Eshet Chayil - A Woman of Valor (for the 21st century)

She doesn't feel brave,

except sometimes, when she does.

She feels the weight of rubies

and gold twist on her fingers;

she prefers a crown of flowers

in her hair to cold metal

and the straight-edged lines

of rocks.

She doesn't feel brave,

except when she does

in her heart -

   the heart of a wife

   and daughter

   mother, perhaps

   Or not - childless,

      by choice or

      unseen circumstance.

Weaver of tales, spinner of

fine linen that snags

sometimes, and she smooths it

with supple fingers -

slim fingers -

crooked and thick-with-age fingers.

She pulls the threads

that pulls the cloth. 
There is beauty in its folds.

She doesn't feel brave,

but she laughs,

and it sounds like water

and light; and she knows goodness

and sometimes pain, 

and the law of kindness

is on her tongue.

She doesn't feel strong,

but she rises when she falls,

because there are bills to pay

and dinner to fix

and papers to grade

and sometimes write.

There are knees to bandage

and meetings to endure

and the clock just keeps ticking.

And there are friends to love,

and family to love,

and self to love -

yes: self to love,

sometimes.

She rises, exhausted.

She rises, in joy.

She rises, trembling.

fearless.

bruised,

alone,

lonely.

She rises.

She knows nothing of valor

or the value of rubies.

She rises, and does not feel strong,

but sometimes she knows blessings

and a stumbling bit of grace.

Based on Proverbs 31:10-31, which is
also known as "Eshet Chayil" - A Woman of Valor

Once more, with feeling

There was a time, not so long ago (and forever ago, both at once), that I swore I could not feel. Did not feel.  

There was a time, not so long ago (and forever ago, both at once) that my feelings ran in a straight line between "fine" and "tired."

There was a time, not so long ago (and forever ago, both at once) that I believed my emotions were so powerful, if I acknowledged them, if I allowed them expression, they would be so powerful they would destroy me. I saw them as Leviathan, a maelstrom of churning, burning energy, an endless and infinite whirlpool that would suck me down and swallow me whole. I invested in them all the power and capriciousness of an avenging god, who only waited in the shadows to strike me down and smite me dead.

Talk about shut down! It took me years to admit that "tired" is not an emotion. It took me even more time to admit that I might have to actually learn how to feel something. Anything. As numb as I was, that gaping hole inside-- the one that tried to keep God and the world out, and me trapped in a tiny universe of one, the one that housed my self-loathing and self doubt, the one that kept me enraptured with self-destruction and addiction to more, that blanketed me with isolation and whispered, from under rocks and dark corners that I might as well drink, because alcohol smudged the lines of pain and left in its wake the slow burn of abject surrender-- that hole was leaking my stiff control into the real world and I hust couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't even stay numb.

I had had glimpses of real love, even amidst the pain. I had allowed myself a few moments to hope that it could be-- would be-- better. And in my hope, the gods did not strike me down for my presumption. And thus began my quest: to learn how to feel, how to be present and sit comfortably in my own skin. I approached this much like I approach a still pond on a hot summer day: toe outstretched, barely skimming the surface, delicately testing the waters. I splashed in the shallow end for a while, water to my ankles, getting acclimated, getting wet, venturing out in a widening circle, slowly, hesitantly, depending upon my level of bravery on at any given moment.

And so I learned. Slowly. Hesitantly. I learned. Mostly. I get happy and sad and mad and glad-- the basics, so I've discovered. And I get wistful and frustrated and bored and joyful and distracted and a thousand other things. Sometimes singly, sometimes in weird pastiches that cycle a hundred feelings in an instant, leaving me breathless. I get to feel all that stuff, every day. I stuck my toe in that dark and murky pool, eyes screwed shut, until I could bear to leap. And I leaped. And I was not devoured.

So why is it, so many years later, that just when I think my head Is just above water, that my toes have finally found something solid upon which to stand, everything seems to have shifted, and that solid ground Is nothing more than quicksand, sucking me under?

When the hell did that happen?

I swear to God—I am a strong and capable woman. I am successful, frighteningly intelligent, witty as hell. Why do I suddenly feel as if I’m mired in a bog? The worst part—I can see myself, holding the compass, and the road map,  clearly outlined with “Here lie dragons marked in glitter paint and arrows. I am holding the damned instruction manual in my hands. I know I have all the tools, right there at my fingertips, and yet I seem so incapable of navigating my way through my life.

I know a lot of things, actually. I know that this, too, shall pass. I know that God is with me, always. That my only job, really, is to love my son and help him find his own path. I know that I have been whole, and sometimes feel broken. I know that I have been caught, redeemed, loved and now feel lost. I know I still stutter and stumble and avoid the phrases “I don’t know” and “I need help.”

I know that the longest journey I’ve ever had to make is the one from my head to my heart. It seems like an endless journey through a trackless and lonely desert.

I’ve been here before, In a thousand different iterations, I have stood in this spot, lost and lonely and afraid. And I am tired of this introspection. Tired of this interminable quest to figure out what the hell is going on in my life, how I can feel happy in my life, where is God in my life, on and on, ad nauseum. At some point, it becomes self-indulgent and I come off as a pampered prima dona (feel free tp protest at this point, that nothing I say could be further from the truth). I am so tired of feeling like a tightly wound spring. I don’t know how to change this, so I avoid it and go numb. I disconnect: one more piece of pain that I have to confront, and I just can’t do it. Not today. I can only pretend to be brave for so long.

I hate having to admit this. I am to old to dance with these ghosts again, too old for this bout of existential angst and self-doubt. I want to do it differently, to fix it, and it feels as if I have slammed into a mountain of glass. I can’t find a handhold, my feet slip and slide out from under me, leaving me prostrate and bruised.

But here’s the difference, all impotence aside, all that quivery, fearful drowning-while-immobile, breathless and clueless and broken-- I know one more thing: in the face of all this, act.

And so I do. In fits and starts, sometimes with feet dragging, I act. I move. And then, I dive. Dive inward , to find God and grace. Leap upward, light the torch, search for a hand to hold in the darkness. I ask for help to find a soft spot upon which to land. How much more miraculous, more holy can it get? How astounding, that in the space between breaths, I find peace and the world changes. This is all holy ground. It is measured in the space between you and me. It’s all there: the sacred, the holy, surrounding us, connecting us, keeping us whole, Keeping me whole.

If I can just commit, just trust, just forgive, just love, then I would know I was in the presence of God.

Life is not what I expected. Life is. That’s the deal. It’s bumpy and messy and scary and happy and joyous and perplexing, in infinite variety and subtlety. And most of all: changing. I get to participate in that. I get to do it well and fuck it up, find moments of grace and spar with demons of my own devising. In the midst of pain or doubt or joy or hope, it is not so dark: I am not so alone, as long as I put one foot in front of the other. I get to find God, every day. I can be made whole, every day. I can be healed, every day. None of this comes naturally to me. It is still easier, at times, to disconnect than to willingly open up my heart. But I have known God’s grace, and I have felt joy and love, and so I struggle gladly to be human, every day.

God is here, in this place, with me, and I---

Today I know it.

Permission

“You have my permission,” he said, “to write about the thing that scares you most. Seven hundred fifty words.  Go.”

Yeah, right.  As if I need permission.  Ha.  I can write about anything.  Don’t need anyone to tell me what or when to write.  Anything I want.  Yup.  Even scary stuff.  Even the stuff that knots my stomach and makes my fingertips tingle.  The stuff that I would prefer to avoid— or at least lock up tight in a tiny box buried waaaay deep back in some cobwebbed and little used corner of my head.  I could write about that.  If I wanted.

Permission?  Ha!

And please– pay no attention to that whisper you might hear, skittering and wild between my ears, the one asking why I’m not writing about that scary stuff, why I’m wasting precious time and space typing all this introductory nonsense, instead of the important, vulnerable stuff that I am so cleverly avoiding.

And I would continue to avoid it, because, really— who wants to dredge up that mess, who wants to go slogging through that swamp, lifting up all those slimy rocks to find the things that go bump in my personal night?  Well, at least they go bump in my head, and maybe squeeze my heart in a slightly alarming way.  But the cost of avoidance, I’ve learned (the hard way, of course) is a helluva lot more painful, more breathtaking (and I don’t mean that in a good way), more constricting than the fear itself.

Trust me on this one.

I know all this— know it, and yet my first instinct, every time I come face to face with my personal demons, every time that fear begins to slither around my head and my heart — I want to run and hide and ignore it long enough until it just goes away, disappearing into the neverwhen where all my fears have migrated.   Trust me on this; I know the drill.  

Except.

Except they don’t.  They don’t migrate.  They do not dissipate or fade or diminish, no matter how much I wish it to be so.  Far from scattering into the mist, my fears morph and shift and grow and grow and grow.  The more I run, the more they drive me.  In whatever boxes I’ve buried them, however deeply I’ve hidden them, they begin to fester and ooze and leak— never forthrightly, but sideways and slanted, and suddenly, my world becomes a funhouse mirror, distorted, disjointed, twisted.

For all that I know that the easier, softer way to exorcize my personal demons is to talk, to write, to claim them as my own, I cannot shake the conviction that were I to name them, were I to bring them into the light of day, far from banishing them to the neverwhen, I would, instead, be giving them power and making them real.  There is always the possibility (slight, I’m sure, but more than real nonetheless) that they are not, that the scary stuff is just a figment of my imagination.  Why give those fears form and substance?  Because if they’re real, if that scary stuff is as powerful as I imagine it, it will devour me, swallow me whole, and I will disappear forever into that black hole of neverwhen.

So sometimes, I need permission.   I need to be reminded that I am tilting at windmills, solitary and resolute and fighting the good fight (even if I have imagined my foe so much more powerful than it really is) (even if my foe is me).  I need to know that I am not lying, broken and bested, at the feet of the Knight of Mirrors, that the scary stuff is just that: scary stuff that only has the power over me that I give it.

And so, remembering, I will write the scary stuff.  I will delve into those hidden places.  And my fears, once magnified and threatening and insatiably hungry, will shrink and shrivel and be powerless before me.  For today, I have been given permission, have given myself permission, to brave the scary stuff and come out the other side, unscathed (mostly) and free.