Where I Confess a Major Flaw

Telling You How to Live

Sometime Around March 18,2025

Two red wing blackbirds settle on twigs as I walk back towards the turn towards home. It’s good to see them again, to see them eyeing me. I think of Saints who have birds land on their shoulders because they are so inside the Creator. There’s a video of an Orthodox monk where the bird lands on his shoulders, but he has food. Food will do it every time. Though I do believe the old stories of saints being so full of The Presence animals are no longer shy with them. It’s good to see birds fly ahead of me and settle, fly ahead of me and settle.

It's been a week where snow curled over the side of the fence row, something we haven’t seen this winter. I woke up with my heart hurting. We stood at the gravesite of an old friend of Bruce’s. They’d gone hunting and fishing together as young men. Rodney’s mother sold us our first house. When things were rough with Bruce, she said, “Ah. You don’t need a therapist. You’ve been married to him for twenty years. You know how to handle him.” Nobody told us when she died.

Nearly a hundred people stood around in the forty-degree day, the sky clouded over. Rodney’s daughter spoke about how he’d never ever raised his voice. We watched as they slowly lowered the casket into the ground. The undertaker picked a flower to give to his widow.

As we pulled away, I read my Substack notifications. I’d responded to a literary writer’s comment about how the next President should not come from an elite school by saying maybe someone from the trades might make a good president. I made an off handed remark about Joe Biden being incompetent, forgetting that this writer’s audience would take offense. A woman asked how was Biden incompetent? Oops. I responded by saying there is wisdom in the phrase “don’t argue with strangers on the internet.” I am trying my best to follow what Martin Shaw has said about not taking up political arguments, how we are Christians first. But my gosh I can’t tear my eyes away.

Her anger jumped out of screen, almost like a black ghost, combined with watching Bruce’s good friend lowered in the ground, brought me to bless the people at the grocery store, going about their business, picking up vegetables or pulling cans off the shelves.

March 24, 2025

When I turned toward home, I walked into a hard wind, as hard as riding a bicycle uphill in a stiff breeze. It was wild, exhilarating. A cold wind wrapped around my legs. I couldn’t help but think about the Holy Spirit being likened to wind, who goes where he pleases, wind we can’t take hold of or control.

As I write I think of the verse, “Trust in the Lord with your whole heart, lean not to your own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.” But I want to lean on my own understanding and lean hard.

The wind blows so hard I can’t breathe. My heart hurts, yet again. It hurts when I wake up. Sleep is not kind, but my dreams are long gone. There are hymns and prayers that ask for the Lord to watch over our sleep, because the powers of darkness can find us there. Other times I wake at 3 a.m. asking the Lord to wrap his presence around grieving friends.

There are days I fear it’s a heart attack. But my CT scan of my heart shows nothing alarming. My cholesterol, blood pressure are good. My Apple watch shows a sinus rhythm. When I see my sleep doc who is a lung doc, he wonders if my esophagus is spasming. After he says this, the heartburn starts, so fierce it burns the back of my nose. I decide to quit Diet Coke because I am addicted, because it’s kicking up the acid.

Doc flips through the actual CT scan and wonders if he should get pictures of my whole lungs but doesn’t think it’s worth exposing me to the radiation. He calls what he sees Interstitial Lung Disease, not just banding that has stayed stable over two separate CT scans. And I am shook. I see why docs just called it banding, because I’d freak out, because having a name doesn’t always heal. I figured it was scarring from pneumonia or the fact my rheumatologist caught mixed connective tissue disease before it took hold.

I walk past the neighbor’s farm, full of judgements. The fat apple tree stares back. The paddock where the horse lived is empty. Her wandering over for some attention, gave life to the place, that has settled into quiet, too quiet. Mr. P rode out of here in an ambulance. We hear that he had died and was brought back. His heart is failing. I think of his stories about being in a submarine when the Cuban missile crisis went down, his trips across country to his military base, how he and his wife came to our house on their gator, how they broke up the forced isolation during Covid. I think about how we’d go to dinner at Grubsteakers, a restaurant rebuilt after the Fairdale tornado. Mr P spoke the stories of the farms we drove past, what he knew about them.

His son says he was eating supper when the next thing they heard was the death rattle. The nurses worked on him for ten minutes. What a wonderful way to go. Eating supper, your son there, and then be gone. Bruce and I sat vigil with Bruce's mother as she panted for breath like a schooling racehorse, or a woman giving birth to her new life in Christ. (I am looking forward to meeting her in glory with her terrible loneliness fixed right up. I am looking forward to seeing all that light pouring off of her.) I think of my grandmother whose mind was gone, gone, her heart trapping her mind in a healthy body. And when it failed the first responders cracked open her chest. My aunts were appalled.

I walk down the hill into the wind, shoving against me. My opinions are shouting. Bursting out of me. I know how best he can write his book, she can invest her money, she can find a home to live. My advice is so loud, I almost want to tell my friends, “Please, please don’t tell me your story because I’ll tell you what I think you should do.” My spiritual friend suggests I ask if they want to hear my advice, but I often barge ahead.

I have read Stephen Freeman who says it’s not on us to change the world. And the famous CS Lewis quote: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult.”

Lewis is right. I can be a moral busybody. I want to help so badly, advice bursts out of me, while people hear me saying they don’t know best how to live their lives. I just want to help is all.

I forget to preface my remarks by saying, “Take my advice, weigh and measure it. If it feels right, use the insight. If not, simply ignore me.”

I also think about the prophets who pushed past their fear to speak words people did not want to hear. Jeremiah felt God’s words like fire in his bones. He couldn’t not speak. I have worked for years in therapy to find a way to speak up. My fuse is so long that I don’t speak when it would be better, cleaner to cry, “Ouch.” But I let it go. And now I want to take hold of that honesty, keep my mouth shut, let people be, respect their boundaries. But how wise is it if they are heading for a cliff?

So I take my words to prayer, though I am stalled not knowing how to pray. Do I pray for Mr P’s healing when his body is tuckered out?

My tears wadded up. Tears that kick the acid into my throat. Make my heart hurt. I am going to miss Mr P, pulling up in his gator, our sitting on the steps talking. I miss his wife who passed a few years ago. I miss the horse, the tiny work of the cross going to their barn twice a day for two months to treat her moon blindness. Both Mr P and I were relieved when the vet released me from the chore. But it was a lesson in tiny taking up the cross, doing something that wasn’t convenient.

I pray for Chuck to find a peaceful night and a perfect end. I pray for his healing. Bruce says just give him to the Father.

The wind blows hard. The Spirit fills me so full so I can’t breathe.

March 25, 2025

Today was so quiet I hear no trains, no planes, and no trucks pass me. There is no roaring of wind. I could hear my footsteps on the gravel. The sun broke through the clouds, to pool light on a distant farm. It looked warm, yellow, a promise. The sun shone in my face. I looked down at the gravel, averted my eyes.

Last night’s readings touched on Psalm 8, the magnificent Psalm that points to the majesty of the heavens: “When I look at your heavens the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him” (Ps 8: 3 – 4, ESV).

When I was a little girl, I’d stand before the men sitting around a kitchen table and speak this Psalm. I could almost feel their admiration for such a little one. At Bible camp I clomped down the long stair steps to stand up and say the same thing. I was so very impressed by the stars, their distance, their mystery. The world hurt so much I wanted to visit one.

But this time when I read it, I was struck by “Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger” (Ps. 8: 2). Of course I think of Jesus coming as a baby, but I also wonder if this speaks to the least powerful, the call Jesus made to become as children to enter the Kingdom. There is a power in a child’s delight and wonder. Power in their insignificance as far as influencing the world. Power in their ability to play. I hadn’t thought of my speeches as a girl until now.

As I walked in the quiet day, the answer came back as it has in the past to take my advice, the stuff I see, and talk it out with the Lord. The Spirit prays for us with groans and Jesus is at the right hand of God interceding. He can take my words and sift them towards a person’s good. And I can get the words out of my system. When I have practiced listening to a person’s story with the intent to open healing, I have gone blank, not knowing what to say, listening. Maybe that’s my answer to this hard impulse to tell people what I think. (Even as a teacher I asked questions and listened.)

Right now, carrying people in my prayers has gotten to be too much. Maybe it’s time to lay the people, that I pray for, in God’s hands, let them be. Maybe it’s time to let sleep be still.

March 27, 20

25

Finally, we drove Mrs. Horse after five months of her standing by the fence, wondering when I’d come out. Her eye softened like you wouldn’t believe when we brought out the harness. I remembered what Linda told me last year, to talk to her, tell her what a good horse she is being, to not be afraid to use my voice. Instead of pulling her to turn I spoke, “Right, right.” And “Left, left.” I squeezed my ring fingers a bit. We just walked around the south pasture because the north field spooked her enough, her power hard into the bit, that we needed to build our confidence.

A swirl of leaves blew up in front of her, one of those swirls, that can be joyous in the fall. She startled, swung left, then right. I stayed quiet, loose, laughed. She jigged a bit and then settled.

We watched smoke rise by a farm in the distance. March burning ditches, burning piles on this quiet day with no warnings not to burn. As soon as I took the harness off Morgen buckled her legs to lay down for a good scratch. She leapt into a buck and ran to the other side of the barn, ready to ask for a flake of hay.