Uninvited

My husband and I were not invited, and it hurt. Half our family was at the function, or invited to it, but we were not invited, we who have invested so much. We who have laid down our lives for them and loved them so dearly. We were not invited.

I found out in a roundabout way, when someone there texted me and asked why aren’t you here? Someone who assumed, as I would have, that we would be invited. Where am I, indeed? I am in bed. I am about to start reading The Solitudes. I have been looking forward to reading it, but haven’t been in a place where I can read anything lately, and finally now I’m in a place. But when I learn that he is at their party, and even his girlfriend was invited to their party, and many other folks besides who they have always criticized behind their backs are all at this party, and we weren’t invited, my heart sinks. I realize with a start that I too must be among those criticized and unloved behind their backs, but I must be far worse in their book because I lack an invitation, and these others do not.

I am at home, in my bed, trying to read The Solitudes. I try to focus on the words on the page, but realize after reading the same paragraph three times straight, without comprehension, that I can’t see the words because my eyes keep filling with tears. I’m hurt. My heart aches and burns and I’m crying, and I am a Grown Woman. I am a Grown Woman with lots of degrees and training who has provided therapy and help for others and won national awards and written books, but all this amounts to nothing as I am denied by the people I love. Because people invite others to their events out of duty or pity, utility or love or liking, but to be uninvited means to be unwanted at all, for any reason. It means one is not a duty. One is not pitied, and one is not useful. And neither is one loved or liked enough to receive an invitation.

To be uninvited is such a deep loss, for the root word and meaning for abandonment is from the Old English verb bannan, meaning “to summon.” To be abandoned means literally “to be uncalled,” uninvited, unsummoned. To be uninvited when others are welcome at the proverbial table is to feel that feeling we felt for much of our adult lives. As our own parents have absented themselves when we have needed them and when we have not, and have been mere figureheads in our lives, titular beings without offering any of the real care, support, or relationship that parents are supposed to offer, so now today, thanks to the absence of a simple party invitation, we have had occasion to feel that deep pain again. And to question ourselves, our worth, and our identities all over again. Much as we habitually did so many years ago as our parents said the right things but did all the wrong things when it really counted.

There was a time in my life when I would have felt the pain and talked about it around the house, and even had a good cry about it, but would not have said anything to the one who had issued the invitations to the event. But not these days. No, these days I ask. I ask so that I can avoid making assumptions, and to find out what their thinking is, for I will understand a lot if I simply get an excuse. Maybe the excuse will be reasonable–if so, so much the better. But if not, ah, well then I am better educated than I was before. And so I text the hostess and I ask directly why we were not invited. Her answer was that the family members who were invited from our side of the family were also friends, and that’s why they were invited. But I already know that someone in our family who isn’t friendly much at all, and doesn’t hang out with anyone there, was also invited. And my husband and I were not. We were out-ranked by other family members who have contributed far less emotionally, materially, and spiritually to this couple, and yet here we were: Uninvited.

One thing I know for sure is that I know what Real Love is. I do know what it is, and it is easy to spot when you finally come to believe that love is action and deeds, not words or niceties, wishes or fantasies. Love is as love does. Love does no wrong to another. Love does unto others as one would be done by. Love is kind. So love does not invite half of the family and ignore the other half. If love invites one person for a particular reason, love lets the uninvited down gently. Love considers everyone’s feelings, not just the feelings of one person or half the people involved. Love tries to help others to save face, to save their self-respect or dignity by giving them something beautiful or worthy to hang on to. Love understands that one human being is a powerful being. My smile may save a person’s life. My letting another person ahead of me in line may restore a person’s faith in humanity. My offer of assistance may be a person’s answer to prayer. An invitation is pregnant with meaning. Being uninvited can hurt almost anyone.

My invitation to a family member I can’t stand and do not trust sends a message: There is room for relationship. You are still welcome at my table. I have hope for you and for us. You are lovable. I respect your place. I love you, even if I don’t like you one little bit. The uninvited person also is handed a message: We don’t want to be around you. Something about you is so bad that we can’t stand having you around. Having you here would be more trouble than you’re worth. You will make things difficult.

An invitation to a party may help wounded people realize that something good has come of their selves, after all; and the lack of one can be a great gift. The emotion that erupts after we see the truth says a lot about who and what we value, what still has the power to break our hearts, how much we want others to value our love. We can see that what we are giving and what others perceive are very different, for if others could see what a sacrifice we have given, being who we are, they could not help but fall down and weep.  We are like the widow Jesus mentioned, who only had a mite or a penny to give, but gave all of it. A rich person standing nearby might scoff, thinking, “Bah! Look at her tiny, inconsequential gift!” But the Spirit looking on says, “She gave everything she had.”

And this is how it is with my husband. With me. We gave everything we had. We continue to give everything we have. And whether we will continue to do it when we are unwanted and uninvited speaks volumes of truth. We are called to empty ourselves and I can see that I am not quite empty, not yet. Not by a long shot. I still want to be loved. I still want to be invited. But these desires, while human, do not deliver on the kind of love Jesus taught about. Jesus, who said, “give without expecting anything in return.”

Devoured Lives

They have devoured lives; they have taken treasure and precious things. Ezekiel 22:25

Sometimes I am so unhappy. Sometimes I am full of despair. Sometimes I feel I’m under it, under a burden too heavy for me to bear. It is the weight of the abandonment of my orphaned children, the weight of their years of abandonment, neglect, abuse, and absconding by their birth parents, their first parents, their so-called original parents, the ones who gave them birth. Parents who are not parents at all, except that they’ve produced offspring, which even animals do. And they act like animals, these parents, because when they have children they do not want, and they have children they treat as objects and non-people, children whose lives they devour and then pass on to others to try to repair: that is what they are. They haven’t acted human. They have not been humane.

They have devoured lives; they have taken treasure and precious things. Ezekiel 22:25

It doesn’t matter to me in this moment whether my children’s parents meant to do it or not, because they did it. And every parent between that first parent and me, the last one, did it too. I have children who were rejected more than once by adults who signed on to do the job of a parent and then thought better of it. Parents who quit their jobs. Parents who were fired as parents. And every single time a parent took off, something inside that child was devoured. Some precious thing lost.

This morning on the way to school, one of my children whose wounds I have worked at healing for six years now showed us all, once again, just how wounded she is. Just how orphaned. Just how she carries around this goneness of the treasure and this spiritual and emotional bankruptcy. And my beloved, always wanted, always cherished daughters watched it all, wide-eyed. And their family is not middle-class American normal. Their family is not Normal Rockwell normal. Their mother is in tears as she pulls up in front of the school. Their mother wants to bash in the faces of the asshole parents who did this to them. This mother wants to tear her hair. I want to tear my hair and wail, and roll on the ground with grief and horror over what has been done to my children.

They get out of the vehicle. They wear their plaid skirts into their private school but they are not like the other girls and boys, whose mothers are merely burdened with the regular, tedious, predictable passing of time marked by paying bills, buying groceries, taking the children to school, vacuuming, walking the dog.

Where are my children’s precious things? I want to demand. Where is their treasure? Who gave you the right to take their lives like that?

You might have done something different. But you didn’t. Instead, you were like those ancient peoples who put their children through the fire, who sacrificed their own offspring to pagan gods, your nostrils filled with the smell of your own child burning. And you turned away and went on with your life. What did you think? That she would bounce back? That she would recover, given enough time and peanut butter sandwiches and trips to the mall with her Adoptive Mother?

Well, she didn’t. She didn’t recover. She isn’t recovered at all. And I carry the weight of her devoured life every single day. We all do. Everyone in our family. And because our family has many children whose lives were devoured, whose precious things were taken, it’s a heavy burden. Sometimes I stagger under the load. Sometimes my heart breaks (it breaks every day).

And I wonder. I wonder about myself. I wonder what kind of a fool and idiot I must be, to think I can do this. Who do you think you are?

I wonder if I will be able to stand before God and give a good account of my life, some day, when I explain why I was just like my children’s first parents, because I too put my children through the fire. I sacrificed them to a pagan god whose name I cannot recall. I put the children I birthed through the fire, and their childhoods were consumed by my trying to heal and save their siblings.

Am I so different, then, from their first parents? Today, I’m not so sure. Today, as I sit here with a heavy heart and my eyes filled with tears, I really am not so sure. I am not sure at all that I’ve done a good thing, not sure at all that anyone besides God is ever able to help anyone else, to heal, to soften the blows, to bathe the wounds and dress them.

Being There

One of my dearest friends lost her 28-year-old son-in-law to cancer yesterday. He and his wife, her daughter, celebrated their three year wedding anniversary only four months ago. These two kids spent almost half their marriage dealing with cancer. Imagine that.

I don’t mind telling you that my husband and I conducted their wedding and did their pre-marital counseling. They were one of the most attentive couples we’ve ever counseled. And they loved each other. They never even had time to get to that middle-aged phase when you hate each other, either. All they ever had was that heady, youthful love and friendship, and then his sickness. I feel so sorry. 

My friend called me yesterday afternoon to tell me her son-in-law was going downhill, but I didn’t listen to my messages until 7:00 this morning. Of course I intended to go up to the hospital after dropping my girls off at school. But when I called my friend, she said that her son-in-law had already died. And she told me how it went. And we cried and said how unreal it seemed and was.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you guys,” I said, after a time. And I truly was sorry. I felt terrible, because I know what it means to have your loved ones nearby during hardship. And my friend said, “That’s truly OK, I know you would have come. And the hospital was packed. You’ve never seen so many people there for one person—relatives, his fellow National Guardsmen, friends. It was incredible. We had the family room just packed. It’s truly OK.”

I knew she meant it, and wasn’t suffering from lack of support. I thought what a way to go: surrounded by loved ones wishing you godspeed on your journey.

I thought, too, about my friend’s daughter and how untimely this is. How she will be the only 27- or 28-year-old in her circle of friends to have suffered and lost so much at such a young age. Already. Imagine that. When you’re supposed to be young and naive, stupid and foolishly invulnerable and immortal in your own head. And that’s been taken from her.

I talked to my other friend today, too, my friend who has just had a new baby over the weekend. A new baby who came with flashing lights and EMTs, for my friend didn’t even know she was in labor until the baby decided to pretty much fall out and be born at home in the bathroom, as her daddy dialed 9-1-1 and tried to catch her with a free hand. Exciting stuff, all right. And all turned out well.

So my friend’s parents and brothers and in-laws all crowded into her small house, so that when her darling toddler son woke up the next morning, he was greeted by all those adoring fans, who promptly whisked him up and fed him, and then took him away to granny and grampa’s house to spoil him for a week while mom and dad recovered and fell in love with new baby sister.

I asked how she was doing, and she said, “Oh, it’s wonderful. I’m glorious! I am so enjoying this new baby. I feel so warm and enclosed and loved, and it’s been so great. Everyone is helping, and all I have to do is nurse the baby.”

This friend of mine has always been surrounded by love and has available, loving parents. She’s always had supportive siblings. Though their family has had some very tough times, they have stuck together and grown as human beings. My friend has also always had good friends, because she herself is a wonderful person. She believes and speaks the best of people. She’s enthusiastic about life and about loving other people. She is so filled up within herself that she has an abundance to give to others, and give she does. She’s someone who really never meets a stranger. The worst she ever does is to become cross. That’s what she says, “I felt so cross.”

She’s charming, really. Cross? Cross?! I wax absolutely bitchy on people, but she is merely cross. And she really is that way. Just a good, warm, kind-hearted human being. I don’t know anyone who knows her and doesn’t say that they feel enriched by knowing her. She is that sort of a human being.

So I started thinking about sorts of human beings. I thought about how my friend’s son-in-law died surrounded by love, and about how my other friend had her baby surrounded by love.  I thought about how this love wasn’t just hanging in the air, because it came from people. And then I suddenly realized just how much I’ve dealt with in my life without a mother and father nearby, or a brother or any family member there for me. I thought about the hours I’ve spent sitting in a hospital by myself, and how only my husband or the children we were raising sat with us, and sometimes a friend from church. I remembered how none of our parents had the time or compassion or—what is it that you have when you will just sit with people, and help them by just sitting and loving on them, and being there? oh… is it love?—whatever it was we needed (it was love we needed). Didn’t have something to give. And really haven’t. And still don’t.

And I thought about all I handled as a young parent, when I could have used help but had none. The one time when my sixth or eighth child was born and I had an infection, and was in a lot of pain, and had to drive 45 minutes to a hospital to see a specialist and how I had to take my newborn and five or seven little children with me, because I had no help. And I did that myself. And didn’t even think about it ’til later, when I realized how I have so often just plodded on and pushed through and taken care of myself.

I realized then that people who have never had that sort of love or support just do it anyway, survive. Live. We do it and we don’t know any better until we get a vision and put into motion the ways and means that lead to that place of Family. Love. Being-there-ness. Then we realize one day that we are giving our children, and they are giving to us and to one another and to others, exactly what we didn’t have, but knew we needed. We’re pioneers in our own families of origin. It’s rough. But we’re making it because we know love is real.

I thought for the zillionth time about how my friend sat with me as Olivia died, and once again I couldn’t get over what that has meant to me. I can’t stop crying as I am sitting here right now. I want to just weep and die over my keyboard at times like this, because a part of my heart breaks all over again. I want to ask, “Why don’t you love me?” And then another part of me sees the family my husband and I have created, and the grownup children who would drop anything at all that they were doing (and have), and will be there for us, and who know how to be there for their friends (and have)… and I know we did good. I know that we had so many fewer love resources and so many big wounds, and yet by God—yes, by the grace of God—somehow we did it. By God’s grace and psychology and yes, by self help and professional help and school, and education.

And my kids, some of them, don’t understand why I’m so big on education. I’ll tell you why, my child: BECAUSE KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATION CAN SAVE AND CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

I mean that. It can. It has saved me and changed the sort of person I am.

And so my friend—the one who had the baby—she told me that her own mother had also tearfully expressed to her how she, as a young mother, didn’t have the family support that she herself has been able to give to her own children. And I thought about how the Bible says “and women shall be saved through the bearing of children.” I thought about how we carry our own selves as we give our children what we know we should have gotten from our parents, but didn’t.

I thought about all those people whose parents or spouses or children die out of time, people like Crazymumma who are not finished growing up themselves and absolutely have to go through hell before they are half ready (and who ever is ready? and yet… go we must). And about my friend’s daughter, who just lost her husband… and how wrong that is. And there was no free pass for her. I know she’s strong, though. And she has a good mom.

I don’t have a conclusion. I do know that it’s hard being a parent. It’s hard being a human being. It’s hard being someone’s child. Life is difficult. Life is suffering. There’s beauty in it, too, but it can be fleeting and sometimes the sun is gone for a long time.

The only thing that really compensates for the way life is, is other people. God is a big help, and I’m not being weird about it when I write that. I love God and I can hardly wait to die, sometimes. I sometimes am just ready to move on, because it ain’t gonna get easier. I am such a spiritual and mental work horse that death seems like a vacation to me, sometimes.

But God is not really my own personal reason for sticking around. My own personal reason is people. That’s right: people. I stick around because it means something, loving others. It means something to hold someone’s hand. It means something to sit in a crowded waiting room and to take turns sitting with a dying young man. It means something to call and tearfully say “I’m sorry.” It means something to show up at the funeral or memorial, tissues in hand. It means something to go to weddings and births, sicknesses, recoveries, anniversaries, drunken dancing parties and christenings, and deaths.

It means a lot. It means a lot to be there for someone. And so I thank God that there has always been someone there for me, a person or even more. How lucky and blessed I am. It reminds me of a verse in Isaiah, I think, where it says, “If even my mother and father abandon me, the LORD will take me up.”