The importance of a voice

These last two weeks, I actually sensed God's desire for me to open up more about my personal life. I've written about my struggle in telling the whole truth in the memoir I recently finished writing, and about the severity of my experience with post-adoption depression after we brought our daughter Evangeline home from Ukraine. 

A little bit of electricity zapped my fingertips as I hit the publish tab on both posts. What would people think if I put myself out there? I should just keep these things to myself.

This year, in addition to therapy and after school activities and church and writing and querying agents for my book, I've also had the privilege to speak to a handful of MOPS groups in the Chicago land area. I talk about the birth of my daughter in the former Soviet Union and her diagnosis of Down syndrome and about the grief that ensued for almost a year over the loss of the child I expected. I have other presentations about how to teach our kids to be good friends to those around us with special needs, and about loss and grief in motherhood. 

Every time I have a presentation, there is a part of me that is afraid of judgement. Maybe I shouldn't share all of me. Maybe I should just share the good Christian/ pastor's wife/ missionary parts of me and tuck away the other parts: the mom who didn't want her child. The mom who went to a bottle of Chardonnay instead of to the Lord. The mom who adopted another child with Down syndrome; a quasi stab at redemption, only to find that she, of course, was still the one who needed redeeming.

But each time, and I'm serious when I say this, I can almost hear God's voice saying, "share all of you, Gillian. Because in the hard parts, in the times you made bad choices, in your brokenness and lack of faith, I was there. And that's MY story in you."

Before I speak, I usually run to the bathroom and grab a wad of toilet paper to sop up the sweat underneath my arms. I smooth my hair, and look at myself in the mirror. 

I think of God's voice telling me not to waste the life he's given me. I think of one mom who may be struggling. If my voice encourages her to speak up to someone about her struggles, than sharing the ugly parts of me is more than worth it.

And I think of Polly's voice, chattering in my ear non-stop throughout the day. I think about her reciting the Star Spangled Banner with her class in the morning at school. I think about when she tells me that she loves me, and how it fills me up to the brim of my existence with thanks and praise that I get to be her mom.

I think about Evangeline. Oh, how I long to hear her voice. I anticipate it. I wait for it. And until then I stand up for her as her voice.

So, I step out in front of strangers and tell them my story, and I keep querying agnets for my book, and I keep writing down my rambling thoughts here. 

I include the embarrassing parts for sure. But I also include the best parts, how Polly and I are crazy in love now. How thankful I am to be Evangeline's mom. How awed I am that God knew I needed to be broken in such specific ways in order to be used for his purposes and for his glory alone.

Last night, I got an email from someone who attended one of my talks in September thanking me for my willingness to be vulnerable and for sharing my dark moments, thoughts and actions in my presentation. She is a mother to a child with special needs. Here's a little bit of what she wrote:

 

What you said made me feel “normal”, connected and accepted.  (I’m tearing up as I write this to you, even now, because it meant so much to me and I understand how difficult it is to be honest like that with others…even if they are “strangers”.)

That's really the point of why I do what I do. 

I have a voice, and I am learning not to be afraid to use it.

What about you? How are you using your voice?

Why it is hard to tell the truth in my memoir

 (NOTE: I added this post to Joy in this Journey's life: unmasked linky. Read more here.)

Most of you know I recently completed a memoir and am now querying agents for representation.

So far no one's bitten. I have received a handful of polite rejections regarding my project. I suspect I will continue to get rejections for a while. There are just too many aspiring writers trying to get their work in print. Some agents claim over 100 new query letters hit their inbox every day. EVERY DAY! And so I trudge on, do my research, send the queries, and continue to work on my craft.

But I have a confession: sometimes when I get a rejection, I breathe a slight little sigh of relief. It's not that I love rejection ( I mean, come on, I was in Junior High once). It's not because I want to tell one more person in my life that I have spent over three years writing a book and it seems that no one, as of yet, wants to read it.

I breathe a slight little sigh of relief because of fear. I made a commitment to the story and to God to tell the whole truth about those first years of Polly's life. In memoir, (as in life) its a no-no to lie. When I got serious about writing our story, I knew that I would have to be real about everything that happened after Polly was born. As a missionary and pastor's wife, my response to having a child with Down syndrome was much less than Christian. The bottom of my faith easily fell out. I got depressed. I stopped showering. I drank too much Chardonnay. I struggled to love my baby.

Do I really want people to read all of that?

To tell the truth, the answer is no. I don't want people to read the whole story because I am afraid of what they will think of me. I would rather hide the hard parts of my life and let them think that I scooped up my child with special needs and said a prayer of thanksgiving for her life and moved on. I would rather them think that I am always a woman of faith, worthy of the call to be a child of God.

But Flannery O'Conner says the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

I would also add that truth loses its power when altered.

Even though I am afraid, I realize that my story isn't worth telling if not told in its entirety. The very essence of my memoir's power (if there is any) is brokenness. The fact that God came in and rebuilt me and my faith and my relationship with my baby after I fell apart is the real story. The redemptive story. And I am convinced the very thing people need to hear to truly get a clear, non-superficial, non-judgmental idea of Jesus.

I used to think of redemption as a one time thing. I believed in Jesus when I was sixteen years old. His payment for my sins on the cross equaled a done deal. I still believe this. It is the very core of my beliefs.

But I also believe that we are all a work in progress. There is a continual need for everyday redemption. The kind of redemption that heals a mother's heart. The kind that sets a person back up on the wagon after he has fallen off, that helps someone apologize to her kids for freaking out over spilled milk, or causes a shoplifter to put the bra in her purse back on the shelf in Target. A redemption that showed me that the child I was afraid to mother was the exact child I needed to reach depths of joy and wonder otherwise unknown in my life.

So I will keep putting myself out there. If my memoir publishes one day, not everyone will like it. There will be criticism (well deserved, I should add). There will probably even be disappointment. But most importantly, there will be the truth of everyday redemption and unexpected beauty, displayed in the birth of a child with slanted eyes and the widest smile on the planet.

And I think, that's enough.

13 years today!

Happy Anniversary to my husband, Sergei.

When a writer has no words... you know it's love.

The kid at the piano

My friend Alyson (who is also married to a minister) shared this beautiful story/thought today and I asked if I could post it on Pocket Lint.

"i'm sure you've all heard the story about the kid at a famous pianist's concert who sneaks up on stage and starts playing a messy version of chopsticks on the grand piano. the famous pianist sneaks up behind him and begins to play too, transforming his banging notes into beautiful music, all the while whispering in the boy's ear, "don't stop, keep playing, you're doing great, don't stop." it's a powerful story and one of my favorites.

well, i feel like that kid lately. we've had a rough couple weeks both within our church and with unity with other churches in our community. my husband and i are trying to remain faithful, we are keeping at it, but feel like we are banging our heads against the wall.

however, all along the way, God has given us these blessings, sometimes really crazy things that are only explained by God's greatness and i feel like he is behind us at that piano whispering "don't stop, keep playing, you're doing great, don't stop." we're not doing great, our version of chopsticks sounds terrible, we're just banging on the keys. but God, in his infinite wisdom, is transforming our feeble attempt. and THAT makes it worthwhile."

This week I've been discouraged. I identify with the feeling of hitting your head against the wall on so many levels; our church, the kids, my writing...even my marriage. I need a good couple of weeks to catch my breath. I'd like to check in to a hotel and just sit and absorb the silence, to eventually reach for my Bible and gain perspective, encouragement, the pep talk as to why any of this is even necessary.

Right now I just want to crawl back in bed.

I so needed this piano story today. When I read Alyson's words my eyes teared up.

Life is as swift and high and low and curvy as Great America's largest roller coaster.

We played twenty questions today at our MOPS meeting. Someone was asked about roller coasters; fun or scary. The mom said that as a kid they were fun but as she gets older they get more and more scary.

Ain't that the truth?

I'll read and reread these words, Alyson. Thank you.

In the zone

Last Thursday night I went to a Moms Night Out for my kids’ school. It took me an hour to figure out what to wear before I left. It was not going well. In a moment of pure insanity, I even tried on a pair of maternity jeans I had set out for a friend who is expecting. While admiring the boot cut fit, I schemed about a shirt that would actually cover the elastic band around my waist. Then I imagined bending over at the party and showing off my secret to neatly dressed, put together women and I peeled off the jeans and chucked them across the room.

Going to the party was definitely out of my comfort zone.

Which begs the question: where is my comfort zone?

And the answer: I have no idea. I have not been comfortable for years.

There have been many changes in my life in the last six years. Sometimes I liken myself to having gone through menopause several times.

First we moved to Kiev, Ukraine. Elaina was 2 1/2 and Zoya was 9 months old. For two years my husband helped out with a church plant in another part of town while buying groceries, paying bills and looking after his little foreign family. I studied the Russian language full time and learned to walk to the Metro station looking down at my feet. Things that came easy to me, American mannerisms like smiling at strangers, wearing your shoes in the house and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese were boxed up and left in my mom’s attic over the garage in Michigan.

Time went on. I tucked comfort around my children in our little seventies style apartment like a warm fleece blanket the only way I could think of. I mixed our new culture with the old, pouring the American Happy Birthday song in with the custom of not wrapping birthday gifts in Ukraine. We dressed the girls up in costumes for New Year’s Day and pretended it was Christmas. I found the only store in Kiev that sold Lasagna noodles.

Everything I did in Ukraine was uncomfortable, until one day it wasn’t, and I was able to conjugate the verb ‘to buy’ in Russian’s past, present and future tenses. After three years there I noticed friendly faces around me, offering to show me how to make a warm compress for my daughter’s cold instead of reaching for Tylenol. We were part of a church that was growing closer to one another and to God, and my oldest daughter was learning addition and subtraction in her Ukrainian preschool.

I almost felt comfortable. So we decided to try for our third child.

God blessed our efforts and along came Polly. She was born there in Ukraine, three weeks early, in a private hospital that looked a lot like our western hotels. After her birth I had to learn a new language. I had to find out how to speak special needs; words like Down syndrome, IEP, therapy, hypotonia.

We landed (twenty days overseas in the NICU, packing our lives up once again, saying goodbye to our church) in Michigan and attempted to find comfort in our new surroundings once again.

I thought that moving back to the States would be easy. I already spoke the language here. Only, my time overseas changed me. A large part of me identified with Ukraine. I was out of place in church. The music was loud. There were too many faces. Every thing was so big and people had a lot of stuff. I came home from Zoya’s preschool round-up drenched in sweat. I remember standing in the school supplies aisle at Walmart, overwhelmed by the variety of paper and pens and lunch boxes.

And then last summer, we moved again, from Michigan to Chicago, from rural to urban, from middle class to upper class, from being average church goers to my husband pastoring a church.

And once again I am out of my comfort zone.

So, you see, there really is no such thing as small talk in my life. Which is why I dreaded the Mom’s Night Out last week. My small talk either gets big quickly or it gets quiet. Simple questions like, “where did you live before you moved here?” or “what does your husband do for a living?” or the ever present, “tell me a little bit about your kids?” do not have simple small talk answers.

After I found an outfit that fit, the party last week wasn’t that bad. I made small talk. The questions came up and I answered shortly, “we lived in Ukraine,” “my husband is a minister,” “I have three girls; seven, six, and two.”

My life has changed so much and so quickly, at times it’s like watching a three ringed circus. I have the poles and the plates, I am just having a hard time getting them all to spin at once.

In the midst of all these changes, I am finding that comfort is not really the point.

I speak different languages; special needs, English, Russian, Christian, urban, rural. And every language molds me a bit more into who I am to become.

I guess I am learning to speak small talk here in Chicago as well and to be OK with it.

That, in and of itself, brings me a bit of comfort.