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And This is Why You Should Not Give Up

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Maile and I sat at a table outside the cafe, enjoying brunch together. The four oldest kids were at my parents’ house, and Leo sat quietly in his stroller, wearing his mustachifier (a pacifier with a huge mustache on it), gathering laughs from nearly everyone walking by.

It’s a rare moment these days, when the noise and busyness subsides and Maile and I can look at each other and really see.

“It’s hard to believe,” a kind old man said as he walked by, looking at Leo. “It’s hard to believe all of us were that small at one point.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s hard to believe.”

And more people walked by and Maile and I talked about life and writing and schooling the kids. We ate nice food and we sat quietly and the trees that lined the city street whispered in a cool breeze. Cars drove by. The sky, up above the tall brick buildings, was blue.

* * * * *

“I think I need to take a break from writing at my blog,” I had told Maile just the night before. With the projects I’m working on for other people, and with trying to finish up this novel by winter time, I just don’t know if I have time to write blog posts.”

It’s this sense of being stretched, and as time passes and the stretching continues, fabrics begin to tear in places. My ability to be a good father unravels a little. My ability to be a good husband frays a bit around the edges.

* * * * *

“Excuse me, are you Shawn Smucker?”

A young woman stopped beside the table where Maile and I were eating. She had two children with her. I recognized her face but couldn’t place her.

“Yes,” I said. “And you look very familiar.”

“You probably don’t know me,” she said. “But I read your blog.”

She smiled and told me her name. We had gone to the same college, and she was two years older than me. She asked us how we liked life in the city, and we found out that she lived not too far from us. She was very kind.

Then, before she walked away, she said something that had a big affect on me.

“I have to tell you, I find your blog very encouraging. My husband and I are on the edge of making a pretty big decision, and your posts about courage and trust have had a big impact on both of us.”

I was floored. Sometimes it feels like these words are dust thrown into the wind.

* * * * *

“So maybe you shouldn’t stop blogging?” Maile said after the young woman walked away.

* * * * *

I’m telling you this story for a few different reasons.

First of all, being recognized on the street was probably the highlight of my week.

Second, the blogs might flow a little thinner around here in the next month as I try to finish my novel and prepare for the Kickstarter campaign. Before that sidewalk conversation, I had planned on telling you today that you wouldn’t hear from me at all for the next month or two, but I guess her’s was the encouragement I needed to hear. (Also, if you want updates on the novel, you can like my Facebook page or subscribe to my newsletter in the right hand margin of this page.)

Finally, and most important of all, you need to be reminded that what you’re doing is making a difference. The stuff you’re writing, the time you’re spending with young people, the encouragement you give a friend, the evenings with your child, the long days taking care of an aging relative…the ripples are spreading out from the work that you’re doing, and the world (contrary to popular belief) is becoming a better place for it.

Keep doing. Keep being.

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What I Learned From Taking Five Kids to the Park (or, Living in the Middle of Your Fear)

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The other day I took all five kids to the park by myself. I know. I deserve some kind of a medal. Lucy rode her bike around and around, Abra trailed behind on her little scooter, and Sam went from one thing to the next. Leo mostly chilled out in the stroller and vacillated between crying and sort-of-crying, so I kept pushing the stroller in circles and trying to get him to fall asleep.

Cade, though. Cade had his own little adventure.

There were three guys at the basketball court. Two in high school and another about Cade’s age. They asked if he wanted to play two-on-two. He had never played a pick-up game at the park before. He could have shrugged them off and said no. He could have kept shooting by himself at the other end of the court. I could tell he was afraid.

I was kind of afraid for him.

But he nodded.

“Sure,” he said.

* * * * *

The other night I exchanged a few long emails with my friend in Kelowna, British Columbia, as we often do. His name is Jason and he’s one of my best friends. We’ve known each other for almost twenty years, ever since he showed up during my sophomore year in college with his long blond hair and massive Bob Marley posters.

We were writing back and forth about this whole idea of fear, and he was encouraging me in regards to my novel, when he said something that really got my attention.

“The fearful place we often avoid has some integral part of us wanting to be heard, and it brings the greatest reward when we truly step (into that place)…Sometimes we get hurt, but that risk is a part of it.”

* * * * *

When I look back on some of the more disappointing times of my life, or the times that I find myself wondering “what if?”, those times have one thing in common – in some way I allowed fear to keep me from doing something.

On the other hand, the last five years of my life have been the most exhilarating, rewarding years I’ve ever had, and they’ve been years that I’ve lived right in the middle of fear. I’ve taken on stories I wasn’t sure I could write; I’ve chosen a way of life I wasn’t sure I could make work; Maile and I took a cross-country trip and then moved from a cabin on forty acres and into the city. All things that we did in spite of the fear.

The next big fear for me is publishing this novel, and I think Jason is right – there’s some important part of me that wants to be heard, and I have to step into that place.

* * * * *

We got home from the park and I told Cade how proud I was of him for playing in that pick-up game at the park. He just smiled.

Are you willing to enter into that fearful place in your life and discover what important part of you is trying to be heard?  Or are you avoiding the fear and silencing some inner need?

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I Have 22 Journals Written By a Girl Who Committed Suicide

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(Trigger warning: rape, suicide, and self-harm are discussed in this post. If these are topics that may cause you to descend into a dark place, please stop reading now.)

I met her parents at a Panera Bread just outside Baltimore to talk about turning their daughter’s life into a book. It was our second meeting. Afterwards we walked out into the parking lot and I went with them to their car. Her mother popped open the trunk and handed me a heavy bag full of journals.

“I’m really nervous about taking this with me,” I said. “I don’t normally take original material from my clients.”

I paused.

“I’ll guard these very closely,” I said.

We stood there, and I stared at the bag, heavy in my hands.

“I know you will,” her mother said. I reached in and took the bag out. i gave her mother a hug with the arm not holding the bag and shook her father’s hand.

“Oh,” she added, “I wouldn’t let your children look at those. They can be rather…dark.”

I nodded.

“See you in a few months,” I said.

* * * * *

They’re in my office now, those journals. They are various sizes and colors, some the typical journals you might buy at a book store, others handmade and decorated with artwork. The girl whose handwriting flows from one year to the next started writing them when she was thirteen years old and continued on until she was twenty.

They seem alive. Sometimes, when I go into my office and close the door, I’ll stare at them, and it’s like they have a pulse. They breathe. Because that is her life, right there, those scribbled words that stretch from page to page. It’s an organism, one that tells over and over again, no matter how many times you read it, the tale of a girl who had a disease we struggle to understand.

There are the stories of the two times she was raped. Her sense of never fitting in at school. Her self-harm. Cutting. There is the story of telling a counselor about her rapes, a few years after the fact. There is the spiraling downward, and the suicide attempts. There are the cries for help, the anguish, the confusion. There is desperation.

There is medication after medication after medication. Treatment. Psychiatric evaluations. Counseling sessions. Times when she seemed to be doing better. Times when she wanted to give up. She called her Depression “The Beast” and “The Imp” and she chronicled her life with these strangers. They were things she couldn’t live with, things she couldn’t live without.

Then there was her final journal entry, when she expressed that within a month all would be well – she would either be better, or she would be dead. And you can tell that there is immense relief, almost joy in that glimpse of the end of the struggle.

There is the last picture she drew, one of her alter ego flying away from the scene of her funeral on colorful wings over a church with stained-glass windows.

Then she walked into a lake, and they found her nine months later.

* * * * *

What can we do for those who walk among us but cannot bear this thing called life?

* * * * *

A friend of mine, Ami, only a few days ago retold the story of her own recent suicide attempt:

I don’t know what made me decide on a Sunday morning in early June to take a palmful of Tylenol before walking out the door to go to church like I do every Sunday. I didn’t wake up that morning knowing that I was going to try to die that day. When I was asked at church if I was planning on doing anything, I didn’t know that I would go home and take another handful of Tylenol.

I don’t know why I took that second overdose.

To those of us who have a loved one battling suicidal thoughts, these words can be scary. We want to know what to do to prevent it. We want to know what we can do to keep this thing from happening.

I don’t know the answer. I don’t think there is “an answer.”

* * * * *

When I was young, suicide was talked about in hushed whispers, the unpardonable sin. The Amish, the community from which my ancestral roots sprang forth, used to bury those who committed suicide on the spot, not even marking the grave. They were forgotten, or at least smoothed over, their history lost in a field beneath the tree where they were found hanging, or outside the barn where their blood was spilled.

Those lucky enough to receive a proper burial were deliberately buried outside the graveyard fence, symbolic of their excommunication from the church, albeit after death.

This is no different than many we hear today who talk about those who commit suicide as being “cowards,.” Such a label erases the person, erases the struggles.

“Selfish,” some will say.

“The most self-centered thing you could ever do.”

But I’ve read twenty-two journals of a girl who could not bear to live, and I do not see a weak person. I do not see a selfish person. I do not see a coward. In fact, she is one of the bravest people I’ve ever had the chance to know – she battled her illness for eight long years. Having read her life and the thoughts that continually went back and forth inside of her head, I don’t think I could have lasted eight years under that kind of torment.

I’m eager to tell you her story so that you can see these things, too. Maybe it will change the way you view this disease. Maybe, like the mud Jesus told the blind man to put on his eyes, her story will help you to see.

* * * * *

This is a long post, but the point I’m trying to make is actually a very short one.

Be kind.

Remember that none of us can comprehend the pain of another person.

Speak well of those who could not bear this life, or do not speak at all.

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What I Heard My Children Saying (or, What You Can Do With Ten Nails)

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I listened through the open window, and because I stopped and waited and listened I could hear their tiny voices dancing through the summer day, accentuated by the metallic strike of a hammer on a nail, the thunk of hammer on wood (missed!), the raspy sound of the shovel as it shoved into our narrow strip of city yard. They are five and six years old, the two of them, and their voices were serious.

I listened through the open window and they talked about building a tree house out of only a three-foot long board and the ten nails I had given them earlier, five in each dusty palm, five white nails that they held like magic seeds. They raced outside and one began digging and the other began nailing and that’s how it went for an hour or so as they planned and schemed the massive tree house they would build in the tiny tree that lines our city yard. Out of one small board. And ten nails.

This is what it means to be a child: to believe that even a tree house is possible, though you’ve never built one before, though you don’t have the tools or the materials, though you don’t know why or how. To believe it’s possible.

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

* * * * *

I spoke with Kelly Chripczuk the other day and we were talking about trust when she said something that made my ears perk up, something along the lines of,

“Until you lose your identity (as a writer or preacher or student or whatever), there’s so much pressure. Too much pressure. There are people to impress and a reputation to uphold. But once you can let go of that identity, it allows you to play again, like a little child, to create things and not worry about what anyone else will think.”

To play again, I thought to myself. This is what I have to allow myself to do.

* * * * *

I immediately thought of the novel I’m releasing this winter (I’m sorry if I’ve been talking about that too much, but it’s on my mind all the time, and to be honest I’m still terrified of freeing it into the world). But after talking with Kelly, I thought, That’s it! It’s all just play, this creating and conjuring and sharing of stories.

I enjoy writing stories too much to let what other people might think stop me from writing, from creating, from producing and sharing. When it’s me and all these potentially critical readers, I feel myself drawing inward. When it’s me and and the story, just us, and I’m making things up and chuckling to myself and nearly crying, that’s it. That is a life I could live and enjoy and be at peace.

That’s me in the back yard with not enough materials, not nearly the right tools, and ten measly nails. Making plans. Digging in the dirt. Climbing trees.

And believing.

What do you wish you could start believing for again?

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Can You Remember Why You Started?

Start Line from Flickr via Wylio
© 2011 LindsayEnsing, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio

If you’ve read my blog at any length since I began sharing here in 2010, you’ve been witness to what feels like an incredible journey, from those early days when I didn’t know where my next project would come from, to our 10,000-mile cross-country trip, to these last two years where I’ve had more work than I ever imagined I would have.

You can learn a lot of lessons in difficult times, but you can also learn a lot during times of abundance, if you keep your eyes open.

This year I’ve had some intriguing projects, some of which I’m in the middle of right now, and the amount of work allowed us to buy a house and move into the city and has just generally made life a little easier. We used to have to check our checking account before filling up the van with gas. We used to line up the bills and have to decide which to pay and which to hang on to.

But this “abundance” has also made life very busy. Very busy. I write all day, six days a week (sometimes 6 ½), and then usually a few hours at night. I’m constantly reviewing and editing and submitting, recording and transcribing and re-writing. Right now I’m at various stages of five different books.

I’m making good money, but a thought dropped into my mind a few months ago, and it stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Is this why you wanted to be a full-time writer, so that you could make a lot of money?”

No, was my immediate response. I never became a writer so that I could earn a lot of money. I never became a writer so that I could spend the rest of my life writing other people’s books (though I do enjoy that aspect, and helping someone else share their story seems like a very worthy part of my calling as a writer).

I became a writer because I have stories to tell. Some are true stories, things that actually happened to me and other people. Some are True stories, tales that, while fiction, feel like some sort of very personal history. And in my busy-ness and occasional fear of running out of work, I lost the ability to ask people to wait.

What if I tell them I’m not available for six months and they go with someone else?

But if I’ve learned anything over the last five years, it’s the importance of living life from a place of trust and not from a place of fear. So I’ve decided to start trusting again.

Part of that active trust means not taking on any new projects until early next year. I need to finish the ones I have, and finish them really well.

Just as important, I have a book that I promised my kids I would finish before the end of the year, the first novel I’m releasing out into the world, so I want to spend some quality time revising and editing that story. (I’ll probably release that through Kickstarter, so if you’re interested in hearing about that when it happens, stay tuned here at the blog or sign up for my email newsletter over in the right-hand column of this page.)

Which leads me to this:

Why did you start doing what you’re doing?

For the authors out there…why did you start writing? Was it so that you could build a platform and create an audience and market and beg people to read your book? Or was it something else, something inside you that simply had to tell a story?

Why did you first take the job you have now? Why did you become a painter? Why did you become a pastor or a teacher or a business person? Why did you start that charity?

We are all in tiny vessels lost at sea, and even though we’re fortunate enough to find true North for brief moments of time, we will always drift from that heading. Living a good life means constantly evaluating where we have drifted, and doing what must be done to get back in the direction we are meant to travel.

So, can you remember why you started? (Seriously. That’s a real question. I’d love to hear your answer in the comments.)

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My Middle-of-the-Night Ambulance Ride (or, This is Life)

photo-26I woke up at 1am and I couldn’t stop shaking. Every muscle in my arms and legs, my back and neck, convulsed and shook. I was freezing cold. I pulled the comforter tighter around me and tried to warm up, but the shaking seemed to move deeper inside of me, and soon my breathing was coming fast and shallow.

I stood up out of bed and nearly collapsed. I mumbled something to Maile, something incoherent. What I meant to say was,

“I’m freezing cold. I’m going to go get in the shower.”

But I’m not sure what I actually said. I stumbled out of the room and down the hall. The shakes made the stairs difficult. I depended on the bannister. I turned on the hot water in the downstairs shower and stood in the steam, then undressed and got in. I still couldn’t stop shaking. My breath dried out my mouth, and soon I was gasping for each gulp of air.

I can’t keep this up, I thought. In five minutes I might not be conscious.

I pulled the shower curtain back and shouted.

“Maile!”

I sat down in the shower because my legs were giving out. In all the shaking I banged my head against the tile wile. I wondered if she would be able to hear me above the fans and the air conditioner.

“Maile!” I shouted again. Panic.

This isn’t it, right? I mean, I’m sick, but this couldn’t kill me. Right?

I felt myself nearly pass out. I gathered myself and shouted for Maile as loud as I could. I heard her footsteps come out of the bed, down the hall, down the steps. The bathroom door opened.

“Mai,” I said, between the gasps and the shaking that made my voice waver. “You have to call 911.”

* * * * *

That’s how I found myself in an ambulance on the way to Lancaster General Hospital. When I arrived they stuck me with two IVs, one with icy cold fluid I could feel oozing up my arm. My temperature was over 103. My heart rate clipped along at 140. My blood pressure didn’t even have two numbers. It was 41. They packed ice around my body to bring down my temperature.

Cat scan. Chest x-ray. Antibiotics. By 6am they wheeled me up to a room on the 8th floor of the hospital. I slept on and off, my IV machine beeping, nurses coming in every thirty minutes to check my temperature, my blood pressure, my heart rate.

By the time the morning came, I felt weak but calm. Outside my window I watched the life flight helicopter come and go a few times a day, landing on a section of the hospital roof a few floors behind me. In and out. Life and death.

* * * * *

My room was divided by a curtain, and on the other side was a man in his 80s. He had fallen at his house, and they weren’t sure why, so he was under observation.

“The doctor says I can go home this afternoon,” his wavering voice said quietly to one of the nurses.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Garvey, but you’re not going home today. Remember? We’ve already talked about this. You’re being transferred to physical therapy for ten days.”

Silence. The nurse leaves. Then, a few minutes later, the old man’s voice ventures out in the now-empty room. I can’t see him. I can only hear him behind the curtain. I’m pretty sure he’s not talking to me.

“The doctor says I can go home this afternoon.”

* * * * *

The doctor spoke in matter-of-fact terms. No big deal. It is what it is.

“You have a six-inch section of your small intestine that’s severely inflamed,” he explained. “And in the center of that section it’s almost completely closed. You need some rest and we’re going to try to bring the swelling down. Liquids only, for now, and we’re going to keep you in here until you can eat some solids.”

* * * * *

Three days later, I walked out of the hospital. We live two blocks away. The sun was warm but the day felt cool for July, and as I walked out of that place, no longer tethered to my IV cart, I was very aware of each free step, each breath. I stopped at a bench along James Street and just sat there for a moment. The world felt like it had slowed down.

Leaves scuttled across the sidewalk. Cars spun by. I wanted to stop each person in the street and remind them that they are here, in the world. They are walking around. The sun is shining, for goodness’ sake.

Man alive.

I got home and no one was there so I sat on the front porch and watched the traffic go by. I was reminded again, in a way I hadn’t been since my trip to Istanbul 18 months ago, that all of this busy-ness we create is a mirage that cloaks reality. We spin our webs and the storms blow them down and we spin again, ceaselessly rubbing our hands together, never stopping to look. Never stopping to live.

So I sat there and I waited for my family and the day passed and that night I held ten-day-old Leo on my chest, his eyes heavy, each blink taking longer than the one before. His breathing came in short, jerky spurts, then slowed into an even rhythm as his dreams melted into night.

This is life.