A Chance to Save Children

A year or so ago, Michael and I saw a segment on 60 Minutes about a product that had been developed to save children suffering from severe malnutrition. It's called Plumpy'nut, and it's a concoction of peanut butter, dried milk, sugar, and vitamins and minerals. It does not have to be refrigerated and comes in packets that can be given to mothers, so they can feed it to their children themselves. And within days, the child is dramatically better.

After viewing the segment, we immediately went online to see where we could donate money to send more Plumpy'nut to Africa, but we couldn't find the information we wanted.

Well, yesterday, World Vision sent me a brochure that they have a program providing Plumpy'nut to malnourished children. In fact, right now they have enough matching funds to provide $6 worth of food for every $1 that is donated.

This is a chance to do so much good that I wanted to let all of you know about it too. You can donate here. I know that times are tough for many of us now—Michael and I are feeling the pinch too—but I also know that my struggles are nothing compared to what these children live with every day, and this is a chance to make a small gift go a long way. I'm sure that even $5 would make a major difference in someone's life.

Thanks for reading this appeal.

Life Is Like a Cup of Coffee

A friend, who knows I've been struggling with financial worries and health issues, sent me the link to this a few days ago. I almost didn't watch it because I felt grumpily resistant to a pep talk type video. But it turned out to be a good reminder.

Thanks, Christine.

Saturday Hello

Good morning. I haven't disappeared off the face of the earth. I've just been trying to work out a routine that will allow me to work two jobs (one full-time, one part-time), take a class, and still have a little time leftover. Plus, I'm still trying to shake a lingering cough.

Anyway, I thought I'd post the scan of a sketch I did last week. We've been doing quick studies: sketches of poses that last from two to ten minutes. This was the ten-minute pose from last week.

Hope to catch up with you all soon.

R

Good News from Michael's Trip

I want to thank you for your prayers last week. Emotionally, I coped with Michael's absence much better than I expected to. I found myself missing him as a person, but not feeling abandoned or terribly alone in the world. That's true progress from the way separations have felt in the past.

I also want to share some extremely good news. The reason he had to go to Los Angeles was to meet with a cinematographer who had read his script and was possibly interested in signing on to Michael's film project. I can't mention his name yet because the paper's aren't signed, but he has more than 20 years of Hollywood experience, and he's worked on movies that I'm sure you will have heard of. Anyway, he loves Michael's script, and he wanted to meet Michael to see if they would have a compatible working relationship. They met for four hours and discovered they have a very similar film aesthetic. So he's agreed to sign a letter of intent (which means he is saying he plans to work on the project).

This is a huge step for us. Having such an experienced cinematographer will really help reassure potential investors who might be worried about Michael's being a first-time director. It also might reassure actors (who like to know that they are going to look good).

Now we need to get a couple of name actors, and Michael and his producer are working on that. The project is still far from certain, but this development makes the odds a little bit better.

"Justify Your Existence"

I'm going to write about something that happened five weeks ago, the morning of the day that my mother died. Because of her passing, I just haven't had the energy to blog about this before now. She died on St. Nicholas Day at about 10:30 at night. And twelve hours before her passing, God gave me once of those incredible preparatory gifts that make me realize how much he loves me.

Reverend Kate, one of our two priests, was preaching, and as best I can remember after five weeks, she spoke about how Advent is a time when we await Christ's second coming as well as remember his first coming and how the early Christians thought he would return in their lifetime. She asked how we can still be awaiting God 2,000 years later and how we can help give people the hope to wait for God. And the answer had to do with loving others, with being a channel of God's love to them.

In response, I could feel myself starting to feel guilty for not having loved my mother enough, for not being able to transcend the damage she did in our family and love her the way Jesus would have done. (I did love her, but it wasn't perfect Christlike "agape" love, because really, how many people actually love like that?)

In the midst of chastising myself, the guilt suddenly stopped because I had an insight that I can only credit to the Holy Spirit. As I've said before, my mother was a very damaged and narcissistic personality, and throughout my childhood, I perceived that the purpose for which I'd been brought into the world was to heal her hurt, to be the replacement for the love she didn't get from her mother or sisters (or the friends she didn't have). But fairly early on, I rejected that purpose for my life and chose to go my own path.

But what I was never able to reject was the guilt that ensued. Most of my life has been plagued by ambivalence--guilt that I refused to be who Mom wanted me to be warring with the absolute certainty that to survive I had to develop my own gifts and learn different ways to be in relationship than my family used.

None of that was new knowledge. The thing that hit me in church was the blinding realization that I have always felt that I must do something extraordinary in order to justify the pain I'd inflicted on my mother. My first plan was to become a healthy enough person to raise healthy and happy children, the reason I diligently pursued counseling for years. That's why our infertility was so devastating to me, why it felt like such a failure. I'd lost the purpose by which I intended to justify what I'd done. After I realized we weren't going to have children, I adopted the goal of bringing my gifts to fruition and becoming a published novelist. Well, that hasn't worked out either.

On St. Nicholas Day, it became so clear to me that God had never demanded that I fill either of those goals . . . and he certainly never endorsed the idea that I had to heal my wounded mother. All that he has ever asked of me is to love him and to do my best to be one of his followers. And that's a choice I made when I was three years old. Contrary to what I've suspected my whole life, I've never had to justify my existence at all. This insight was reinforce by the closing prayer of the Episcopal service, which concludes "grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart." To love and serve God, that's all he asks. He doesn't judge us by the accomplishments on our resume.

Receiving this insight just hours before her passing helped me during the difficult weeks that followed because whenever I started to feel guilty about our relationship, I had something to help me stave off the negative messages.

I'm trying very hard to apply this new understanding to my life. For example, I'm taking pressure off myself to have longterm goals for my art class. I'm doing it because I enjoy it and it's a gift God has given me, and I'm trying not to think about what the future end result will be.

In other words, I'm trying to take the performance pressure off myself. I think this will help me live more in the present. But it's going to be a process.

Not-So-Quaking Aspen

I have been feeling utterly depleted lately. These are the things I've been dealing with the last 32 days:

• the death of my mother and the subsequent period of grieving
• the holidays and all that entails
• an illness that began December 26 and still lingers enough to prevent regular exercise
• the absence of my husband this week (who went to California on business)
• tight finances, compounded by minimal work for Michael and the extra expenses related to my mom's funeral and Michael's trip

I've been struggling with anxiety, exhaustion, fear of abandonment, fear of even more financial difficulty. I hate being separated from Michael (he hates it too), and I often struggle (even when he's here) with the fear of him dying and my having to learn to live alone. I feel rather childish to have that fear, but it's a byproduct of some old family dynamics and it's deeply embedded. Anyway, Michael's absence on the heels of my losing Mom meant that I've had to face my abandonment fears at a time when I don't have a lot emotional stamina because of my illness. I've managed to stay on a fairly even keel this week, but it's required effort.

Then this morning, as I meditated, I gazed out the window into my back yard. There is a corner of the yard where I planted several young trees about 12 or 13 years ago. They were only three feet tall at the time.

Now from the couch where I have prayer time, I can see the tallest of those trees, It is a quaking aspen that has grown higher than a two-story house. In summer, the little silver-backed leaves quiver with every breeze, hence its name. But in winter, all I can see are the trunk and branches. It stands tall, straight, and sturdy. The wind doesn't cause it to quake.

Snow is falling right now and coating the horizontal sections of the branches, and the white looks peaceful against the light grey bark. In spite of its present barren appearance, I can make out the buds that promise renewal in another four months.

Somehow gazing at that tree this morning, I realized that I am still strong despite all the things that have been stripped away from me recently. What matters in the long run is the core of a person's life—or a tree's, for that matter—and I believe that mine is sound. I have friends, church, my class, and a professional network. Even if I lost Michael, I would be far from alone. Most importantly, I'd still have God, who was with me before I knew Michael or even my own mother.

So for today, I'm staring at my not-so-quaking aspen and finding a symbol of hope.