Here is a word that someone spoke aloud to me yesterday: repose. What a beautiful and evocative word—one whose sound immediately conveys a sense of it that can actually be felt. This morning I looked up the definitions for it in The American Heritage College Dictionary, something I always do with words that strike me (I get a little sad at the thought of all the people—especially younger ones—who do not know the pleasure and value of looking up a word and savoring all its meanings and nuances). The definitions listed for both the noun and verb forms of the word are as follows:
1. The act of resting or the state of being at rest.
2. Freedom from worry; peace of mind.
3. Calmness; tranquility
4. to lay oneself down
5. to rest or relax oneself
6. to lie at rest
7. to place trust in (stemming from the Latin root “repos,” meaning “to put away”)
Hearing this word and reading its definitions are like a little clarion bell going off in my mind and heart, because “repose” is what I am so often longing for and what I so often struggle (and fail) to achieve. At the risk of alienating readers who work traditional jobs, I am on my summer break from teaching right now, and, as I find it to be every summer, I am engaged in a kind of battle. It is a wonderful and extraordinary blessing to have eight weeks of not having to work (and it is eight weeks, not twelve as so many people mistakenly believe—I work until late June and start my preparation for the coming year in late August). Not many adults have two full months of free time, so I truly do appreciate what a fantastic luxury that is.
There is a difficult aspect of it, however, at least for me. I like structure and I like routine, and when I’m not working, structure and routine are out the window, and the endless possibilities of what I can do with all this free time become somewhat overwhelming. I have so much time, I think to myself, that I should be able to do EVERYTHING. I should be able to clean and organize my entire house and garage, I should be able to e-mail everyone back immediately, I should be able to get together with every friend I have, I should be able to travel, I should be able to write every day, I should be able to read lots of books, I should be able to play the piano regularly again, I should be able to stay on top of the weeds in the garden, I should be able to have all the minor repairs on the house done that I’ve ignored all year, I should be able to go to museums and concerts, I should be able to exercise every day, I should be able to cook healthy meals for myself, I should be able to watch all the movies in my Netflix queue, and so on and so forth.
Last Friday, I sat in my living room and read a novel for nearly three hours. When I had finished the last page and closed the book, I slowly became aware of the dimming light outside and, after a moment of dazed disorientation, sprang out of the armchair I was sitting in. I looked at the clock, and my heart fluttered with a kind of panic. It was nearly 7:00! And all I had done that day was return a shirt to Old Navy, meet a friend for lunch, buy groceries at Trader Joe’s and read! That’s it! What about cleaning the bathroom? Putting away my laundry? E-mailing my friends back? Prepping for my trip to Boston? The list I had made that morning had less than half its items crossed off. I paced up and down the hallway and around my dining room for a few anxious minutes, trying to decide which task I could squeeze in before eating dinner, and all my enjoyment in reading evaporated. I could relax and enjoy myself only as long as I wasn’t aware of it, as long as I was completely caught up in whatever I was reading or watching on TV. But those experiences really weren’t that enjoyable or relaxing because the moment I became “aware” again, I was filled with guilt and anxiety.
Which is why I’m so attracted to the word and idea of “repose.” Repose implies rest with awareness. Repose implies pleasure in and appreciation of that rest. Repose implies mindfulness and intentionality with a freedom from "shoulds." Repose implies a deliberate putting away of tasks and their accompanying guilt and anxiety, which is very different from mere escape. Escaping is not rest or tranquility—escape is fleeing. I have been escaping instead of reposing whenever I’ve been engaged in “relaxing” activities. The result is that the wolves are still always at my door, circling and snarling and ready to bite me the minute I poke my head outside. Repose, on the other hand, flings the door wide, commands the snapping wolves firmly, “Be still!”, walks out to the grassy hillside, and lays down in the sunshine, basking in the warmth with a heart full of gladness.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Gratitude and the Stomach Flu
This past Sunday morning, I woke up with the stomach flu. It was actually one of those situations where I knew something was wrong even before I was fully awake, and once I had woken up completely, my body began the many-houred ordeal of ridding itself of every particle of food and ounce of liquid I had ingested over the last 24 hours. I won’t go into too much detail, but let’s just say it’s going to be a long time before I eat cheesy nachos again.
With this onset came a radical change in my perspective and what was important to me. Just the day before, I had made a long list of plans for the coming week, which included all kinds of cleaning and organizing projects, errands to run, things to read, e-mails to send, people to get together with, etc. By 10:00 am Sunday morning, my biggest goal was to make it from my bathroom floor to the sink and then back to my bed. It took several minutes of prepping myself—of visualizing the route, of short panting breaths and, I’m embarrassed to admit, a few pitiful moans—and then I did it. As I was washing my hands and rinsing out my mouth, my vision started fading to black and a roaring filled my ears. Having passed out while sick in the past, I knew the signs and began a quick stagger to my bed, which I flung myself at just as the blackness and roaring overtook me. Seconds later, it began to recede, and I slowly became aware of a number of things. I became aware of the softness of my bed under my sprawled limbs, of the bright sunlight filtering through the curtains of my window, and the cheerful chirps of birds breakfasting in the yard outside. And I was suddenly filled with the most profound gratitude for the comfort and encouragement of those things.
My incapacitated physical state magnified even the very smallest elements into the greatest and most wonderful luxuries to me. For example, how wonderful that cell phones exist and I could actually have a phone in bed with me and reach numerous people at the touch of a button without even sitting up. How wonderful that I had a CD player nearby with a remote control. As my fever kicked in, I closed my eyes in relief from the cooling breeze that wafted down from my ceiling fan. Who invented ceiling fans anyway? Fantastic. Genius. And buckets. Buckets are amazing.
I also spent a fair amount of time marveling at the beauty of friends who will go to the grocery store and buy Gatorade and soda crackers (thanks, Diana) and leave them on your front porch and talk to you on the phone from your own front porch because you’re too weak to get to the front door to let them in. And neighbors who will roll out your brimming garbage cans for trash collection the next day and put them neatly back. And, after a few more hours had passed and I was finally able to retrieve the grocery bag off the front porch, the indescribable sweetness of those first few sips of Fruit Punch Gatorade and lime seltzer over ice that I was able to swallow and keep down (don’t ask my why this combo worked—it just did).
On day two, I graduated to gratitude and joy at being able to take a short shower (oh, what bliss to wash my hair!), eat soda crackers and soup, and swallow an ibuprofen to help the backache my fever was causing. I could sit up! I could enjoy watching TV! It was great.
By day three, the fever and nausea had gone completely, and I was left with only an overwhelming fatigue and a lack of appetite. I found myself restless and anxious as I lay on the couch watching TV. My mind raced with all the things I needed to do, and I began to grow impatient and frustrated with my lack of energy and all the time I was wasting. As I turned off the TV in petulant disgust and railed against my situation, I suddenly realized that not only had the fever and nausea gone away, but so had my gratitude. The more “well” I was becoming, the more I was taking for granted, and the more I was able to do, the more ungrateful and demanding I was becoming.
Last week, while having dinner at a friend’s, I had told her about my experience attending my niece’s recent singing competition. Towards the end of the concert, the host had briefly interviewed last year’s youth winner, a bubbly, vivacious teen who was very obviously eager to witness for Christ. I smiled indulgently along with the rest of the audience at her comments until she got to the part where she gushed about the opportunity she’d had to open for Randy Travis during his local concert, and how that “totally was the work of Jesus Christ.” At this, I couldn’t resist leaning over to my sister-in-law and whispering, “That’s so awesome that Jesus got her Randy Travis! Think he could score me a couple of Coldplay tickets?” After sharing this anecdote with my friend, we began to talk about what exactly the difference was between a Vending Machine God mentality and a genuine gratitude for every good gift, and the conclusion we came to was that the difference lay in the definition of “good gift.” A good gift, my friend pointed out, could be humility or patience. It could be the strength to endure a terrible loss. It might be something we want, but often it is something we don't want, want being irrelevant to need.
A good gift can be the stomach flu.
I definitely have no wish to revisit that experience anytime soon, but I realize that it literally stopped me in a way I needed to be stopped. It forced me to live entirely in the present moment and to be aware of and grateful for the ways in which my most basic needs were met and cared for, the ways these needs are met and cared for on an hourly and daily basis that I never give a second thought to and that I take for granted in the worst of ways—by being completely oblivious to them.
As day three taught me, it is all too easy to lose perspective, to forget what you’ve just experienced, and to slide back into old habits and ways of thinking. The activity and busyness of my days are slowly ramping up again, and I know I’ll lose my way again. Probably by this afternoon. But for the moment, I am grateful once again—that I have a Father who gives good gifts, gifts that shake me up now and then and get me to stop and pay attention in spite of myself.
With this onset came a radical change in my perspective and what was important to me. Just the day before, I had made a long list of plans for the coming week, which included all kinds of cleaning and organizing projects, errands to run, things to read, e-mails to send, people to get together with, etc. By 10:00 am Sunday morning, my biggest goal was to make it from my bathroom floor to the sink and then back to my bed. It took several minutes of prepping myself—of visualizing the route, of short panting breaths and, I’m embarrassed to admit, a few pitiful moans—and then I did it. As I was washing my hands and rinsing out my mouth, my vision started fading to black and a roaring filled my ears. Having passed out while sick in the past, I knew the signs and began a quick stagger to my bed, which I flung myself at just as the blackness and roaring overtook me. Seconds later, it began to recede, and I slowly became aware of a number of things. I became aware of the softness of my bed under my sprawled limbs, of the bright sunlight filtering through the curtains of my window, and the cheerful chirps of birds breakfasting in the yard outside. And I was suddenly filled with the most profound gratitude for the comfort and encouragement of those things.
My incapacitated physical state magnified even the very smallest elements into the greatest and most wonderful luxuries to me. For example, how wonderful that cell phones exist and I could actually have a phone in bed with me and reach numerous people at the touch of a button without even sitting up. How wonderful that I had a CD player nearby with a remote control. As my fever kicked in, I closed my eyes in relief from the cooling breeze that wafted down from my ceiling fan. Who invented ceiling fans anyway? Fantastic. Genius. And buckets. Buckets are amazing.
I also spent a fair amount of time marveling at the beauty of friends who will go to the grocery store and buy Gatorade and soda crackers (thanks, Diana) and leave them on your front porch and talk to you on the phone from your own front porch because you’re too weak to get to the front door to let them in. And neighbors who will roll out your brimming garbage cans for trash collection the next day and put them neatly back. And, after a few more hours had passed and I was finally able to retrieve the grocery bag off the front porch, the indescribable sweetness of those first few sips of Fruit Punch Gatorade and lime seltzer over ice that I was able to swallow and keep down (don’t ask my why this combo worked—it just did).
On day two, I graduated to gratitude and joy at being able to take a short shower (oh, what bliss to wash my hair!), eat soda crackers and soup, and swallow an ibuprofen to help the backache my fever was causing. I could sit up! I could enjoy watching TV! It was great.
By day three, the fever and nausea had gone completely, and I was left with only an overwhelming fatigue and a lack of appetite. I found myself restless and anxious as I lay on the couch watching TV. My mind raced with all the things I needed to do, and I began to grow impatient and frustrated with my lack of energy and all the time I was wasting. As I turned off the TV in petulant disgust and railed against my situation, I suddenly realized that not only had the fever and nausea gone away, but so had my gratitude. The more “well” I was becoming, the more I was taking for granted, and the more I was able to do, the more ungrateful and demanding I was becoming.
Last week, while having dinner at a friend’s, I had told her about my experience attending my niece’s recent singing competition. Towards the end of the concert, the host had briefly interviewed last year’s youth winner, a bubbly, vivacious teen who was very obviously eager to witness for Christ. I smiled indulgently along with the rest of the audience at her comments until she got to the part where she gushed about the opportunity she’d had to open for Randy Travis during his local concert, and how that “totally was the work of Jesus Christ.” At this, I couldn’t resist leaning over to my sister-in-law and whispering, “That’s so awesome that Jesus got her Randy Travis! Think he could score me a couple of Coldplay tickets?” After sharing this anecdote with my friend, we began to talk about what exactly the difference was between a Vending Machine God mentality and a genuine gratitude for every good gift, and the conclusion we came to was that the difference lay in the definition of “good gift.” A good gift, my friend pointed out, could be humility or patience. It could be the strength to endure a terrible loss. It might be something we want, but often it is something we don't want, want being irrelevant to need.
A good gift can be the stomach flu.
I definitely have no wish to revisit that experience anytime soon, but I realize that it literally stopped me in a way I needed to be stopped. It forced me to live entirely in the present moment and to be aware of and grateful for the ways in which my most basic needs were met and cared for, the ways these needs are met and cared for on an hourly and daily basis that I never give a second thought to and that I take for granted in the worst of ways—by being completely oblivious to them.
As day three taught me, it is all too easy to lose perspective, to forget what you’ve just experienced, and to slide back into old habits and ways of thinking. The activity and busyness of my days are slowly ramping up again, and I know I’ll lose my way again. Probably by this afternoon. But for the moment, I am grateful once again—that I have a Father who gives good gifts, gifts that shake me up now and then and get me to stop and pay attention in spite of myself.
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