Grab a blanket, it's cold outside.

Do you ever find that you have a nearly overwhelming urge to talk but have nothing to say? This happens to me all the time. It's like words are stuck in my head in some nasty punishing game of pinball - without all the cool lights and sounds. I know they're in there. And I know I want to let them out. But connections fail, willpower fades, and the moment is past.

So, lacking the ability to hold a coherent conversation, here are some things I've been thinking about lately.

1. I love my husband and kids. I like this life I lead. I'm grateful I get to stay at home to be a mom, and that we've decided to continue home schooling Arianna for awhile. I also want a night out, maybe an entire day off, and am seriously dreading all the arguments about continuing to home school Arianna.

After all the things that we've done over the last 8 years that our fellow humans have looked at askance, you'd think they would just get used to it. I suppose they keep holding out hope that we'll morph into "normal" with no notice.

2. Coffee is my enemy. Or if it isn't, it should be. I only drink it when it's loaded with cream (preferably vanilla flavored) and sugar. And yet I keep enabling myself to drink it. You'd think I'd learn the lesson and stick with tea. I suppose I keep holding out hope, blah, blah blah...

3. "Making choices the most spiritual thing we do," says Shane at Mosaic. Or he said something like it, anyway. And the more I think about this, the more I accept the truth of it. There are many things I do not choose about my life. For example, I wouldn't choose to have coffee as my enemy (think about it's sheer thorough infiltration of our entire culture), but it is. And still I choose to drink it.

Ok, so drinking coffee isn't a spiritual exercise - or at least it isn't for me, enemy or no. It isn't the drinking of the coffee, it's the choice to drink it knowing that I probably shouldn't, knowing that it's just going to be unkind in the end. And this is a huge metaphor for life, isn't it? Don't we take all these things we know and use them to make choices good and bad? Admittedly, I do occasionally close my eyes and blunder forward but mostly my choices are based on my knowledge and experience. And sometimes it seems that the problem lies exactly there: the knowledge base and experience I use to make my choices.

What do you do when your knowledge is faulty? When your experience shines the light the wrong way? How do you learn to disregard everything your head and heart tell you, guessing that they are wrong but unable to understand?

Heavy, vague questions. Here's where my real life intersects:
A great example came into harsh view over the last few days. Hang in there, the connections might take awhile. My nephew informed me that when my sister was young and "threw a fit" her (my) parents would do things like throw her across the room ("and isn't that bad?" he added in a rush). I looked at my sister, wondering about all this, and she said "I might have exaggerated a bit." And I shook my head and said sadly "Only a bit."

No, I wouldn't say my parents were abusive. They ruled with a heavy and explosive hand, though. They never apologized, never backed down, and spent almost all of out time together trying to mold us into what they wanted us to be. This doesn't sound so bad. And I often think of it this way. And I excuse the behavior as being "what they knew" and the "best they could do." But deeply do I remember my dad's kick that sent me sprawling across the floor, and then choosing to leave the house, and making a condition of my return that they weren't allowed to hit/kick/etc me anymore. I was almost 16 then and they were embarrassed that I had told my friend's mom what had happened, embarrassed enough that they agreed to my condition and actually stuck to it, for fear of being embarrassed again.

I spent years drinking behind closed doors, creating poisoned relationships, ekeing out a miserable existence. Is this because my parents were explosive and heavy handed? I don't know. And I'm not sure I care. No matter what they chose to do, I chose to respond this way. And when I get really frustrated or angry with my kids I find I sometimes choose to act in the same way. [Yes, yes, no shock there: we are imitators by nature and learn from our environment, etc.]

But here's where things get dicey for me. I can admit that I made and make some of my choices based on a faulty knowledge/experience base. But what is faulty? Can it be fixed? How do you make these sorts of judgements?

For me, I often rely on outside sign posts. No, I don't want someone to stand over me and tell me what to do. But guidance sometimes rocks. Sometimes you really do just have to give up what you know and blunder forward. But all of this means that in the end you lack a basic trust in yourself. Hopefully, my inward distrust is a healthy thing. I don't know, really, as it's a terribly hard thing to judge.

And so I suppose I'm beginning to hold on to Shane's other rather prolific comment "The past is the past." I just don't know how it all goes together yet. How it changes everything or if it even does.

4. [Amazingly, there is still more!] I haven't been to therapy in over a year. This is the longest break I've had since I started therapy 8 years ago. And I'm so grateful that I went. At the time I was poisoning every good thing in my life, putting my marriage on the line, and was ready to just not step out of the way of the end. Thank you to Marc for forcing the issue, to my therapist for not forcing the issues, and the friends who stayed around anyway. [Award speech ends here.] But it's scary not being in therapy. The real world has actual repercussions and consequences. Therapy was a reality suspension in which words could float away from me without harming anyone else. And I miss that. I should probably try writing again. It's possible that sort of thing is available there.

5. I don't have very many secrets left. I've given away a lot of them. It's strangely lonely.

I can't handle the sound of my own voice anymore. Later.

PostScript: Who's Shane at Mosaic? This Mosaic is Mosaic Christian Church of St. Louis. They meet downtown (cool for me). Shane's the pastor there. He's unlike the "average" pastor: he's not worn a suit to a single church service I've attended, he conducts a lot of meetings at Starbucks (infiltration - see?), and I'm pretty sure I heard him use the word "crap." You can look him/the church up on the web at mosaicstlouis.com

Climate Change

All the words are scrambled behind my eyes, victims of lit monitors spewing forth endless images.
The clatter and chaos of my surroundings limits free thought -
For the most part, language goes through a process of distillation, emerging efficient and stark.
Deeply complex ideas become simple statements of truth requiring a moment of wary faith.

In this world of language drought
My mind moves in monologue;
I have become starved for conversation.
Profound moments come in quick bursts like firecrackers across my brain
Leaving little impression beyond the echo of their light.
I grapple for some method of notation before it is all gone;
I litter bits of paper around me, seeming to exist within an exclamation mark.
Taken altogether, there is a sense of missing grace.