First page of the fairy godmother archive.

cinderella.

Posted by jessica on Dec 13, 2010 with 5 Comments
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
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I keep thinking about flickering lights in the woods. I see them in my mind’s eye. I get up, I follow them. I am not content that they are distant pleasant distractions; I wonder if they will lead me to a better place than here, and so I go.

I think that’s a metaphor, and maybe a strange one at that. But at six am I cannot sleep, and this is what I am thinking, among other things. It is odd for a girl who was born asleep to not be good at sleeping right now. Sleep is part of my birthright, it would seem; my first showcased talent on this earth.  Oh well, a real talent never really leaves. What is that verse in the Bible? Something about the gifts and callings from God being irrevocable? Well then, my good-at-sleeping-ability will be back around presently, I suppose.

I am also thinking about happy endings and fairy tales–stories that leave you feeling like it’s worth it. All of it. Because look where you are now. As a small girl, I used to read Cinderella every time I felt sad and hopeless inside. It was my parable, the lesson I wanted to learn. The story of a girl who had nothing on the outside, but everything on the inside–a heart full of song, animals who she really loved, and the ability to never stop seeing beauty in the midst of what seemed like drudgery to most everyone else–spoke to me. She also had very tiny ankles, just like a good Disney Princess. That is a small aside, but I have always thought ankles are rather important.

But Cinderella’s heart was postured right. And she didn’t have a guarantee that a Fairy Godmother and subsequently a Prince would show up, but when they did, it wasn’t like her heart had to change much to reflect that kind of joy and goodness and grace.

Her heart was sort of there the whole time. Finding the grace, finding the joy. Even if it was just  a small, fat mouse in a belly shirt. Actually, come on, I could live on that kind of joy for a long time, were I to discover a Gus-Gus of my own.

Over the past year, I have been disappointed a lot. To the point where sometimes the taste of ash in my mouth feels normal. Still, I don’t want to learn the lesson of disappointment. I don’t want to be afraid to hope. I was talking to my brother about this today and he told me that life without hope is a bleak, bleak thing. And I agree.

Somebody came up to me in church today and asked if he could pray for me. I don’t have much to lose right now; I would accept prayer from the devil himself, if he seemed sincere. Just kidding, that’d be weird. But the man who prayed for me–I don’t know him at all. He carried an actual handkerchief in his hand and I was relieved that he did not offer it to me. I don’t ever want to use somebody else’s used handkerchief. Just one of my goals. But he told me that he sometimes cries when he prays for people and then started wiping his own eyes with it, and telling me things I already knew, for the most part. “You have had a hard life,” he said.

At one point, this would not have been the case–but now, it rather is. Though I try not to think about life in such black and white categories. Yes, sometimes I have to scrub the floors while everybody else goes to the ball, metaphorically speaking, but then there is Gus-Gus. There is joy. There is humor. There is something good–those flickering lights in the woods that I see, even if it’s just in my mind’s eye.

By now the man and I are both crying and I am still relieved that he is not trying to share his handkerchief with me.

“You have had many disappointments,” he continues, “Many painful disappointments and God sees them. He’s taking them from you and he’s giving you grace in the moment.”

Grace in the moment.

I am not sure what that means. But I think it has something to do with Gus-Gus and something to do with flickering lights in the woods and something to do with the posture of my heart and something to do with choosing hope despite the disappointments that would lead me to choose something that is decidedly less risky than hope.

Because, yes, life without hope is a bleak, bleak thing, indeed.

punching life in the face. Or at least parts of it, anyway.

Posted by jessica on Apr 3, 2010 with 14 Comments
in Funny Stuff, I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
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It’s weird, now that I’m not married, my feelings hardly get hurt at all anymore. That might sound strange, but it’s true. And sure, I get sad or annoyed because of others sometimes, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how this person has hurt me and how we need to work it out and I wonder if maybe he’s gay, but oh, actually he’s just fallen in love with someone else, so it all makes a sad kind of sense now.

And yeah, I’m just generalizing here.

But lately, the conflict is within.

And it has to do with my thoughts and my fears and how they can gang up on me. Because just when I thought I was having a really good time at recess, they’ve suddenly taken my lunch money and oh well, it’s okay that they have it because I’m not hungry anymore anyway.

Because dear God, I get scared sometimes. I feel misplaced sometimes; like everybody else got an invitation to the ball to meet Prince Charming and I am Cinderella and I am in rags and oh sorry–that part that you loved as a little girl–the part about the talking mice and the fairy godmother who makes everything okay for you? That’s the part we made up. Giggle, giggle, high-five.

And sometimes I am not good at silencing those thoughts. Sometimes my tears say what I cannot; they respond when otherwise I would simply sit and listen, and that’s something, I suppose.

But I think I need to get better at this; I think I need to be more like a friend of mine who, when he was younger, punched someone in the face.

Because see, this friend is a very kind soul. The kind who wouldn’t hurt a fly, as they say. Well, actually, he might hurt a fly, but definitely not if he could help it. And he would certainly not hurt a toad. Or at least, he made sure not to once, by stopping his car in order to let the toad hop across the road, unmolested. Whoa. Unmolested makes it sound like my friend saved this toad from a lot more than just getting squished.

But, anyway.

I randomly asked him today if he had ever punched someone before (the friend, not the toad). It was one of those questions you ask while thinking that you already know the answer. It’s a script; he’ll say no and then you’ll move on to something else. Until he said yes. Whhhaaa? And then, Um, why?

Because there was this kid who was so mean to me, he said. He made fun of me all the time, told me nobody liked me, and called me all sorts of things.

And so you just punched him one day? I asked.

Well, he continued, This had been going on for a long time. He’d always pretend to be really nice in front of my mom, and then when she left, he’d be cruel again. Finally he was making fun of me in front of a lot of other people and I just did it. I punched him in the face and gave him a bloody nose. This kid never made fun of me again.

And I love this story; it’s so perfect, it’s like a sitcom. But the kind of episode that I liked to watch–not the kind that would stress me out, like when the guy would accidentally agree to take two different girls to his prom and then have to juggle two dates who knew nothing about each other until, inevitably, the jig would be up and he’d be left alone at the prom before the half hour program had run out of time. Ugh, the stress of it all. Don’t be an idiot. Just take one girl, pay attention to just her like she deserves, and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S GOOD AND HOLY, DON’T LEAD A DOUBLE LIFE, NOT EVEN AT THE PROM.

Sorry to yell, I get a little passionate about that kind of thing lately.

But well, punching someone in the face isn’t exactly the nice way to go, right? I mean, it’s not the kind of lesson that’s spelled out in black and white under the pictures you’d color in neatly at Sunday School. But in my friend’s case, it got the job done.

And I think I need to punch my thoughts in the face sometimes. I don’t care if that’s nice or not. And I think I need to get divorced sometimes; I don’t care if that’s nice or not. Nice to whom, anyway? It’s truth. It’s free. It’s reality. It’s acknowledging what’s wrong, what’s ugly, what’s been broken until it no longer even is and deciding to not live in those hideous, messed up places anymore.

And the other night I was talking to a different friend. Someone who has been shocked and saddened by the past events in my life. He looked at me squarely during our conversation and said, Lately, life makes me want to punch it in the face. To which I added, And once you locate Life’s face, I’ll aim about three feet lower and Life will really know how we feel about what’s been happening.

And so we made a pact.

And then we laughed because it was funny.

Which is usually why people laugh, I guess.