january is for chain smoking
for the foxhole heroes--i see you
A thick blanket of vapor lays across Lake Coeur D’Alene. The sky is blue with thin ribbons of cloud, only slightly diffusing an otherwise brilliant sun. Snow covers the high hills and all is glitter and crystal. Everything is still, other than the wisps of mist rising from the lake. They pull up from the surface of the water like dancers and break and sway until they join other low hanging clouds that tangle around the tops of evergreens. It’s negative two degrees but I stand outside coatless long enough to feel the blood in my veins sparkle.
The pull to grow, change, redefine myself is ever present, but not today. Today I sit in a large cabin surrounded by vapor and trees and a lake and silence and women not unlike myself. We’ve all arrived in different states–some joyful, some burnt out–but right now, we sit in silence. I sit across the table from two ladies carefully painting with watercolors. Another sits behind me, wrapped in a blanket, warm mug in hand, studying the lake. Still others emerge from the sauna, pink, glistening, smiling. We’ve all had breakfast, done yoga, clutched our mugs and with not completely steady voices prayed and recited the morning office together. We closed our eyes, imagining ourselves as the woman at the well. And now, we drink in the silence.
Friends, let me tell you something–January is not for the goal setters, the step trackers, the marathon runners. My paper calendar did in fact turn over on January 1st but the liturgical calendar began the first Sunday of Advent. My only goal at that time was to hopefully catch one, maybe two Sundays of Advent. We’re in a season of hard things and the more I repeat that the more I realize how long we’ve been in this season.
Seven years. We’ve been in a hard season for seven. Years.
January 4th, 2017 I lost my mom and best friend to cancer. A year after that I battled crippling pain that caused me to be bedridden for months. Not long after that, I had surgery. Shortly after that I started a job surrounded by supposed other Christians who regularly shamed me for my lack of homogeneity. Shortly before leaving that job, David and I became foster parents and had our first placement–and that was 2020. Locked behind closed doors, we were new parents, dealing with the government machine that is child welfare, with little to no support from family or friends. David lost his job during the Lenten season and so we were sans employment, sans support, sans *almost* everything that kept us tethered to the ground. Sam’s legal case just about killed everyone involved, but in October of 2022 we adopted him and we had one big prayer answered. But more storm clouds were about to move in.
By February of 2023 we had bought our home in Spokane. We thought we saw a light parting the clouds, and in a few ways it was–we loved our home, we had found a church that felt safe and full of loving people living side by side with one another. But our sweet boy was about to begin struggling in ways we had never before seen—ways for which we were horribly unprepared. Our days felt like weeks while we were plunged into a state of fight or flight–a season that has yet to end. Today, is full of questions and exhaustion. It is not a clean slate. The road is not rising up to meet us, but we continue to trudge down it, even in the pouring rain.
This recap is not to ask for pity or for you to compare your story to mine. It’s a chance for me to say these things aloud and for someone (anyone) within the internet ether to bear witness. The grief, shame, fear, and anxiety we have faced since the end of 2016 has been constant. Maybe you resonate with that. If so, I am so incredibly sorry. A five pound weight carried for years can dislocate the muscles from your arm. Weight is weight, sorrow is sorrow, and sometimes I want to go outside and scream just so I can be heard.
Someone, please, bear witness to this! Tell me this is hard so I don’t lose my mind.
What I want is to be able to press my call button and for a round faced nurse with compassionate eyes to come in and ask if I’m ready for more painkillers. Yes please, and thank you. In an IV drip–keep it coming.
But that’s not what happens.
Instead of an IV drip, I get the occasional shot of adrenaline to the heart, ‘Pulp Fiction’ style. Just enough to get my system going again and for me to remember all of the sadness my body has been carrying for so long. My hands shake, my eyes are quick to well up with tears. I cannot remember the last time the bottoms of my lungs accessed oxygen. And yet, I go on.
But today is not full of adrenaline, and I’m thankful for that. Today I stood on a snow covered balcony and let my nostrils do their best to freeze shut. I drank in the slight painfulness of the biting air and allowed it to be a sedative to my war torn heart. Julian of Norwich said that all shall be well, but she did so while experiencing crippling pain.
There’s a place and a time for goals, but I don’t think refugees worry about getting in 10,000 steps a day. I don’t think soldiers count their calories or make work goals. Deep sea divers focus on their breath to get to the depths they need to go–it’s doubtful they’re thinking about how their butt looks in their wetsuit.
The retreat I am attending is a wonderful pause, but it won’t reset my life. The missiles that fly overhead will find some place to strike–they always do. But the chance for a break might make life in the foxhole a bit more tolerable. Or tactical. Personally, when given a temporary cease fire, I use time that to regroup, replan, and to try to take one deep breath before everything starts falling apart again.
Recently while at the dinner table, David threatened Sam with nipple twists and Sam, who has never taken himself seriously since his birth, dissolved into laughter. The two of them fell completely apart and David looked at me later and said, “You know, he’s magical when he’s not being maniacal. I have high hopes for him–but in between that I have to chainsmoke.” I think those words are something every parent on the planet can relate to on some level. Heck, anyone, parent or not, can relate to this. Sometimes, even in the midst of a full on air strike, you’ll find foxglove growing in your foxhole.
My mother once told me that you can let your circumstances make you bitter or make you better. If anyone could find flowers growing in the dump, it was her. Because sometimes the pain becomes the gift. The sky is never as blue as when you’re looking up at it from a dark place.
So January is for Sisyphus, rolling the ball up his eternal hill, pausing a moment to smile because the sun is warming his back. It’s for Joan of Arc, charging into battle, knowing exactly who and whose she was before dying. It’s for ordering flower seed packets in tandem with making doctor’s appointments. It’s for cold plunging your heart, hoping it comes out bright eyed and sharper than before.
You are welcome to eat more greens and try to get more steps in and start that gratitude journal. But as for me and my house, we’ll be chain smoking and looking for foxgloves in the foxhole.
Always,
Emily
P.S. Unsweetened coconut water with lemon and sea salt won’t solve your problems, but they might make your morning routine a little brighter. It has for me.
I do understand at least emotionally. It is a marathon up alot of hills. I love you