When Courage Sits at Your Table

Last November, Mom packed a lifetime into four suitcases and moved from her two-story-plus-basement farmhouse to a small bedroom in our home where we all experienced LIFE together for four months.

I find myself doing the "One year ago...." thing.

One year ago, Mom moved here. One year ago, Mom celebrated my daughter's birthday.  One year ago, twenty people were here for Thanksgiving. One year ago...

I am aware that walking through the "one year ago's" is part of the grieving process.

My husband recently read a book about leaders and stress. I found one page especially interesting: The Social Readjustment Rating Scale.*

The author listed life events -- both positive and negative -- that required a person to experience stress. Positive experiences included getting married, going on vacation, Christmas and fulfilling a personal goal. The list included over 40 items. I was not surprised to see the death of a family member, a divorce, or a job change on the list. The one that surprised me was number 7:

Major change in eating habits (including the amount of food or change in meal hours).

A change in eating habits makes the top 40 in dealing with stress! Deciding to go gluten-free causes stress. Giving up dessert causes stress (Well ... duh!). Figuring out how to get a family all together while juggling the meeting schedules of the parents, the after-school practices of the kids, and the bedtimes of the toddlers causes stress.

Until the change becomes the new normal, it can be difficult.  Increase-your-blood-pressure difficult. Migraine-producing difficult. A-need-for-an-extra-piece-of-chocolate difficult, thus blowing your promise to give up desserts and causing even more stress.

When life around our table alters, we deal with change. That change can lead to stress.

Life around my table has changed. I am still trying to figure it out.

Some nights it's homemade bowls of soup with cornbread dripping with melted butter and honey and an entire circle of family. Sometimes it is leftovers. Sometimes it is a bowl of cereal because I am the only one home and who wants to cook?

This piece of daily life. This change to my family circle. This missing.

This -- has proved to be one of the hardest adjustments since Mom died last February. This part of grief comes without warning. It still blindsides me again and again. Mom brought with her an entire community of family and friends and I loved having a full table.

Thanksgiving is almost here -- the one-year anniversary of four generations around my table. This year we will be three generations and eleven people, including two international students from Tanzania and Malawi, freshman at ASU Poly who are newly arrived to the United States.

Talk about life changing around their table!

Strange people. (And I'm not talking about family here! Although ...)

Strange food. (Could we have rice and beans?) (Answer: Yes.)

Strange customs. (Why do you not eat with only your right hand?)

On Thanksgiving, the eleven of us will join hands, nine who are missing an entire generation and two who are missing an entire continent, and we will give thanks to God for the gifts He has given.

Our gratitude will be flavored with nostalgia. And maybe sadness.

But we will join hands and give thanks, nonetheless.

And we will begin a new memory, a new gathering of life, around my table.

If you are experiencing a change to life around your table, my heart is with you.

Some days are so horribly hard.

I come back again and again to the words of Jesus, spoken in the middle of a storm:

"Take courage. It is I. Don't be afraid." Matthew 14:27.

I know the days of wondering if you can even conquer the sheets and covers, let alone put your feet on the floor and face another day. Take courage today, my friend. Take courage. You are NOT alone.

Several of you have asked me what I have been up to in regard to writing. 

Here is my writing life in a nutshell:

March

- Decided to switch to nonfiction, because I realized I barely had time to keep track of my friends and family members, let alone ten imaginary people who wanted to take up space in my brain. These imaginary friends were WAY too demanding.

April

- hired a writing coach. (She told me that I never needed to mention her name, but seriously, hiring Joan C Webb was the best decision I ever made.)

May

- Started writing a book about my cancer journey, along with the journeys of my mom and dad. Cancer comes with one goal - to take it all, but cancer does not have the power to take beauty, courage or our belonging to family, to community, and to a loving, pursuing God.

June and July

- wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. Discovered my creative brain loves 4 a.m. Discovered the family can survive on Marie Calendar's chicken pot pies from the freezer.

August

- Exactly 3 months later, finished the manuscript. Gave the book to five people to get their feedback.

September/October

- worked on a premise sheet (a one-page description of the book) and a proposal (a thirty-page document of the book, including why I am the person to write the book, who would possibly buy the book, how I will help market the book and what I had for breakfast for the past three years - not quite, but you get the idea.)

October/November

- my writing coach met with a contact in the literary world. He said, "Have her send me the proposal and I will have an agent look at it." Sent the proposal which included three sample chapters. Five days later, the agent emailed and asked for the entire manuscript. The agent said she will get back to me in early December.

And that ...

THAT

... is what I have been up to in regard to my writing.

  * from the book, Time Bomb in the Church: Defusing Pastoral Burnout, by Daniel Spaite, M.D.