Alison Hodgson

Expert on the etiquette of perilous times.

A Brief Correspondence

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Yesterday Eden wrote this email to her dad in Toronto.  She had asked to use my computer and carefully typed this: 


Dear daddy, I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally miss you. did you get the fancy hotel soap?:) well ok please listen, did you love ninja? or did you just love us, and not want to hurt our feelings. I don”t want us to have a dog that you have no part of. that you do not like. daddy I wrote this my self. love Eden. bye-bye.


I love the whole thing.  It’s just a little email and so much more.  I love her concern about Paul, the wisdom in knowing that parents often go along with things for the pleasure it brings our children, for love.  


“…that you have no part of.  that you do not like.”  It’s so easy to just want something and not really care about another’s needs and wishes.


And then, “daddy I wrote this my self.”  This undoes me.


Paul’s reply:

Aw, thank you for your note Eden. I miss you a lot too. I’ve got some soap & its a little fancy – you can be the judge. I thought Ninja was adorable & I’m sure I would love him a lot too if he was ours. You’re so sweet to ask me. I love you. Bye bye angel.

Jet

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After a lengthy application process we went to visit this little guy Saturday. We had hoped to visit him a month ago, but Paul’s aunt died and the funeral was the same day.  The next opportunity was last Saturday.   Paul had a trip for business, but he changed his flight and we drove across the state to meet Jet.

Minutes before we arrived another couple came and said they would take him.  Because I wanted to meet Jet before committing to adopt, the rescue refused to give us any preference.

This, despite the fact that we had been trying to meet him since mid-October, that Paul had changed his flight and that we drove over two hours.

“First come.  First served.”  Is what the rescue…I don’t know his title…told us.  That’s their process for twelve years he also said and they’re sticking with it.  That’s great for hamburgers, or donuts, but we’re talking about a living creature,

 

as well as our children, who all fell in love with this funny little dog.

 

 

 

We’re all sad and disappointed.  Unfairness in the name of perfect fairness is such a drag.  We have cried and prayed and I have written several emails.  Last night, Eden said, “How about we be thankful for what we DO have:  Jackie Boy.”
We are learning to choose gratitude and hope, in the midst of loss.
This is our lament.

Flunking Sainthood: a review

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I was prepared to dislike this.
I was almost certain I would, but I read it, still, because it was a gift and I am easy; if you give me a book with an attractive and clever cover, I can’t resist.  
This is the copy from the back:  
In her wry memoir, Jana Riess shares a year long quest to become more saintly by tackling twelve spiritual practices, including fasting, fixed-hour prayer, gratitude, Sabbath-keeping, the Jesus Prayer, and generosity.  Although she begins with great plans for success (“Really, how hard could that be?” she asks blithely at the start of her saint-making year), she finds to her growing humiliation that she is failing–not just at some practices, but at every single one.  What emerges is a vulnerable story of the quest for perfection and the reality of failure, which turns out to be a valuable spiritual practice in and of itself.
That sounds good, right?  Why so judgey?
Well, it’s a stunt book and I’m not an immediate fan of the genre.  The writing has to be so good that I forgive or forget the intrusion of the stunt and find myself immersed in the story.  
And then there was the whole premise: striving and failing to attain sainthood…in a year.  It struck me as so glib and controlled and brought me back to the fact that it was a stunt.  Fortunately I got off all that and just read it.  
“Flunking Sainthood” is lovely and funny and I highly recommend.
The whole book is good.   There is a good deal of snark – Reiss’s stock-in-trade – and yet she doesn’t hold back her own surprise and disappointment in her unrelenting failure.  It’s informative as you travel with her month by month and practice by practice and I found myself wanting to incorporate at least a couple of the experiments myself, specifically some of the prayers.
The book culminates with Reiss rushing to the deathbed of her father, who has been estranged from the family since Reiss was a girl.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” I told a friend I had called from the airport.  I was crying full tilt now, my life upended a second time by this man.  ” I thought I had forgiven him and forgotten all this.”

“How could you forget it?”  she countered.  “He hurt you terribly.  You were only a kid then, right?”

“I was fourteen then.  I think I’m only about fourteen years old now,” I sobbed.

“If you turned around right now and went home no one would think less of you.  You don’t owe him anything.  You are a good person even if you can’t do this.” she said.

“I feel like this a test,” I confided.  Today I find out whether I’m really a grown-up and a Christian.  What if I fail?”

She does go and forgives again, but I’ll let her tell you the rest.
It was only a week or so after I finished the book that I pinpointed the root of my resistance to it.  I was talking with Paul and started to cry, “I just feel like I flunked the fire.”
This wasn’t the first time this had occurred to me, I’ve been aware of it for over a year, have written about it privately and discussed with my sister, how not everyone frames everything as an opportunity to get an “A” or an “F” but it’s almost always either or for me, including the aftermath of someone burning my house down.
It was only when I unconsciously substituted Reiss’s word “flunk” for my own “fail” that I understood my initial rejection of her book was the assumption that she was holding back and making fun.  I assumed she was detached and I don’t have time for detachment.
If you are going to tell your story, write to us from where your heart has been broken.  And if you can tell it funny too, all the better.  In “Flunking Sainthood” Jana Reiss does both.
* The Kindle version is only $1.99 on sale on Amazon, through Wednesday.

Home and still moving

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 Photo: Tanner Wolfe

We’re back at the new house.

How strange it is to be back at something entirely new.

“Are you loving the house?”  We are asked a lot.  I actually worked out an answer with our therapist, because the short one for me: “No” leads to a really long one that most people wouldn’t want to hear and I don’t want to tell, over and over.

Most of the time I say, “We’re so thankful to be home”  circumventing the actual question and yet answering it succinctly and truly, which is important to me. And then I ask, “But how are you?”  It’s not all about us – this took me years to figure out – and I don’t want to forget it just because something extraordinary happened.  It’s so easy for me to go on and on.

Here is where I get to and I think I’m finally ready to tell you the rest.  As far as the story goes, I left us on the path watching our house burn.  To be honest, up until a few weeks ago, I was stuck there emotionally too.

You can deny or minimize trauma but that won’t heal it…so I’ve learned.

Thankfully we’re all moving forward and finding our way home.

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I’m fighting the blues today.

It isn’t one particular thing, but probably the toll from sustained uncertainty and stress.

I’m going to go work in what’s left of my garden.

I became a gardener when I was pregnant with Lydia and in the long process of diagnosing Christopher.  It was a hard pregnancy.  I was in constant pain and refused to take anything because I was really clear that birth defects were for real and I wasn’t taking any chances.

I remember putting Christopher down for a nap and then going outside and digging.  My first attempts at gardening were beyond ignorant.  I transplanted violets!  But it was therapy as much as it was home improvement.  I couldn’t control anything it seemed, but you better believe I could move around some plants.  I could show them where to go.  I could dig deep and uproot anything I wanted.

How do you surrender to provision and grace?

How do you simultaneously hold on and let go?  I can’t always find the sweet spot.

Today, in the face of tremendous blessings, I feel despair.

I’m so weary.

So I’m going to put on my work clothes and invite a child or two to help me prune and dig.

https://alisonhodgson.com/2011/08/183/