Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 108

When You Pray…

It’s been a crazy weekend, and today’s slated to be an even crazier day, so I’m pulling one out of the archives today. Be back tomorrow with fresh thoughts!

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“Pray without ceasing.” I Thessalonians 5:17

I’ve known a lot of faithful people in my life. And one of the most striking things I have noticed is that it’s frighteningly easy to abuse faith. To turn it into an idol of its own.

Maybe I should be more specific. It’s easy to abuse religious practice. Like prayer, for instance.

I’ve known people who substitute prayer for action. I’ve known people who go for quantity of words, as if they think if they go on long enough, they’ll beat God into submission. I’ve known people who go for flowery language, thinking it makes their prayers more important. I’ve known people who use prayer, consciously or unconsciously, as a way to lecture other people in the room. (I should add that at least once in every category above, “people” refers to me.)

“Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.” Garth Brooks

And I’ve known people who have bought into the idea of the unanswered prayer. This is one of my biggest pet peeves, because there is no such thing. That lesson, learned in my youngest elementary school days at Catholic school, still forms my world view. God answers every prayer. Every one. But sometimes, the answer is “no.”

And sometimes, the answer is “not yet.”

“If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field alone or into the deep, deep woods, and I’d look up into the sky – up – up – up- into that lovely blue sky that looks like there’s no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer.” Anne Shirley

At some point in my life, someone offered this “formula” for prayer:

First praise, then thanksgiving, and then (and only then), petition.

I struggled for years with the difference between praise and thanksgiving, but finally my daughter taught me the answer to that one.

The trouble is with that last bit. The petition bit. The part that overwhelms prayer for most of us.

The trouble is that we grow up with a wrong-headed idea of what prayer is supposed to do. Prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind. I mean, do you REALLY think you’re going to change the mind of the maker of the entire universe? If that was even possible, I’d lose my faith instantly; who can depend on a God that fickle?

No, prayer is about changing me. It is a lesson in humility, an opportunity to stretch my soul by bending my will to someone else’s. It’s about shifting my attitude from what I want, what I need, what I fear, to what God wants. To what God is asking of me.

That kind of prayer is a lot harder. But it’s also liberating.

I learned the power of this prayer during three years of infertility, when all my life was consumed by the desperate desire for a child. It was such a bruising experience, to pray two dozen times a day, every day for three years, for the same thing, and never once to hear a “yes” in reply. That is spiritual exercise of the most powerful kind. I thought I would never know the reason why God said “not yet” for so long. But in time, that question was answered, too.

“Pray without ceasing.” I Thessalonians 5:17

When I was a kid, I used to hear that quote and shake my head. What a boring life. Are you supposed to just live on your knees? But now I understand that life itself can be a prayer. It doesn’t have to be formal. It doesn’t have to be eloquent. It doesn’t need words at all. It begins with praise, it continues with thanksgiving, and ends with “Thy Will be done.”

And when I manage to live up to it…it works for me.

Sunday Snippets

After a crazy two days of cleaning in preparation for a first grade birthday party this afternoon–wow. I come to you feeling a bit like a zombie as I share my week’s scribblings with RAnn’s Sunday Snippets roundup:

Nicholas’s illness meant that Michael and I had a beautiful visit to my old parish stomping grounds last Sunday.

The Trouble With Absolutes–a parenting post that applies to a lot of other areas of life, too

Julianna got a new bed this week, which she adores, and I shared pictures.

Alex had two moments on the blog this week: a sad moment at baseball and thoughts on his beautiful heart, on the occasion of his seventh birthday.

I Love That About Him

My baby, the child of my heart, turned seven this week. With the literalism of a first grader, he insisted he wasn’t seven until 6p.m. On the way out to the playground, his teacher began to tease him that maybe we shouldn’t have a birthday party after all, but halted mid-sentence. She knows my boy is a sensitive soul. A few hours earlier he had involved the whole class in a discussion of unkindness on the baseball field.

When we came in the door of his classroom that afternoon, Alex greeted us with a passion partly due to the surprise cupcakes we were carrying, and to our presence in his Other World–but also just because that’s who he is. Maybe all children are like this with their own families. I don’t know. All I know is that every day, in almost every interaction, I can see Alex’s love for his family, particularly his little siblings. His fierce adoration can’t be contained. You can see how much their presence completes him.

It occurs to me that this is the essence of my firstborn: he’s 100% heart. Although he’s got a good brain, his thoughts are formed by his heart. I love that about him. He watches the news, worries about the people and situations he sees. Perhaps worry isn’t the right word. He lets it go, but returns to it later, turning over the pieces in his head, trying to make sense of a crazy world. Weather, politics, crime, pop culture–he process his world through a mind formed by his heart. He’s old for his age, that way. It lays him bare to the earthier, more worldly souls among his peers.

He rides himself hard, gets frustrated, and takes criticism deep within, justified or not. Among his peers he often looks frustrated, a little lost amid the alliances and unspoken understandings the other kids get instinctively.

But here at home, among his family, he knows who he is. He doesn’t do as many activities as his peers, and he doesn’t have as much Stuff as many of them do, partly because we choose to live differently, but partly because there just isn’t enough to go around in a family of this size. That is one reason many people don’t have more than the standard two children–this feeling that they’re doing wrong by their kids if they have to split the finite resources of the family more ways. Yet I hold up Alex against that fear. His life is formed and defined by love–by people, not by accoutrements. And he’s such a beautiful soul.

I love that about him. God grant he remains that way into adulthood.

Core

“Mommy, that boy called me stupid.”

I shaded my eyes against the yellow heat of the sinking sun and saw Alex, his big brown eyes simultaneously wide and droopy, pressed against chain link as if trying to squeeze through the backstop and draw comfort from me. I hitched Michael up onto my hip and got up from the bleachers, thinking fast. A first grader’s perception doesn’t necessarily equal reality, but neither can I discount the look on his face.

“Did you say something to him about it?”

He shook his head, looked down at his baseball glove. “He told me I was stupid,” he said again.

“I know it’s hard, but when somebody says something mean, you have to tell him ‘please don’t say that.’”

Coach called the boys then, and Alex returned to practice. But the name calling had sucked all the energy out of him. He didn’t catch one ball all night, and instead of scampering around the field after the missed throws, he trudged, as if the core of his being, that beautiful heart, had turned from brilliant radiance to cold lead.

When practice was over, he returned to me. I hesitated to bring it up again–mountain out of molehill, you know–but he saved me the trouble. “Another boy said ‘I hate being your partner.’”

I sighed and hugged him as we walked toward the car. Cleats and Keds tapped softly against asphalt, our twin cores hurting in unison. Although mine goes deeper, through thirty-seven years’ layers of slights both real and perceived. You think you develop a thick skin, but you don’t. You just hide the pain better. Pain is necessary, I reminded myself, and whispered a prayer for inSpiration.

“You know,” I said, “when people say mean things to others, a lot of times it means they don’t like themselves very much. If you say, ‘Please stop saying mean things,’ they’re going to realize you’re stronger than they are.”

He didn’t answer, but I’ve learned that lack of response from Alex doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t get it. I wanted to tell him it doesn’t matter if he’s not as good at baseball as the other boys, because his heart loves and his ears hear music and his fingers obey, and he’s intensely, beautifully creative and reads at nearly a third grade level. But dumping ointment upon salve until the wound on his soul is a gloppy mess doesn’t help. Kids can tell when affirmation is really just meant to distract them from their own weaknesses.

So we walked the rest of the way in silence, and I put my faith in the future. And I prayed I can shepherd him safely there.

Special Exposure: Pixie and Pixie

Look who got a big girl bed this weekend!

It was quite the adventure, involving two trips to the store (we thought we had a mattress in the closet, so we bought a box spring. And upon assembly, discovered we were remembering backward) and throwing it together after bath, before bed. Julianna was so excited. “De-beh!” she shrieked, pounding Tink with one finger, and with a little repetition, we got as close as “Tee-beh”.

It was the first time in, uh, her LIFE, that we didn’t have to come in and put her covers back on her during the night. And now, coming into that room just makes me happy.

She even consented to share with Alex…briefly.

 Speaking of Alex…today is his 7th birthday! How many happy birthdays can we get in the combox for him?

The Trouble With Absolutes

I used to think I was an “attachment parent.” I have kept my babies, all four of them, close by me, never put them on a schedule, never fed them a bottle, responded to their needs and always proceeded on the belief that we have to learn to be parent and child together.

I don’t believe in letting them cry.

But.

When Alex was about four months old, it became impossible to put him down. He could not transition from breastfeeding to the crib without waking. Couldn’t do it. For a while I laid down with him to nurse, and that way when he finally conked out (45 minutes later), I could cautiously slide away, leave him on the bed, and go on with life.

It worked. I listened to my baby and met his needs.

But 45 minutes takes a real chunk out of married couple time. After a few weeks I realized I wasn’t leaving the house, because if he needed to nap and we weren’t somewhere I could lie down with him and leave him there, we were in trouble. Before long, I was falling apart.

Finally I gave in. We let him cry. Of course, we went in and soothed him every five minutes, then ten, but oh my goodness, it felt wrong. I was a mess. But then–Hallelujah! In less than a week, he learned to put himself to sleep.

Fast forward three children. At 4 1/2 months, Michael is in a totally different environment than Alex was. With big siblings grabbing him by the head and yelling in his face, picking him up, playing with him, he’s perpetually stimulated. All last week, he refused to nap. He would nurse to sleep on the breast and wake up the instant I put him down. If I got lucky, he’d sleep twenty minutes. At night, sometimes he would go down at 8, but often he’d get a six-minute snooze at 7:30, only to be zinged awake again by the chaos of three other kids getting ready for bed, and then he’d be up until 9:30 or 9:45 with us–wiggly, hyper, and wearing us out.

I’m no baby whisperer, but after four kids, I can intuit a lot more of what’s wrong with a child than I could seven years ago. Michael was tired, and he couldn’t get to sleep. He was too dependent on me. That much I knew. What I didn’t know was what to do about it. I was trying to avoid the “let him cry” solution. But when I started to fall apart, it was clear what had to be done.

I believe in attachment parenting. But these days it seems there’s never enough of me to go around, and everything’s getting broken (the baby swing, the CD player, etc.). I raise my voice far more often than I would like–another thing attachment parents DO NOT DO. You never, ever yell at your children. You find ways to discipline positively, without shaming them. So between losing my temper and letting my baby cry, I feel I’m betraying my convictions.

But that’s the trouble with absolutes. They become codified and inflexible, and life involves too many variables. I totally believe in teaching children good behavior by reason and by empathy. And with Alex, that’s primarily what I do. But you can’t reason with a two year old–or a three year old, for that matter–and you can’t have your eyes on your kid at every moment, especially if you have several children. Sure, it’s a worthy goal to distract them before they get in trouble, but when they go around hitting their sisters, or taking toys from their brothers, a calm, reasoned approach is like taking a Rembrandt and throwing it in a blender. Sometimes, they need to see Mommy and Daddy angry, because it’s the only thing that sinks in. I wish that wasn’t the case, but in my experience, it is.

And when a baby’s showing you he needs to sleep, and every other possible solution has been tried without success, is it reasonable to take crying himself to sleep off the table? Is it better to let him teach himself to go to sleep by crying for a few days, or is it better to let him drive himself to utter exhaustion because he can’t sleep at all?

(That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.)

As much as I hate the process, I don’t believe I’m damaging my children. As I have said before, some of the most important lessons of my life were learned, not in joy, but in suffering; not in affirmation, but in shame. Sometimes a good parent has to allow her child to suffer; that truth isn’t going anywhere. As kids grow, they’ll have to suffer through broken friendships, heartbreaks, failures of all kinds, academic and personal. If I try to shield them from all pain, I’ll deprive them of the richness of life.

I don’t ignore my children’s needs for my own convenience, but there are lessons they need in order to become healthy adults. Yes, I fail sometimes, and when I do, I apologize. And I hope from that, they learn another important lesson.

Alive Again

Michael and I went to the Newman Center for Mass last night. That wasn’t how the day was supposed to be. I was supposed to be at 10:00 Mass across town, with the choir and my husband. I was supposed to conduct an a cappella piece and sing harmony on the psalm. But Nicholas’ illness peaked in the night, capping off three days of whining and bloody noses with a night of fever and four hours’ solid dry hacking. At three a.m. I said blearily, “He can’t go to church tomorrow I’ll have to go later, before my meeting.”

So there I sat at five p.m., in the section beside the choir, at my old stomping grounds. As accustomed as I am to the constant jostling for position, it was disorienting to sit alone (well, alone until the baby woke up). But restful, too.

Although this was the Sunday evening liturgy I directed for one short year as a newlywed, the parish repertoire has moved on. I knew very little of it, but I learned, enjoying the sound of a contemporary ensemble that is most of what I would like ours to be, leading a willing assembly actively engaged. (Can I just say…wow.)

There’s something special about that church, and although I love my parish and the community to which I have dedicated the last twelve years, somehow whenever I walk into the building where I met my husband and where I married him, it feels like coming home. So much of my growing-up-in-faith happened within those walls, and sitting there, the memories seemed to leap up in greeting.

There were evening choir practices and prayer circle in the cry room, and the heartfelt hug and prayer of a wonderful woman who could see that something was troubling me in those early months of my anxiety, even though I didn’t have the courage to tell her what it was. There were Sunday morning prayers before Mass, twenty people crowded into a music storage room not wide enough for two to pass each other. There was day after our wedding, when I stood up to ask for  volunteers for my Life Teen music ensemble. It was the first time I ever referred to myself as “Kate Basi,” and the whole assembly, which had seen us grow together for four years, applauded.

Photo by Niccola Caranti, via Flickr

There were earlier memories than that, even. I remember sitting with my parents on a Saturday evening in the days when the church was arranged “in the round,” and the slanting rays of the evening sun blinded, the light searing my soul, flaying it open. It flayed open again last night as I watched my fourth baby stare, mesmerized, at the warmth glowing on polished wood.

I was awake to the holy last night in a way I haven’t been for a long time. And it was beautiful.

Sunday Snippets

Another weekend, another round of Sunday Snippets with RAnn:

I realized this week that my life is a comic strip.

Alex gave me a great motherhood moment this week.

Nursing Michael gave me two posts: a reflection on trying to exclusively breastfeed and be a professional, as well as a tiny spiritual insight.

My latest post for Catholic Mothers Online didn’t generate any comments, which I found a little disappointing, as I think it’s a very important topic for an election year, when people are already screaming at each other and already no one is listening…

I wrote a fiction piece this week.

Fiction Friday: Makeover

Was that her?

The image reflected in the window of a real estate office arrested Alison’s forward motion abruptly, and two young honeymooners ploughed right into her, knocking her leather attaché case out of her hand. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said as papers flew everywhere in the hot wind.

The boy smiled. “Oh, that’s all right.” He and his companion bent and swept the pages together.

“Uh-oh!” The girl darted after a stray sheet flicking hither and yon on the vagaries of a hot, dry wind, swatting at it midair until at last she managed to pounce upon it just before it plastered itself to the front of a delivery truck. She swept her hair out of her face as she returned. “I’m afraid they may be out of order, but at least we didn’t lose any.”

“Thank you,” Alison said.

“Don’t mention it.”

Alison watched them walk on, entranced by the easy companionship, the way their hands brushed, then entwined unconsciously. Had she and Carlo ever looked like that?

She glanced again at the reflection in the window. In the hot July sunlight, an old lady stared back at her.

Well, perhaps that was overstating it a bit. Still, her face had sagged beneath the burden of grief and alienation, and in the glare of the hot noonday sun her ponytail hung stringy and mousy, peppered with gray. In her housecleaning clothes, she looked like a worn-out new mother. Only older.

How long had she been sliding into self-neglect without realizing it? Months? Years? Decades? So much of her identity had been tied up in Jeremy, and now that he was gone, she wondered if all this time she’d been getting by on her son’s reflected glory. Time was, she would never have left the house in her cleaning clothes.

She couldn’t stand by Carlo’s side tonight, not looking like this. Men had it so much easier. A man ages, and he becomes distinguished. A woman ages, and she becomes invisible.

Debra glanced up when she walked into the salon. “Well, hello there, Alison! What can I do for you today?”

“Do you have time for a cut and style?”

“Sure. What do you need? Just a trim?”

Something wild and restless took hold of her, an urge to cast off and begin anew. “No,” she said. “I need a change, Debra. I don’t really know what. I just want to feel like me again. Like the girl I used to be.”

Debra’s plain face split wide. “You know how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that?” She clapped Alison on both shoulders. “You leave it to me.”

Two hours later, colored, bobbed, and made over, Alison stepped back into the heat and turned to face her reflection in the window of the salon. Ghostly in the depths of the reflection, Deb smiled and waved. Alison returned the gesture. The sunlight and the hot wind blew the haze out of her consciousness, waking parts of her she hadn’t been on speaking terms with in months. Years, maybe.

Maybe she could do this, after all.

I had to put this one together more quickly than I’d like, and the idea never developed as fully as I had hoped, so be gentle–but at the same time, please don’t hold back. I love concrits!

This week’s “Makeover” prompt sent me back to my novel about Carlo and Allison. If you haven’t read any of the others, of if you’re interested, here are the prompts about this troubled marriage. (But don’t expect them to make any logical sense, exactly. I’m just feeling out the characters and learning what this novel is about.)

Heartbreak

In The Mist

The Magic Hour

David

Nicholas Is A Comic Strip Waiting To Be Written (a 7QT post)

For example:

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Early this week, in the middle of the night, Nicholas woke me up with his wailing. He’s been having epic nosebleeds again lately, so of course I rocketed out of bed and tore across the hallway, but it soon became clear there was no blood on him. “What’s the matter, honey?” I asked.

“I jus’ want a…BAGEL,” he sobbed.

“Oh,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. What I wouldn’t give to have a bad dream involving nothing more than frustrated Bagel Desire! “You can have a bagel for breakfast, honey, but right now it’s time to sleep.”

“Okay,” he whimpered, and conked right back out.

___2___

Then there’s the thrice-daily mealtime fun. Nicholas sits and plays with his belly button, knocks his milk over, basically does anything to avoid eating his meal (there’s a reason he’s been in the 25th percentile on growth his entire life), and spends his time instead yelling at his sister to EAT YOUR FOOD JUWEANNA. Hypocrisy, thy name is…oh, never mind.

___3___

Yesterday morning, I heard motion in another room as I was getting dressed. “Nicholas, you awake?” I called.

“No, I jus’ asweep,” he said.

Um, yeah.

___4___

On Monday this week, we had Julianna evaluated for assistive technology. At Nicholas’s naptime. It was torture for that boy to sit here and watch her play with an iPad to choose real toys off the shelf to play with. They took mercy on him and gave him a Cookie Monster toy to play with, which kept him amused for a while, but when Julianna pulled out the Wiggles electric guitar, it was very nearly too much for him.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the wheelchair ramp wall, I was trying to nurse the baby to sleep while staying awake myself. Michael was desperate for sleep–hadn’t had a good nap all day. Somewhere in my half-trance, they finished with Julianna and invited Nicolas to play. I dragged myself back from my near-catatonic state and went to put the sleeping baby in his seat. At the very moment of greatest danger for waking, Nicholas saw me return and leaped up with the guitar. “LOOK MOMMY!” he shouted….and tripped. And flung the guitar at the baby’s head.

___5___

One of these days, man...one of these days, that tree is MINE.

But hey, the other kids have their comic strip moments, too. Like when Julianna lay on the floor all morning, whimpering pathetically and patting her tummy to say it hurt. “Do you need to throw up?” I asked anxiously; she made her “no” noise. “Are you hungry?” YAH. More attempts to show herself cruelly starved by mommy who won’t let her eat till she’s dressed. Whimper. Quiver. Pat tummy. “Maybe,” I said unsympathetically, “it’s because you REFUSED TO EAT DINNER last night!”

___6___

And then there’s yesterday’s story about Alex. ‘Nuff said.

___7___

Christian brought me this comic strip out of the Sunday paper last week (as you can perhaps see, it now holds a place of honor on my refrigerator door):

That sealed it: my life is DEFINITELY a comic strip.

(***Incidentally–I also published a fiction prompt today, if you’re interested.***)