My writing self is divided into two beings—Ms. Practical and Ms. Deep. Unfortunately, they aren’t getting along very well these days.

Ms. Practical is bossy and overbearing by nature. I can’t really blame her—she has a business to run, with lots of deadlines to meet and bills to pay. She has learned what she needs to do to keep her head above water, and she’s relentless in her focus.

Unfortunately, she has a way of silencing Ms. Deep in the process, acting as if all that introspective stuff certainly couldn’t be of any real consequence—not when there are Important Clients and Deadlines to attend to. In her pushiness, Ms. Practical manages to convince every last inch of my energies and creative thinking powers to join her side of the operation. My mind becomes an unbalanced longboat, with the entire crew working furiously on the left side, rowing us in mad circles.

Ms. Deep stands on the shore, graciously waiting her turn, just as she always has. One day the bills will be paid, maybe the bank account will be cushioned. One day the kids will be grown—they won’t need to be driven to soccer and voice lessons, picked up from volleyball and helped with algebra. Ms. Deep knows her time to write will come, but it will come yoked to a sacrifice, a loss. It’s that knowledge of what will be lost that gives her patience. There are too many good and beautiful things about life right now to complain or demand her place in the sun. She watches while she waits, soaking in the stories, processing the ideas, capturing still images as the days speed by.

And every so often, Ms. Deep gets to do her thing. Enough of the Important Deadlines are met, and Ms. Practical collapses for a while, leaving everyone else alone. A peace settles over the harried household that is my mind. Ms. Deep carves out a few hours to write on the front porch, to engage in an inspiring conversation with friends, to read and process ideas that might later emerge in new strings of typed words and sentences.

Last summer there was even a mini writing retreat with Jen at her family’s lake house. An essay for the book Not Alone was finished, another chapter of my memoir project was written, and I even found the time and the words to describe why writing should be hard. Ms. Deep was completely in her element. And this summer, in June, I’m heading to the Glen East writing workshop for a week. In case you’re wondering, Ms. Practical is not invited. There simply won’t be room for her overbearing ways.

Photo by sunshinecity

I’m trying to make sense of the tangled mess that’s created when my relationship with God gets all confused with my relationship with Christians.

Somehow the wires get crossed, and suddenly part of me is thinking the words of (usually) well-meaning Christians are coming from God. Then my anger toward the well-meaning Christian gets projected onto God, and so the tangle begins. You don’t have to come up with very many examples of this in your own life to realize how easy it is to let this happen, and how harmful it is when it does.

There’s no question that our human capacity to love and forgive is so miniscule compared to God’s—that’s bound to be a key problem in this confusion. But there’s another significant problem, I think: how vastly different our human perspective is from God’s.

While we’re busy making checklists of behaviors and sins, evaluating how others are doing in a very black-and-white, methodical way, God sees each person’s whole heart, mind and spirit all blended together as a whole, in the context of all the potential he created in us. While we have a knack for focusing on one small piece of one small moment, God sees the enormously big picture—not just where we are, but where we’ve been and where it’s all ultimately taking us.

The checklist Christian compared to a big-picture God

Here’s an example. In 2006, a year after I met Jason and eight months before our wedding, Jason moved in. That’s right, folks, we were living in sin. We made that choice not because we think it’s the “right way to go,” or that waiting until your married is sooo outdated, but because it made a lot of sense to us then, in light of our specific circumstances. I’m going to put it another way, to be extra clear: I am not suggesting that living together outside of marriage is the right choice. It’s simply what we chose, as two people who had each been married before and had been traveling down a long road of pain, cynicism and healing.

And I do not regret it or feel apologetic. Because, do you know what? While some Christians might look at that decision—that time in my life—as sinful, plain and simple, end of story, I see that time in my life as one full of grace, redemption, and reconciling with God and his people (and myself, for that matter).

This is not to say that living with Jason made any of that grace and redemption possible; I’m just saying that those things coincided in my life, and that I believe, deep in my gut, that God was seeing the big, full picture. I believe he was celebrating my progress back towards him, even in the midst of my inevitable stumbling along the way. Because the fact is, I was much closer to God at that time in my life, and striving much more earnestly to be his servant, than I ever was during my first marriage—the time in my life that looked so good on paper to those checklist Christians.

So what do I get from all of this? Two key thoughts:

1. Stop judging others in our inevitably human ways. And since not one of us is capable of judging in God’s way, I suppose we can just leave it at this: Don’t judge. Stop making mental lists of sins and stop assuming that you know anything about a whole person, let alone their whole story.

2. Tell your story. Tell all of it, as it really is, not as you think it should have been or even as you wish it had been. God is bigger than all of our wrong turns, and he is so much bigger than all of the checklist Christians in the world put together. The Bible is full of redemption stories like the ones we have to tell—they certainly aren’t pretty, but they are powerful, because they ultimately point to the power of God’s love in a messy, human world.

Photo by Cea

It’s been quite an emotional news week for all born-in-the-1970s-liberal-Christians, like me.

First we were saddened by the death of Maurice Sendak, whose books shaped not just our childhoods, but our very imaginations.

Then North Carolina residents voted in favor of an amendment that bans gay marriage and civil unions (conservative Christians, of course, were at the helm of that effort, which was endorsed by evangelist Billy Graham).

And on Wednesday, President Obama was the first sitting president to clearly and publicly say that he believes same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

Each issue reverberated in me for one reason or another, driving me from sadness to admiration to anger to celebration. But do you know what really got under my skin? Hearing more than one person mention how surprised they were to find out their beloved children’s author and illustrator, Maurice Sendak, was gay.

Not everyone who has said this is being judgmental, of course. Some were just merely surprised. But the reaction still raises some interesting questions. On one hand, I want to ask, “Does Sendak’s sexual orientation change anything about his talent, or the impact of his books on thousands of children over the past 50+ years?” Amazing stories and illustrations that make us laugh and examine our fears and think about the world are simply amazing. Period.

But on the other hand, I’m glad people are finally making the connection between the “output” they value and the people creating it. As a culture we spend far too much time thinking about people in terms of what they are rather than who they are. The what of Maurice Sendak—of any of us—is a list to pick and choose from: author, illustrator, gay, white, male, etc. The who, however, is not a list, but a beautiful, intricate web tying together all of those traits and talents, and many other factors.

Yes, the talents and contributions of an individual do have worth and value on their own, but I bet the people who make those contributions cannot separate what they create and do from who they are. In other words, they want (as we all do) to be valued and respected as whole people, not divided into neat parts that others can choose and reject, a la carte. As people—whether we are gay or straight, black or white, old or young—we deserve to be seen as carefully crafted fixe prix menus. Each aspect of who we are complements with and informs the others, resulting in a purely beautiful and unique whole, meant to be experienced and enjoyed as a whole.

Maurice Sendak’s illustrations, after all, did not just magically come from his hand, or only from his imagination. They also came from his life, his relationships, his hurts and hopes, and how he experienced the world. And until we begin to fully understand that about one another, we won’t grasp what it means to fully love each other. Love gets way too complicated when we try to divide and conquer, picking and choosing what to accept and reject about one another.

Yesterday, a brief tweet from @MichaelDPerkins hit me hard. I’m not positive he wrote it in response to all of the news and dialogue around the passing of North Carolina’s amendment and President Obama’s speech, but I’m guessing that’s what was on his mind. It sure was on my mind, when it showed up in my Twitter stream:

Love God. Love Others. Go.

That was it. And yes, sometimes I think it is that simple.

Photo by tshein

My kids seem to think that when a skill comes easily it means you’re good at it—you’ve reached a level of success. Ironically, it’s a good thing I no longer believe that myself, because if I did, I would have to conclude I’m a complete failure at parenting.

Of course, I have shared my kids’ assessment of “easy = good” in the past. Long ago I decided if writing is easy and math is hard, I must be good at writing and bad at math. If playing the viola is easy, but only up to a point, I figured when it became hard I had reached the limits of my talent.

There is some truth to this logic, which is, I suppose, why we attach ourselves to it in the first place. I have no doubt, for instance, that my natural gifts are in writing, but that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t get much more skilled than I have in math or music. Because here’s what I’m finally starting to get: It’s when something gets hard that it’s getting real. The hard moments are those breakthrough moments, when you either get stuck or push through to a new level.

The teen years: Where the parental rubber hits the road

Right now, the hardest thing in my life is parenting. Jason and I have been sort of coasting these past few years—no big challenges or concerns, no weighty issues to sort through. I have to admit, it sort of felt like we had figured a lot of this parenting thing out, and we had gotten lucky, too, with generally good, happy, problem-free kids.

But now, our kids are 15, 14 and 12, and suddenly nothing seems to be coming naturally for me as a mom. Every day brings conundrums—issues to sort out, consequences to weigh, doubts to push back into the shadows. I second-guess myself at every turn, trying to choose my battles and decide which message or lesson is most important in any given situation. That my daughters respect me? That they know I love them? That they’re safe in this moment? That they’re learning things that will keep them safe down the road? That they’re learning responsibility and respect for others? Of course, we want all of those things in equal measure, but in real, day-to-day situations it seems like something always has to give.

“I’m not good at this!” I wail to Jason.”It’s so hard.”

As parents, when things get hard we don’t just throw in the towel, like we might with a musical instrument or sport. But it is easy, I think, to get stuck. It’s easy to let things slide, to not follow up, to decide to keep an evening at home peaceful and pleasant rather than bring up difficult issues. It’s easy to try forcing our kids (or at least our concepts of them) into one-dimensional packages that we can more conveniently handle.

And there’s that other, less neutral side of easy, too: It’s also easy to just yell, to take away privileges in a rash way, or to be passive aggressive in our communication of frustration and disappointment. It’s becoming crystal clear to me, as a parent of adolescents, that easy parenting is not synonymous with good parenting.

In fact, if parenting feels hard, it’s probably a better sign that you’re doing a good job. Because parenting is complex. Individuals are complex. Relationships are complex. The world we’re raising our kids in is complex. Why on earth would we expect—or even hope for—any of this to be easy?

Ditching “easy” in favor of “real”

That’s why I’m trying to let go of “easy” and “hard” as measures of how things are going. Instead, I’m going to ask myself, “How real is this?” How real is this relationship? How real is the writing on my blog? How real is my life?

I started thinking about what “real” looks like on Friday, when I was writing a let-it-flow post prompted by Gypsy Mama’s “Five Minute Friday” series. As I wrote, my relationship with my daughters bubbled to the surface as an example of what real feels like:

[Real is] my relationship with my daughters, always situated somewhere between knowing them too well—every small fault and quirk—and never being able to know them well enough, to the full depth of their beings, the full capacity of our love.

Real is complex, which makes it hard. Real, as I also wrote Friday, “…is contained in the words I write when I feel most empty—when I think I have nothing to say, no path to run down, no clear destination to reach…. Real is back and forth.”

And you better believe that’s hard. It’s hard, and absolutely necessary.

Photo by John Tann

I was wondering how I would ever find time to write a post today, then I remembered it’s Friday—a perfect day for a five-minute post! The concept starts at The Gypsy Mama’s blog, where she provides a topic and urges everyone to “Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.” Today’s prompt is just one word: “Real.” I’m setting the timer…here I go!

—————–

“Real” is everything I’m longing for in my deepest of deeps, yet makes me cringe and feel uncomfortable on the surface. It’s that push and pull—the longing and the discomfort, the heaven and the earth, all wrapped into one.

“Real” is the lopsided, experimental loaf of bread that I bake from grainy ingredients in a well-worn pan. It’s my relationship with my daughters, always situated somewhere between knowing them too well—every small fault and quirk—and never being able to know them well enough, to the full depth of their beings, the full capacity of our love.

Real is contained in the words I write when I feel most empty—when I think I have nothing to say, no path to run down, no clear destination to reach. It is all about struggling with those words, then abandoning them to go struggle with the weeds in my garden, then dragging my sweaty, dirt-smeared self back to my computer to try again to do something beautiful with the words. Real is back and forth.

Real is a life that doesn’t look at all like I thought my life should and would. It is a love that is at once less than perfect and so much more perfect than I could have imagined. It is a place, neither here nor there, where God and I meet, and try to hash things out.

Photo by Flickrized

“Are Highly Religious People Less Compassionate?”

I’ve gotta say, I hate reading headlines like this. I hate it even more when I’m not really surprised by them, because I’ve witnessed and experienced their effects firsthand.

In case you’re wondering, the study, which is to be published in full this July, says yes, “highly religious” people do tend to be less compassionate:

A provocative new study from the University of California, Berkeley suggests highly religious individuals are less likely to help a stranger than less religious people.

In three experiments, researchers discovered the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.

Instead, when religious people do help others, their generosity is driven more by factors like doctrine or reputation than by emotions like empathy, the article says. Which makes perfect sense, because doctrine motivated Jesus, and Mother Theresa, right? Oh, wait…

Stories lead to more empathy

Clearly, this makes me upset (and therefore snarky). How did we get here—to a place where caring about others (if we do at all) comes out of our heads rather than our hearts? More importantly, how do we navigate our way out of this tangled, confused mess?

The life of Jesus seems like an obvious place for Christians to start. Jesus was born on this earth with the heart of God, which definitely gives him more than a leg up. But he also worked really hard at giving his compassion meaningful direction, and at cultivating it in others. The way I see it, his two key tools were relationships and stories.

First of all, Jesus went out of his way to connect with all kinds of people, including the last people you would expect him to interact with (at least from a cultural and historical standpoint). And how he connected is also significant. The relationships were intense—even the ones that were built on mere moments and brief interactions. When Jesus connected with people, he stopped and focused, truly seeing people for who they were, and listening with not just his ears, but also his heart.

Those relationships are intricately tied to Jesus’ love for stories: The people Jesus connected with became the main characters in his stories as well as the audience. In other words, the relationships we build feed the stories and provide people to share stories with. Together, the whole process cultivates compassion. A recent guest post on Donald Miller’s blog points to a study connecting reading (ie: stories) to empathy:

Raymond Mar, a professor at York University, noticed a link between reading and empathy. In a study of children, Mar found that the more a child reads, the likelier he or she is to be able to understand the emotions of others.

…the people I know who haven’t picked up a book since high school or college do their professional work just as passionately, but with “me”-centered blinders, unable to see the possibilities outside of themselves.

Loving what is mirrored

One way or another, whether we’re the tellers or the listeners, stories force us to orient ourselves outward, toward others. I love how Newberry Award-winning author Gary Schmidt put it during his recent Festival of Faith & Writing talk: “Story makes us more human—it gives us more to be human with.”

During his talk, Schmidt also shared this quote from Victorian-era art critic John Ruskin: “You will never love art well, till you love what she mirrors better.”

What she mirrors, of course, is the world. The stories. The individuals, each with their own joys and pains, hopes and needs. If Christians can’t grasp that even better because of our faith, something is fundamentally wrong with our relationship with God. We must get better at loving those created in the image of God—those who mirror him—if we are to love God well.

What do you think of the study tying religion to compassion? What has cultivated more compassion in you?

Photo by J. Berg

“Today was sort of depressing,” S, my sixth grader said while settling herself in the car after school.

She and about 40 other students, who had for months been working on a production of the musical Oklahoma!, had given their final performances—at two school assemblies.

“The sixth and seventh graders were mostly respectful, but the eighth graders laughed at us,” S said.

Can I just pause, here, and say that parenting middle schoolers is at once amazingly fun and horribly heart-wrenching? And my middle schoolers have experienced relatively few incidents like this. They are generally happy, have good friends, and even look about 20 times better than I did at their age. But that doesn’t change the fact that 12-14-year-olds are inwardly awkward, uncomfortable, and unsure, which has a way of translating to behaviors like rudeness, cruelty, and “group think.”

As S talked about how hard she and the other cast members had worked, and how it felt to be disrespected, I got the feeling I was in an after-school special, but someone had forgotten to give me the right mom-lines to speak into her frustration. I listened, hugged her, and pulled out the bag of Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips. “It’s hard—but so very important—to be who you are,” I told her.

All greatness has to start somewhere

Later, as I was sharing with Jason what had happened, he pointed out how all those “cool kids” who were laughing—I’m guessing mostly tough boys and jocks—worship movies and music, and the actors and singers who have “made it.” And it occurred to me that nearly every one of those famous performers started in amateur school productions of Oklahoma! or The Music Man. We all have to start somewhere.

Thankfully this experience won’t dissuade my daughter, who loves acting and singing, and has dreams of “making it” that aren’t completely far-fetched. But I’m sure some of her fellow cast members won’t be in another play, even if they really enjoyed the community and the process.

I felt a deep sense of sadness and loss in that. How often are passions squelched and possibilities cut short? How often do we end up abandoning deep-seeded dreams and instead take the safe route—the one that doesn’t draw attention or cruel laughter?

As a culture, we love the stars—their talent, their expressiveness, their ability to step outside of ourselves and invite us to do the same. We love the fame and success, but we don’t love the journey that gets people there. We don’t respect the wrong notes, the rejection letters, the awkward forays out onto the wrong limbs. Most of all, as a culture, we don’t admire people who are different—the ones who get up on stage at the school musical and sing their hearts out, not because it’s cool but because it’s the only thing that feels close to right in their 13-year-old hearts.

How can we begin to change this harmful perspective? When will we recognize and respect the less-than-picturesque journey that leads to innovation, creative genius, and success? And most importantly, when, as a culture, will we admire people who are in the journey—in the process of striving for something big and grand, even if it seems absurd, highly unlikely? We owe this to one another, to our kids, and to our culture.

Photo by Tobyotter

At the writers’ conference, surrounded by hundreds who boldly claim the title “Writer,” it’s easy to feel both more and less like a Real Writer.

Making my way from one session to the next, I’m struck by the wonder and audacity of it all. So many lovers of words in one place. So many book ideas and manuscripts, so many stories, each unique yet carrying strong genetic ties to The Story of what it means to be human—of beginnings and ends, of dreams and failure, of hope.

Of course, there are writers and there are Writers. I sit and listen to Ann Voskamp, Jonathan Safran Foer, Marilynne Robinson, drinking in their words with gulps and gasps, as if to keep from drowning. I recognize that my sense of awe also has another, shadowed side, one that wonders “Who am I to put thoughts into words, and put them out into the world?”

After all, too often I feel empty, blank. Too often I am full of fear, diluting or avoiding the story that needs to be told. Too often I rush my words, squeezing them in to small crevices of time where they sit cramped and cold, without room to breathe and bloom.

But these writers speaking to me in session after session at the conference? These accomplished, prolific writers of gorgeous prose and provoking thoughts? They tell me they have been there too. They speak into my spaces of doubt.

“Maybe creativity is this,” author Ann Voskamp begins, “being comfortable not knowing; taking the posture of prayer; waiting.” An auditorium full of writers, all on the edges of our seats, leans into her quiet, careful words. “When you feel empty, that’s the right creative space.”

I breathe—more deeply than I have in months. It’s as if she has dug all of my doubts and fears out of the jumbled junk drawer of my mind, and carefully laid them out to examine them one by one, speaking directly to each in calm, measured tones rather than addressing the tangle as a whole. Lately I have wanted to yell at the jumble, or to simply run away, but the random junk doesn’t look so threatening laid out like that. It almost makes me smile, as I gaze at each random curiosity I’ve acquired and held onto, even though I’ve known it is of no use to me. Together they fill an entire compartment of fear, but on their own they are small, harmless, easier to dispense of.

“Expect to bury something if you want to create. You’ll either bury your fear in faith, or your talents in fear.” Voskamp’s voice speaks of wrenching decisions, but it is soothing and I know her words are true.

I know I need to slow down my life—to stop “blurring moments into one unholy smear.” I know I need to clear out the fears and make room for poetry, and vision, and encounters with God. “Without vision, the people parish,” Voskamp reminds us, quoting Proverbs 29:18.

I have become parched and brittle, but now I know what I need to do to emerge and move forward, paying attention to the moments and doing my small part in what Voskamp believes to be the calling of writers: “…speaking a language of amazement into a culture that feels it has been abandoned.”

Photo by Joelk75

When I became a parent, I imagined it would go down something like this: I would read some books and experiment with some parenting styles until I found one that was “mine,” then I’d get into my parenting groove and be set for life!

That plan was actually going fairly well, but then I had my second baby, who was completely different from my first. And then those babies got older, and needed different things at different times in their development. Then we moved to a new state, then I became a single parent…you get the picture. There wasn’t a groove. There wasn’t going to be a groove.

Instead, I was recalibrating daily, tweaking how I parented depending on WHO I was parenting, in what context. The big picture goals were consistent—making sure my children were safe, felt loved, and were learning and growing in positive directions—but our paths were anything but straight, paved highways leading to our destination.

Where’s God’s superhighway to my destiny?

The older I get, the more I think that’s how God parents us. I used to think there was that one Superhighway leading to his kingdom, and our goal was to just find it and stay the course. You know—that straight and narrow path. We just had to avoid detours, wrong turns and exits, which at various points in my life proved easier said than done. Maybe we’d start off slow and steady, but eventually we’d get good at handling our “vehicles.” We’d be able to move into the faster lanes, speeding our way to God’s great destiny, wise and skilled at avoiding horrendous crashes along the way.

But yeah, I’m pretty sure it isn’t that straightforward. And I’m simultaneously sad and relieved to come to that conclusion. The sad feeling stems from accepting that cruise control and auto pilot won’t ever be options. I’m not going to wake up one day and realize I’ve arrived, and that things will be simpler from here on out. Instead, just like with my own parenting challenges, each day presents new challenges—reasons to recalibrate, opportunities to hear something new and apply it in new ways.

And that’s where the relief comes in, too. Each day is new. Each of us—God’s children—is different. Of course he gets that, because that’s how he designed it. And of course, if he gets how different we each are and designed us that way, he also tailors his love and guidance.

God’s tailored ways of loving and teaching his unique children

That’s why I’ve been reading the Bible in a new way, too. Yes, there are consistent big picture goals—loving God and loving each other—but many different ways to get there. Now, if someone asks “What does God say about money, or knowledge?” I say “That depends…” rather than finding a few verses to rattle off in response. (And it doesn’t feel like inconsistency, it feels like wise flexibility.)

I also used to think “If Jesus said it—if it’s in the Bible—he was saying it to everyone,” but now I know it isn’t that simple. Now I see how Jesus was constantly tailoring his words to his audience, because he knew them (and knows each of us) so well. The people who interacted with Jesus were specific people, with specific histories and weaknesses, specific ways they needed to be challenged and pushed to grow. Yes, Jesus’ words still speak to us, but I believe they speak to each of us in very tailored, unique ways.

If my take on this is right, it’s both a gift and a challenge. The gift, of course, is that of a very personalized, perfect love—a love that’s tough and gentle, merciful and challenging in exactly the ways we need. The challenge is for us to disengage the cruise control and the GPS on our lives, accepting that we’ll never have an opportunity to use them. Instead, we have to do the harder work of watching and listening, looking for signs and being open to changes in our course. Ultimately, I’m thinking that might be the only way to get where we need to go.

Have you seen evidence of God speaking to you and parenting you in very tailored ways?

Photo by SportSuburban

I made a breakfast table decision way back when my kids were still small enough for a highchair and booster seat: I will do my best to anticipate my family’s morning needs—providing something to eat and drink, and even something to spread on their toast. But once I sit down? I’m not getting up again until I’ve finished my own breakfast. More importantly, I’m not getting up until I’ve enjoyed at least one cup of coffee.

This was a stroke of wisdom that must have come from above. It’s a small thing, but it set the tone for a very big idea: I might be a mom, but I am a person, too. I also get hungry, and tired. I, too, like to sit down and enjoy my breakfast. And some day, as I explained to my toddler, you will understand the magic that’s contained in this coffee cup I hold so lovingly.

Is it possible to love yourself without being selfish?

But even with that precedent set early, I have continued to struggle with this particular aspect of being a mom: how to balance serving my family with advocating for myself. Because I do believe that serving those I love—especially those little ones I brought into the world—is part of my role. I don’t mean that in a “vacuuming in heels, putting on lipstick, and making sure dinner is ready when my husband comes home” sort of 1950s way. I mean that serving is a form of active loving. Creating a safe place, where essential needs are heard and met, where I can set aside my own worries to listen to someone else’s, is part of what I signed on to when I decided to bring kids into the world.

My own mom was amazing at this sort of giving, anticipating and serving. Perhaps too amazing. Kids are bound to be self-centered—it’s just the way we come into the world, all helpless and unaware—but even as I entered adolescence I have no memory of thinking, “Wow, my mom is a person. She has things she’d really like to do, friendships she’d like to develop, dreams and ideas.”

As a result, I now feel both emotions tugging at me, often simultaneously: I feel guilty for not being more selfless, and also determined to shout “Hey, what about ME?!?”

Love involves compromise and balance

Most recently, this problem has played itself out on my calendar. My very favorite, “most important” writers’ conference, which only takes place every other year, is schedule for the exact same days as my daughter’s performances of her school play, Oklahoma! (First of all, how do these things happen? Because they seem to happen to me all the time. I had to miss the first play she was ever in because I was participating in a reading at Powell’s Books in Portland.)

The inner dialogue since finding out about this conflict has been off the charts. I play both prosecutor and defender:

“She is guilty! What kind of mom would miss her daughter’s play? The poor girl will be scarred for life by her mom’s absence and lack of support.”

“But what kind of daughter would want her mom to miss the only conference she goes to—one that is so important for her career and for her sense of community, as a lonely writer?”

To be honest, I have felt physically sick over this. For two full months. I haven’t found peace in either argument, even though I went ahead and signed up for the conference weeks ago.

The best I can do, I’ve decided, is miss the last day of the conference and come home early to see the final performance. It’s a compromise, and maybe that’s the lesson I’ll take home. I am both a mom and a person. I have a responsibility to my kids and to myself—to love and look out for all of us. In order for this balancing act of love to work, we all need to practice honesty, listening, compromise, and forgiveness. And as the mom, it’s my job to lead the way.