlie and Leslie's house.  In fact, I continued to ponder it throughout the rest of our trip, and even after we came home.

At each stop along our road trip (and there were seven more homes that welcomed us after Gaye), I told the story of her question and made the same simple query.  Over late-night beers after the kids went to sleep, or Mexican food, or as we sat together on patios and porches, the things I heard amazed me.  It was a question that really cut through the fog and got to the heart of things.

"I'm happy, I guess.  But I'm stressed.  I'm trying to provide for my family, and that means I'm always thinking about the next thing that we want or need.  I don't really have time to think about whether I'm happy."

"I'm not sure that happiness is even the point.  Mom always used to say that the point of life wasn't to be happy.  It was to be useful and survive."

"I don't know when we will feel happy again."

"I'm really happy in my work.  But in the rest of my life . . . I'm not sure."

"I can't even tell you the last time someone asked me that question.  I have no idea."

"I am happy, because I have figured out how to take life on life's terms."

Most people I asked were like me - they hadn't considered the question in so long that they had to really turn it over in their minds for awhile.

I started my 200-hour yoga teacher training a few weeks ago, and on our first night of class, my teacher Liz made a statement that has ricocheted around my mind since then.  She said, "Mental health isn't just being happy all the time.  It's about having the complete depth and experience of all the feelings."  So many of us seem to be searching for happiness, but is it really something else that we're looking for, and we don't know what other name to call it?  Depth, contentment, acceptance, purpose, an end to suffering?

As for me?  I'm really happy right now.  This is a sweet season in my life.  Taking the hallway time has been a really good decision, I think.  The days seem to float by lightly, strung together with a golden strand of friends over for dinner and walking Vicki to school and picking flowers in the alleyway.  But I'm realizing that the goal isn't to make this last forever.  The goal is to learn what needs to be learned from this time, to take what lessons it has for me, and to keep moving forward.  I won't always be this happy, and that's okay.

hallway season

So now that my formal leave request is submitted and we have announced to the congregation and etc etc, I can answer the big question:  what on earth am I going to be doing after June 30?

Some of you are familiar with our itinerant appointment system in the United Methodist Church.  Some of you are not.  Let me explain briefly:  I am an ordained elder in full connection with the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church.  Essentially, this means I belong to one of the strongest unions still in existence.  It's a closed shop.  I am tenured.  Unless I do something ridiculously unethical (or choose to surrender my credentials), I will retain that tenure for the rest of my life.

The covenant that I have made, in exchange for this lifetime guaranteed appointment/job/minimum salary, is that I will itinerate.  This means that the bishop and cabinet will assign me to a church somewhere within the geographical confines of middle Tennessee.  I get some input into this decision, but at the end of the day:  I am assigned.  There are a hundred reasons why John Wesley thought this was such a good idea in the late 1700s, but that's not really what I'm gonna talk about today.

There are some accommodations that can be made in the case of those who need to take leave, while retaining full connection in the conference.  You can be placed on leave (involuntary), or take voluntary leave for transitions or the care of family.  I have submitted a request for one year of voluntary family leave, to begin July 1 of this year.  After seven years under full-time appointment, I will not be taking an appointment for 2017-2018.

So, what will I do with this year?  

1)  work with an area church and Vicki's elementary school to complete my Doctor of Ministry project, which focuses on increased engagement and investment in neighborhood schools to stem the tide of charterization in middle Tennessee.

2)  spend pretty much all of July on an epic family road trip, touring the West.

3)  complete a 200-hour yoga teacher training at Kali Yuga Yoga from August through November.

4)  take my daughter on her first trip to New York!  To see my best friend and her baby and her husband and Brooklyn and see the Thanksgiving Day Parade.  This is such a rite of passage for us, introducing her to The City.

5)  spend a lot more time with my son and daughter, cat, dog, and chickens.

6)  take a German class at Vanderbilt (modern languages . . . ugh).

7)  apply for about 15 more Ph.D. programs in Religious Studies/Theology.  Including reapplying to Stanford.

8)  take my kids to DC in May of 2018 for my graduation at the National Cathedral.

Big questions I've been asked:

1)  How can I do this, financially?

I am by no means independently wealthy (have you seen my house/car/life?!), but I have enough saved from inheritance and cheap living that I can afford to do one year this way.  We won't be able to live extravagantly, but I can take a year to breathe.

2)  Will I return to church ministry?

I have no idea, honestly.  I am trying to be as open as I possibly can.  I have spent a lot of my life rushing through whichever door opened easily and quickly, because I couldn't stand the ambiguity and discomfort of standing in the hallway.  But this is my hallway season.  This is the time to stand and observe the doors and see which one cracks open and which one shuts and which one can be the door that is wisest and most accommodating for all three of us.  Perhaps I am accepted to the perfect Ph.D. program, and that is the door that opens.  Perhaps I am not, and I realize that God is pulling me back to the church.  Perhaps God pulls me in some other direction entirely.  I have to take the time to see.  There is no substitute for time, not even hard work and determination and grit.  Not even pushing as hard as I can.  I have not done a good job in my life of respecting the role that simple, observant, engaged time plays in any given situation, and now I need to do that.

3)  Will I miss City Road?

Um . . . yes!  This place has been my home in ministry for the last five years, and they have seen me through some of the most horrific and celebratory times in my life.  They have seen my son born, my marriage disintegrate, my heart be broken about seven times.  They have seen me grow as a leader and a person.  They have accepted my vulnerabilities and flaws.  This church is far from perfect, but the people here are as good as any people I have met in my life.  They have cared for me in a way that is truly Christ-like:  challenging and nurturing and trusting.

This is an exciting season for me.  I am somewhat terrified, but I feel ready.  Open and ready and accepting.

zooming out

In yoga practice, the balancing poses usually occur sometime after the standing poses and flows in a vinyasa.  They come before we move to the floor and snake through stretches leading to savasana.  During the balancing poses (tree, dancer, bow, eagle), the teacher will often instruct us to focus our gaze on one point in the room; something that doesn't move.  (So, not yourself in the mirror.)  This focused gaze is called drishti in Sanskrit.  It's a place that you can send your thought and energy while you allow your body to balance itself.  Drishti is a necessity to maintaining poise and grace during the balancing poses.  It's also a powerful concept to apply to larger issues with balance in life.

I suffered a major setback in the last few months.  I was rejected for a doctoral program at Stanford.  It makes me feel like a real idiot to even write that, because . . . most people get rejected from Stanford.  There is nothing special about me that makes me different or unique because this happened to me.  There are a thousand idiosyncratic reasons this could have happened, and perhaps there is really just one salient reason:  I'm not qualified.

But it still just sucked.  Rejection is so unbelievably hard, especially because I tend to take others' dislike or indifference for me as a challenge to show them how much they secretly love and need me inside.  (Analyze that one for a little bit!)  I have a very hard time flouncing and detaching in these scenarios.  Rather, I tend to double down on convincing the party who rejected me that I'm actually the choice they want.  They just don't know it yet.  This kind of persistence has generally yielded great results in my life, but at significant personal and emotional cost.

When I shared about my experience of rejection from Stanford, my old friend Andy Piper popped up and reminded me of something I had shared with him during a challenging time in his life many years ago.  He said, "You once told me that in times of distress, you "zoom out."  I have thought about that nearly every single day since then."  Zooming out has indeed been my strategy of choice for escaping the pressure cooker.  It's like a release valve.  I picture myself floating up from the dense underbrush of whatever is entangling me.  I begin to see a pattern from the tree canopy.  As I get further away, I see that the dark tangle is just a little blip.  The forest is so beautiful and rich.  There are gorgeous areas just beyond whatever I was struggling with.  The way things are won't last forever - I can escape the dangerous endlessness that threatens to overwhelm me.

"Feeling are intimate, but not infinite."  My best friend Amanda shared this with me a few months ago.  Yes.  It's so true.  Finding perspective and zooming out, fixing your gaze, using drishti, is terribly challenging in times of disappointment and distress.  But it's a skill we have to cultivate if we are to maintain any kind of balance in the poses.