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January 21, 2016January 20, 2016

“To My Mother, Who Committed Suicide,” by JJ Landis

Today’s “Letter to Those We’ve Lost” is brought to you by JJ Landis. Check out some more info on her and her work at the end of the post, including info on her new book, Some Things You Keep.

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Dear Mom,

The last time I spoke to you was from the phone in Jeff’s apartment. I loved hanging out there with him, my big brother. I called to tell you I was going to stay all night at Dad’s house.

You chose that night when I was twelve as the one you would take your own life.

I was not enough to live for. Do you realize how embarrassing and awkward it makes a kid’s life when she has been abandoned by her mom? I didn’t cry, didn’t grieve, for about eight years. When the tears eventually came, they were agonizing.

You weren’t there to teach me how to apply makeup, when I started my period, or had my first crush.

You messed with my head by leaving me, and I closed up and kept everything emotional inside for years. I eventually mixed drugs and alcohol with the trauma; my goal being to either numb pain or make another kind of pain.

You weren’t there when I was nominated for prom queen and then got kicked out of prom for drinking. You weren’t there when I dated losers, when I married a non-loser, moved to another country, gave birth.

I wonder if you assumed I’d be better off growing up with my dad and stepmom. Did you plan ahead or did you make a rash decision that night when you were drunk? It shouldn’t matter but it does. But alas, I can never know.

By the way, if you did think I’d be better off, you were incorrect. No fault of theirs – but my new parents weren’t really looking to take in another kid and didn’t really know how to handle someone so damaged.

I was left by you. And I was left alone by them.

There’s no decent place in a letter to tell you this, but I should let you know that your firstborn, Jeff, followed in your footsteps and died a drunk by his own hand and left two children behind. He was 34. Five years younger than you when you did it. I’m 45, so I have you both beat.

What have I been up to? Well, here’s where things get weird. You won’t believe it, but my life is completely remarkable. My heart is so full of love and joy and compassion, sometimes I think I will explode from all my blessings.

You’re probably wondering if I’m serious since I have mentioned all the crap I had to deal with. But it’s true. I am one of the happiest people I know. I never expected anything good to come my way, but somehow I won the life lottery. My life is so great it’s almost not fair to others.

My life is sweet, but it’s not without constant heartache. Almost every time I’m alone in my van in the garage, I think of you and how you were in a garage when you died. I think of suicide every day. Every day.

It’s not an easy, shallow happiness I carry with me though. No, I have deep inner joy. Contentment. I have met depression and anxiety, but still I am able to have a joyful soul.

In a way, this is possible because I used your bad example as the motivation to get my life cleaned up. When I was a wretched, drug-addicted drunk before I was even legally allowed to drink, I recognized I didn’t want to live an unhappy life. Suicide was not going to be my way out.

So, uh, thanks, I guess, for giving me a perspective that not many people get to have.

I also knew that I wanted God, so I searched for him. I wanted peace that came from somewhere beyond me and the world. I realized eventually that Jesus had been with me all along, weeping for me when I couldn’t and drying my tears when they did fall. Oh, that you could have seen Jesus in your life, that you could have seen that tomorrow is always a new day and the sun will rise. Always.

I mourn the idea of you probably more than I mourn the real you. I have to fight off jealousy when I see friends turning to their moms for babysitting and recipes and traditions and advice. I was cheated. When a friend’s mom drove two hours to deliver chicken soup to her sick daughter, I physically hurt with envy.

I am fiercely devoted to my own children. I’m deliberate about my mental health and will not let them have a disinterested, damaged mom. They are having an incredible childhood and they know they are loved.

I have cried all the tears I can cry for you. I’m emptied of that grief.

I want to share what I’ve learned. That we can all overcome hardships, heartaches. That we are all valuable and worthy to be alive. We all have strength we haven’t tapped into. Life sucks a lot of the time, but life is fabulous most of the time.

My story convinced a friend to change her plans to jump to her death. She mustered up strength to take one more step, even in her utter despair and weakness. One more step is always possible.

Who knows where I would have ended up had you stayed…

It’s a frightening thought, because I absolutely love where I am.

I was in chains for years but am completely free now. I surrendered to God’s love for me. I knew my wounds would either keep chained or set me free. I decided to build on the pain and make a way to peace.

We have all been given one time around. My hope for others is that they choose to live untethered to those who have harmed them, but choose rather to dance in the joy of freedom.

My hope is that others will choose to live.

That’s it, JJ

* * * * *

JJ Landis is a writer and speaker who enjoys discussing real life with others. She is the author of Some Things You Keep, a memoir about growing up after the suicide of her mother. She writes about parenting, marriage, and getting through the day at her blog “Living for Real.”

“Letters To Those We’ve Lost” is a series I started running during December. If you’re interested in reading some of the other letters people have written to those they’ve lost, you can check those out HERE. If you’d like to submit a letter, please click on the contact link above and send it through. I’d be happy to consider it for publication here at my blog.

January 16, 2016January 15, 2016

All That For That: Some Thoughts On the Movie, The Revenant (Spoilers)

“All that, for that.”

My friend Jake summed up my thoughts perfectly with those four words as we left the theater after seeing the movie, The Revenant. What he meant was, all that blood, all that violence, all that determination, all those miles crossed, all that intensity, all of that sacrifice…for what, exactly?

All that for that.

* * * * *

Four of my buddies and I grabbed 35-cent wings at The Brickyard before heading over to see the movie, The Revenant, on Tuesday night. We had all seen the previews. We heard stories of Leonardo DiCaprio’s method acting, eating raw buffalo organs and swimming freezing rivers. We went in excited, ready to be amazed.

The cinematography was incredible. The scenery, the creative shots: everything was stunning. There was a depth to the portrayal of the Native Americans that I’ve not experienced before in a movie. And I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything as intense as this one – it’s right up there with the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan. From moment one, you are in it.

The bear attack scene drags on uncomfortably long, but somehow in a way that makes sense. I felt like I was there, lying under the beast. I feel like I know what it’s like to be attacked by a bear. The constant setbacks seem insurmountable. This movie is not for the faint of heart.

DiCaprio and Hardy were masterful.

But most importantly, the desire for revenge is palpable throughout. You get the sense that the main character, Hugh Glass, is not surviving on his strength as a human being as much as he is on his hatred. He writes the following wherever he can, scratches it into wood and stone and ice:

Fitzgerald killed my son.

There are hundreds of miles to be crossed. Rivers in the way. Mountains. This is the first thing we learn: there is an unnatural strength found hidden in the desire for revenge.

* * * * *

Towards the end of the film, in the climactic scene, Fitzgerald says to Glass something along the lines of,

You’ve come all this way to get your revenge, but it won’t ever bring your son back.

This is the main question the movie leaves behind like a sour aftertaste:

Is it worth it? Can revenge give us what we want?

Don’t get me wrong – if someone had done to me what was done to Glass in this movie, I probably would have crawled over mountains and floated down icy rivers and ran my horse over a cliff to administer my own vigilante justice. I may have sought revenge with as much determination as he did.

Even in all of that, even in my ability to understand why he did what he did, the questions still remain,

Is it worth it? Can revenge give us what we want?

Thus the four words of my friend, Jake.

“All that, for that.”

Have you seen The Revenant? Any thoughts?

January 15, 2016January 14, 2016

This Week’s Top Blog Posts

Excerpts from some of my favorite blog posts this week. Click on the links to read the entire post, and, as always, I’ve tried to find engaging posts as well as things that might challenge your thinking a little bit. Enjoy!

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Here’s what I did in the NICU: I simultaneously begged God to heal my son and I told God to go to hell.

There’s a good chance I lost half my audience with that one piece of honesty. But I’m not a good marketer and I’m an even worse Christian.

* * * * *

The assignment I was referring to on Instagram was offered to me by National Geographic Channel. My job? To travel as the exclusive writer/photographer on a trip around the world with Morgan Freeman.

* * * * *

What Nate is reminding me again and again is you can feel like an exile and still be elect. You can be chosen by God for a purpose and a plan, even one that doesn’t makes sense and keeps you far from “your people” and feels uncomfortable.

* * * * *

“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”

How can this be?

* * * * *

I’ve said this before. It’s difficult to “see” things as racist or racialized when the systems have always been designed and created for the success and flourishing of white people – even as the category of “white” evolves.

* * * * *

Church every week was a protest, it was resistance, it was a gathering in the darkness, and a way to be given life and light.

January 14, 2016January 13, 2016

Some Thoughts Regarding Baby Number Six. Yes. You Read That Right.

Later this year, Maile and I will celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary. That’s a long time. Seventeen years ago, it was a different millennium. We spent our first New Year’s Eve together in 1999 as newlyweds in Jacksonville, Florida, waiting for the world to collapse under the weight of all those nines turning into zeroes. Seventeen years ago not very many people had an email account. In 1999, Justin Bieber was five years old.

The main reason I bring this up is simply to say that 17 years is a long time, and after 17 years you get to know someone pretty well. So when Maile leaned around the corner a few weeks ago, her head peeking out of the bathroom, and asked me the following question, I knew she wasn’t joking. I had seventeen years of experience in knowing the difference.

“So, are you ready for baby number six?” she asked, her eyes round, like a deer in the headlights. I just kind of stared at her. Everything went silent, except, of course, the sound of our five children playing in other parts of the house. Yes. Five plus one does indeed equal six.

* * * * *

It’s difficult to talk about this baby number six because I have more than a few close friends who would love to have baby number one, but for who-knows-what-reason, they haven’t yet. When I compare how I feel right now to how I know they would feel with a baby on the way, I feel a little guilty, a little ungrateful.

This is one of the most difficult things in life, the unfairness of it all. It seems like things should be more even. It seems like blessings should fall in a way that looks less random, makes more sense.

Good fortune, luck, blessings…whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t make me feel as ecstatic as it did when I was younger. I think I recognize better now the pain on the other side of the gift, the emptiness that trails along behind good things. I am happy, yes, I am grateful and amazed and full of thanks, but I also bear the weight of those who still seek, those who still yearn after something, something really good, something that just never seems to arrive.

Can we live in that tension between the having and the wanting? The blessing and the waiting? Can we celebrate and mourn with those we love at the same time?

* * * * *

To be honest, my answer to the question Maile asked from the bathroom was, “Not yet. I will be, when it’s time, but not yet.” I know I’ll be ready. I know after I hear the heartbeat in a few weeks, I’ll even be excited, falling in love with this next addition to our wonderful family. But right now? Honestly? I feel too old to be setting out on this journey again – I turn 40 in December. Leo will be just over two, and he still isn’t sleeping well, and I’m tired. Lord, I’m tired. Maile and I both are.

Thinking about baby number six is also tough because Maile has miscarried twice before. Twice we’ve gone in for the first scan at around 12 to 14 weeks only to discover there was no heartbeat. Things were not progressing. Twice we’ve left that appointment in tears. Twice we’ve gone home and gathered our children in a mass of humanity on the couch and explained what happened to the baby growing inside mama and then had a huge, family cry together.

And we can get through that again, if Maile’s upcoming scan reveals the worst. But I feel too old for that, too. Too weary, right now, for deep grief.

* * * * *

I remember when we found out Maile was pregnant with Cade, thirteen years ago. We had been trying for six months and Maile fretted she would never be able to get pregnant. We lived in England. I worked in London, and she was taking a cooking class at Leith’s School of Food and Wine, and everything they cooked made her morning-sickness tummy feel like throwing up. I would meet her at the tube station and we’d board the train and she would hand me the food she’d made and I would devour it.

That first night after we found out she was pregnant, I found a kid’s clothing store downtown and bought her an outfit for the baby with a little giraffe on it. She cried when I gave it to her on the train. We sat close the whole ride home, her head resting on my shoulder, the weight of the existence of a new human being heavy on our souls.

* * * * *

I also remember Maile’s last miscarriage, three years ago, the two of us on the floor in the bathroom with her going back and forth between throwing up and passing blood clots. I ladled the ruby red human tissue out of the water with a slotted spoon so the doctors could analyze it. I put it in a baggy and we handed it in, feeling a sense of betrayal and deep loss. There was so much there, in the clear plastic. An entire world. A universe.

She slept for days on end. The kids asked what was wrong. I told them. It was like a nightmare but duller around the edges.

* * * * *

Now, here we are once again. We’ve got the noise and chatter of five wonderful children in the house, the mess and the chaos and the love to prove it. We’ve got a one-year-old who I lay down beside almost every night, the carpet leaving marks on the side of my face. And inside Maile, that miracle.

This is not the life I expected or planned. I can assure you of that. But it has more depth, more meaning, than I ever knew a life could have. The sadness is heavier, the joy less transient. Of course, it’s not just the children that make it that way – it’s the friends, the successes, the failures, the questions, the doubts, the certainties. The blessings. The empty spaces. All of it, balled up into one beautiful thing called life.

You know, just in writing this out I can feel my answer to Maile’s question shifting towards a yes. I am ready. There is a space here in our family for this little one.

Now, we wait.

January 13, 2016January 13, 2016

After the Rain, On James Street

After the rain, on James Street
the cars drift on glass,
the wind toys with a wisp of hope
someone left behind, or misplaced,
and my neighbor across the street limps
outside, leans into traffic, and
peers west to see if the world has
actually ended or if it is only the peculiar
way winter light will sometimes fall.

I stand with my hand on the cold knob,
and think of my friend, recently departed. I, too,
wonder about the end of all things, the silence
six feet under, and even the practicality
of golden streets, the marks tires might make,
the long, gradual grooves weight will press
into its softness.

Inside the house, normal life awaits.

I turn the knob but still do not go in, still
stand staring at the glassy street, when my neighbor
shouts, “Hey!” across the way
and raises his arm to say hello or good-bye
or perhaps he is saluting
me before the end. I raise
my arm back at him and he smiles and shrugs
towards the street and the sky as if to say, Look
what I found.

But neither of us move from where
we stand. We simply wait there,
looking
hoping
for something spectacular to happen
after the rain, on James Street.

January 12, 2016January 11, 2016

This is the City You’re Afraid Of

The four oldest kids and I bundle up and walk out the front door, on to the sidewalk that runs along James Street. It’s 5:45pm and January, which means it’s almost dark, the sun drowning in the buildings that line the western sky. And it’s cold – the wind whips through the intersection of Prince and James, and we wait at the corner for the light to change, and we all sort of gather closer together like penguins waiting out the darkest days.

“Look at the moon!” Lucy says, and it’s there, barely visible, a thin, rounded silver thread. We follow it as if it is a guiding star, all the way to the Y.

Inside, the girl at the desk smiles and welcomes us and my glasses fog up because of the humidity from the pool and we walk up a long flight of steps to the second-floor gym. The three younger kids are absorbed in a cloud of children for an hour of Fit Kids fun, while Cade goes to the other half of the gym for basketball practice. Older neighborhood teenagers hang around the margins, waiting for an extra moment when they can shoot some hoops before being shooed off the court.

One of the teenagers – a tall, tough-looking kid – grabs Cade’s basketball from where he left it under the bleachers. Cade doesn’t need it during practice, since they use the basketballs from the Y. The tall, tough kid dribbles the ball during Cade’s practice. I have to admit: I’m a little worried he might walk off with it. We’ve already lost a few things here in the city. I’m trying to be smarter about this without going all paranoid.

Cade’s practice ends and the kids fun time is over and the gym erupts in chaos between the classes. We gather our coats and walk towards the door. I walk over to the tall, tough-looking kid who has been playing with Cade’s ball.

“Hey, can I get that ball back? It’s my son’s.” I’m kind of expecting him to give me a hard time.

He stares at me for a moment, then smiles a kind smile and bounce-passes the ball to me.

“No problem, sir,” he says in a respectful voice. “Thank you.”

“Thanks,” I say, and we leave, the kids and I, back out into the dark and the cold and the short walk home.

But I can’t help think about the kid in the gym, the tough-looking kid I was worried about approaching. I’m a country boy, and I grew up fearing the city. With the five words he said to me, I could quickly tell he was a good kid. A kind kid.

He reminded me of another story, another instance here in the city, when the kids and I walked down the sidewalk on our way to the park. A group of teenagers emerged from a side alley and walked towards us. But they weren’t looking for trouble.

“Over here, kid!” the oldest one shouted to Sammy, motioning for him to throw him his football. Sammy glanced at me.

“Throw it to him,” I said, shrugging. “Go ahead.” Sammy did.

“Go on, go deep,” the kid said to Sammy, and again Sammy shrugged and this time he ran long, dashing down the sidewalk. The leader of this posse heaved a pass, and Sammy made an amazing over-the-shoulder grab.

“Whoa, boy!” the kid shouted to his friends, laughing and hitting them and generally making a big fuss over Sammy. “You see that kid? He can catch! Sweet grab, kid!”

Sammy, of course, grinned from ear to ear.

I only say this because this is the city you’re afraid of. These are the kids that make you nervous when you walk the streets.