Knowing Peace in Change

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Change is hard.

Any change, even good change, positive change is hard.

The reassembling of the map by which we navigate our lives is always a complicated undertaking. We get so used to roles and relationships, we come to count on them.

Especially for many of us with our family.

They are the first relationships, the hands and hearts which help shape our being, however skillfully.

And we come to depend on those relationships, we come to know ourselves through those relationships, and so it is hard when they change.

One of the great challenges in writing this sermon has been articulating the love that I share with my mother.

It is an encompassing love. Her love for me was the first and most fiercely committed love I have known. It has held me and shaped me. The love she has for me has kept me grounded and tethered when all else has fallen away. When I lacked faith in myself, whenever I have waivered and been most adrift, the love we share has been my rock, my compass and my guide.

I think it is safe to say that until the arrival of my stepfather, who after some tough times, I love dearly, I was the most important thing in her universe. Now I happily share that role with our beloved Joe.

Having Christopher changed my life totally; I now knew what unconditional love really meant. Elizabeth Stone writes, "the decision to have a child is to decide forever to let your heart go walking around outside your body."

During Christopher's early years, I relearned how to watch an ant carry a small stick...to dance wherever we were, to stop and look at the daisies. I learned how to see the world anew.

Above all else, I wanted Christopher to know that he was loved.

I started teaching full time when my first husband decided that he wanted to go to divinity school to become a minister. But I didn't drop anything else.

I have always been an overachiever; I had three majors and two minors in college; my curriculum vitae was 29 pages single space and it always bothered me that it didn't hit 30; it still bothers me occasionally! I had over 60 publications, including books and book chapters; I had more than 100 presentations and that doesn't include the conflict management consulting I did with academic and religious institutions.

I loved it all. I learned that Christopher did not when I came home one summer after facilitating two UU leadership schools back to back. Five year old Christopher greeted me by saying;

You look a lot like the woman in the picture.

He has always known exactly where my buttons are.

So I trimmed my schedule... but not by much.

In the late 80s, I started getting pain all over my body. No doctor could figure it out. No one knew what to do, so I was given casts and pills and nothing worked. Finally I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. So I changed my life, instead of never stopping, I went run... run... run... crash... and then got up to run again.

Christopher and my husband, Joe, often talked to me about doing too much. I always countered with "but I'm not too bad. I can still function most of the time.

By 1992, I was using a cane most of the time. I envisioned only severely disabled women and men with canes and that was NOT the identity I wanted. But I couldn't walk across campus so I had no choice. I now have a cane in every room of the house, just in case my legs give out.

When I walked, without a cane, people treated me as normal. With my cane, I couldn't hide

I HATED using my cane; it portrayed me in a way I didn't like – at all. It conflicted with my image of myself as superwoman.

In 2004 I began to have attacks. I had never felt such pain, nor even known it could exist. When I had – or have – an attack, it feels like someone is slashing my face with a hot, sharp knife... like a sumo wrestler is sitting on my head... a fence post digger is digging through my skull... like ants with metal feet which have been lit on fire are walking around in my face. Trigeminal Neuralgia is called the suicide disease because the pain is so horrid. And I can sere why it has that name.

I tried to work with this, but it is hard to do that when, in the middle of class, I had to immediately stop, turn around, and try not to scream. In my classes with majors, they got used to me stopping and saying "talk amongst your selves."  I would get ice out, put it on  my head, and wait until the pain subsided enough for me to talk again.

At meetings, colleagues frowned and asked me if I had to put ice on my head; they said it was distracting.

At church, thankfully during coffee hour and not the service, I would be talking with friends and suddenly be hit with what felt like a lightening bolt. I'd immediately scream for Joe, and he would run to my side. He would start his mantra which he uses every time my pain takes over my body; another friend came to do Reiki; others asked Joe what they could do. But now even at church my cover was blown. Friends said "thank you" for letting us see what pain you were in so that they could know how to respond.

And even still, I kept pushing.

It was hard to watch.

For years I could see that her pain was getting worse.

In my work as a massage therapist I worked with other people suffering from chronic pain disorders, and I saw similar patterns of people pushing themselves and their conditions worsening. .

It was hard. And I didn't know what to do or what to say.

I wanted to give her the space to know what she knew and make the decisions that she chose to make. I wanted to respect her, to honor her as my mother, to honor all she had done for me and all she was to me.

But one day I realized that the only way I could honor her, the only way that I could be true to our love and what it was calling me to was to speak, to speak the truth of what I was seeing, to speak the truth of what I knew.

She is a consummate giver of gifts.

She has a table set up in the basement with wrapping paper and ribbons and surrounding that table are bags and boxes labeled with the names of all the people she might buy gifts for.

She had descended to the basement to wrap something, and I followed her down.

The pain had gotten worse. It was really bad.

She was still working, still pushing herself, still tied to an identity which was in part worsening her medical condition, and it was painful.

It was painful for me, for my step father. It was so hard to see her pushing herself.

And so I went down to the basement with her.

I think we were talking about her taking on another consulting job, and my stepfather and I knew that it was the wrong decision.

This was just over three years ago. Lauren was pregnant with Ben.

And there in that moment, I said, "When you're considering taking on more work, when you're pushing yourself to do more, just know that every moment that you spend with these strangers is one less moment that you will get to spend with your grandchildren".

And there in that moment, something broke open.

We both wept.

Christopher and Joe had been trying for years to get me to slow down. They saw that I was in horrible pain and that the more I did, the more pain I had.

But I didn't want to hear them.

Besides, who was I if I couldn't work?

Who was I if I wasn't a professor, or a researcher, or Dr. Holton?

Who was I if I wasn't writing, or if people didn't come to a conference just to hear me; or bring one of my books or articles for me to sign.

Who was I?

I couldn't do anything that I used to do. I would read 100 books a year, while doing everything else. So far this year, I've read about a dozen.

Who was I to my husband Joe if I wasn't the woman he married; the woman who could take long walks and climb steep hills to find waterfalls.

Who was I to Christopher if I wasn't super mom; the mother who could keep him safe and protected.

It is one thing to be a parent, the one who provides the stability, who is relied upon by their children.

It is very different to reverse that.

A children's book, I love you forever, begins with a mother looking at her newborn son, saying "I love you forever, I love you for always, for always and ever my baby you'll be." The story goes on through every phase of the boy's life, through his adulthood. The last pages of the story show a man holding his mother in his arms. He says, "I love you forever, I love you for always, for always and ever my mother you'll be."

I always cried when I read that, but I didn't fully understand why. Now I do.

The last surgical procedure that was done to relieve some of the pain didn't work. Rather than calm the nerves, it irritated them. I have more pain and more attacks than ever before. I thrash and scream and cry – all without my ability to control. Joe knows how to calm me; he holds me and repeats a mantra.

This past week, I couldn't hide anymore. I had a horrendous attack and had to ask Christopher to hold me and help me manage the pain.

I love you forever, I love you for always, for always and ever...

The worst attacks I have seen her have, my stepfather Joe has been there to hold her. He sits next to her as waves of pain sweep over her. In a calm, clear voice he repeats, "Breathe in love, breathe out pain, breathe in love, breathe out pain."

Over and over. And it helps.

And so the other night I sat beside her and as the pain burst into her being, as she trembled and shook, I prayed, "Breathe in love, breathe out pain."

As I held her there I was initially swept by fear.

Fear at this new role. Fear at the amount of pain that she was in, fear for her future, fear for everything that was here with us.

And slowly, breath after breath, prayer after prayer, I came closer and closer to those passing moments.

There we were.

This woman who gave me life and has blessed me with love and guidance, who has been with me in some way for every moment of this life, here we were in this new way.

And breath after breath, it became ok.

Even beautiful.

And the pain, for that moment, eventually subsided.

May we know peace in the changing tides of our lives.

May we open to the truth of what is.

May we love so deeply that our loving can not help but transform.

May we love with all we are and all we have.

May we do what we can for our parents,

For our children, for all those we hold dear.

May we know the peace of bedside prayer,

The peace of finally asking for help.

Amen.

Knowing Peace in Change from UU Church of Berkeley on Vimeo.