Have a little faith in me....

Faith.  It seems like we talk about it all the time: keeping the faith, having faith, believing in faith to get through a rough patch.

But what does that really even mean?  How do we define this one word that carries so much weight, particularly when times are tough?

For starters, I consulted Google--the foremost authority on all matters, right?  (Or, at least, it is to my generation!)

 

"Complete trust or confidence in someone or something"?  Yikes!  That sounds so....huge.   Can we settle for partial trust or confidence?  

But in matters of the heart, we can't really settle at all.  It's an all-or-nothing proposal when it comes to love.  You can't sort of love someone.  You can't half-ass a relationship and get good results.  You can't have some form of Faith Lite and expect that the Universe will honor it when you can't be bothered to commit.

When people make mistakes, as they're bound to do, forgiveness is really only the first step.  What I have realized it that there is this important second step called faith.  Faith in the power of someone to grow from his mistake, to adjust his course, and to right the wrong over time.  Forgiveness seems almost to be the easy part; the hard part is to have the faith to believe when there is no evidence to support it.  

For as a person who believes in empirical data, as a person who lives in a world where statistics and quantitative analysis can make (or break) a case decisively, having faith in the unseen and unshown requires superhuman mental strength.  It's a daily exercise to believe in something for which there is little to no proof.

And while I'm far from a religious person, I do like to believe that the Bible holds some gems of truth.  Among them, this:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  Hebrews 11:1 

Even 2000+ years ago, people struggled with the idea of faith.  And they wrote about it, imploring generations to come to keep hopeful and confident, even when there is no tangible reason to do so.

Years later, the dear Saint Mother Teresa underscored these teachings and reminded us of this:

Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. 

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Other religions remark upon the power of faith as well:

And those who believe and do good are made to enter gardens.

Surah Ibrahim, Verse 23 of the Quran

On the long journey of human life, faith is the best of companions.

Buddha

And so I wonder: who am I to disbelieve what wise people through the years, across cultures, and in varying conditions, have told us is virtuous and beneficial?

While I am struggling to accept the love that is in front of me, I am finding it way harder to establish faith.  But without one, there cannot be the other.  A love that is not supported by hope and faith will not be a lasting love.  And a faith that is not embedded in a love is nothing more than a wish.

So now I settle my rapidly beating heart and quell the anxiety.  I inhale peace and turn myself over to the unseen, allowing love and faith into my soul.  It's the only way forward. 

Capture the Flag

When I was a kid, we used to play games in the suburban cul-de-sac I grew up in--every child on the block would come out after dinner and we would collectively decide whether tonight's game was Capture the Flag, Kick the Can, or just a simple game of tag.  Even as the hot summer sun was setting in the red July sky and our moms were hollering at us to finally come in, we would pursue each other without relent.

Years later, as adults, we still play these games--albeit in a "grown-up" format and with far more serious consequences.

These days, I find myself talking with my friends about a game of Capture the Heart.  In this version, the rules require us to hide our emotions away and leave tidbits and clues to only the truly discerning among us as to the whereabouts of the special prize.  As Julie, Angela, and I explored this topic over cheap beer in a sticky bar tonight, I found myself wondering why one person understands our vague language of love while others completely misunderstand the translation.

What is it about one particular person that makes our hearts race?  That sets our souls on fire and sends the stars careening?  How can one kiss--that brief contact of our mouths--turn the world upside down when it's with the right person?  Do our hearts instinctively know that the heart beating on the other side of that chest wall is the one that was meant to be? 

Though the trials be fiery and the road be twisted, I have found the one whom my soul loves.  To be sure, he has broken my heart more times than I dare recall.  But on a beach in southern California two short years ago, he won me over in a daring and audacious game of Capture the Flag Heart.  As the salty sea air whipped around us and the bright yellow sun turned to pink in the evening sky, he kissed me on a Huntington Beach pier, stealing a bit of my breath and all of my heart.  In a game that is sometimes reckless and always adventurous, he took the prize fair and square under all applicable rules of love and war.

In all of the dizzying confusion that has ensued, I do know this: that when I look into his eyes and see the very reflection of my soul, I am with the right person.  When I feel his heart speed up to match the pace of mine, when I hear his breath slow to meet mine, when I taste the sweetness of love in his kiss...I am with the right person.  All else falls away: the hills and the valleys level out to become a plateau, grace envelopes me, and hope becomes more than a whispered prayer.

Tonight, in a fervent sigh under his breath, I heard these sweet and everlasting words:

Wherever you are is always going to be my home.

Emotional Kevlar

With a heavy heart, I've been thinking all day about the recent line-of-duty death of Officer Tom Decker of the Cold Spring (MN) Police Department.  Officer Decker was just 31 years old and leaves behind a wife and children.  By all accounts, he was a fine man and a good cop.

In talking over the tragic event with a friend, I reflected back on my own marriage to a police officer.  When we were dating, I used to make him call me at the end of each shift so that I knew he was okay.  After a few months of these 4:00 am wakeup calls, I was exhausted...and hardly consoled with regard to his safety.  Finally, I consulted his mom: how did she handle the stress of both her husband (a commander) and her son (an officer) being cops?

"It's in God's hands," she told me.

Although I have never been a religious person, for some reason her words made sense.  Worrying wasn't going to keep him any safer.  I tucked her advice into my heart and tried to keep calm and carry on.  After all, what option did I truly have?

Every day that my husband would put on his bulletproof vest with the extra layers of Kevlar over his physiological heart (called, horrifyingly enough, a "trauma plate"), I would layer another piece of my own Kevlar over my emotional heart.  I isolated my fears to keep them from invading the rest of me.

As it turns out, bulletproof vests aren't really bulletproof--they're only bullet-resistant to some forms of ammunition.  Some of them won't even repel a knife stick.

And like the myth of the "bulletproof" vest, my emotional Kevlar wasn't fail-proof.  Sometimes, the bad news found its way through the woven fibers and straight into my core.  I've been to two line-of-duty death police funerals--one of them just days after we returned home from our honeymoon--and I assure you, they are not for the faint of heart.  It's soul-numbing to see a grown man in full police uniform with tears running down his cheeks while he stands at attention to honor his friend.  On those occasions, you wrap your arms around your husband a little tighter, you cry, and you try to convince yourself that it won't ever be you.

Emotional Kevlar, as a concept, isn't unique to cop spouses/partners.  All of us have walls that we've built up to protect our hearts from one reality or another.  The trauma plates that protect our emotional centers are the result of fear, whether real or perceived.  Sometimes they're based on our own bad experiences--times when we were the target of metaphorical gunshots--and sometimes they're the result of someone else's tragedy that we've internalized.

The question becomes: Is the Kevlar necessary, or should it be retired?  And if it is necessary, is it thick enough to prevent tragedy?

My thoughts and prayers go out tonight to Officer Decker's family and loved ones, friends, and fellow officers.  I will say another prayer tonight for all of my friends in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day so that the rest of us may sleep in peace.  There will be a third prayer for the family members who support our police officers--those families that give up birthday parties and anniversaries and sometimes even their loved ones so that you and I are safe.


This photo was taken on the chilly November day in 2007 when the Minneapolis Park Police buried Officer Mark Bedard, who was killed in the line of duty while pursuing a drive-by shooter.  Officer Bedard touched many lives and his gift to all of us is not forgotten.

It's of my then-husband and I, reunited at the end of a long and terrible day--a day when he was the one standing tall, saluting the casket of a friend, with tears falling on his cheeks.

source: Star Tribune

Theory of evolution

"You have to force yourself to evolve."

--Taylor Swift

I'm not sure Taylor Swift was referring to who we are in the context of our love lives here...but then again, maybe she was!  I mean, really.  Listen to her songs and you'll know what I mean.  In fact, it's probably instructive to listen to her while you're reading this blog.  Start with "Red" off her new album. 

Anyway....I was reading an article about her song writing and BOOM!  there it was, the words practically jumping off the page at me.

I used to think that evolution occurred only after enough damage...which is really probably more like erosion.  You know: enough wind and rain can cause small rocks to fall off the face of a cliff...eventually big rocks fall...and next thing you know, a beautiful new rock formation is exposed.  Geologists swoop in and find fossils and dinosaur bones and what-have-you.  Cool stuff.  Shiny stuff.  Meaningful stuff.

I'm ridiculously optimistic.

Turns out.....erosion in people is just simple destruction.  Wind and rain from bad relationships can erode you into a shell of your former self.  What once was sparkly can become dull, and you might not even realize it for awhile.  You have to be careful to protect yourself and know when to come in out of the rain.

Evolution is far different.  In nature, evolution occurs when DNA adapts to changes in the environment.  In people, our emotions can adapt in much the same way--but we have to let it happen.  In other words, get out of your own way.

We can keep on making the same mistakes in relationships, or we can see that the environment demands us to do otherwise...and then step aside so that we can make those needed changes.

I got an email this weekend from an ex.  When I read it, I knew he wanted me to respond, even though it contained the classic "you don't have to reply to this" line.  And in the past, responding always meant that there would be an exchange, and then ultimately a meeting, and then SNAP! we'd be back together, on the same path to nowhere.  So I thought about it.  I brooded about it.  I drank a bottle of wine over it.  And in the end...

I chose evolution.

The risk of a first date...

It's a first date...anything can happen, right??

Isn't that the magic of dating?  That glorious, butterfly-filled first date, where the world is open to the possibility of fairy tales.  Your tummy has that little twitch, your heart beats a little faster while you pick out just the right outfit... what if, what if, what if....


....Or...it's filled with hilarious mishaps.  And that's why we're really here, isn't it?   It's far more likely that the first date is awkward, maybe even tense, and you spend an hour or two with a total stranger wondering if you can get past that odd stain on his front tooth or the fact that you're taller than him in heels.

Once, I went on a blind date with a guy who was sweet and cute over text messages and the few photos I'd seen of him.  We had enough in common--same college background, children, etc--that I thought a first date would be great.  Visions of our first kiss danced in my head as I drove to meet him; I was glowing with happiness.

When I arrived at the restaurant where we were meeting, I almost turned around.  He looked nothing like the proportionately muscled man I'd seen photos of; rather, he was stout and slightly slack-jawed.  And then he spotted me and I was trapped into the longest hour of my life: he spent at least 45 minutes of it trashing his ex-wife.   The remaining 15 minutes were filled with me trying to dodge his offers to go get a glass of wine somewhere.  I've never eaten a slice of flourless chocolate cake so fast....

Is it moments like this that make us feel compelled to return to the scene of the bloody disaster of our last relationship?  Case in point: I was talking with a friend tonight and she was telling me about a mutual friend of ours that had ditched girl night to go hang out with a boy who had already proved himself to be all wrong for her.  It made me wonder: is the comfort of the known bad guy that much better than the risk of a bad first date? 

Dust yourself off....get on out there...

Eleanor Roosevelt once said:

You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

With all due respect to the former First Lady, I think she got it wrong.

"Must"?!  I mean, really....I reject the notion that I "must" do anything other than take care of my kids.  And brush my teeth...that seems important.  And it's probably a good idea to eat once in awhile.

But I digress...anyway, I think she really should've said this:

You CAN do the thing which you think you cannot do.

Yep, I can.  Watch me.

On a different note....I was talking with my friend, Julie, tonight and she reminded me of a truly important principle: "I can't move on if I don't learn from the past."  

Wow.  What a thought!  It got me to thinking back to a topic once explored in class...how do we define failure? 

A year ago, I read a book for my grad program entitled The Music of Failure, by a local author named Bill Holm.  Admittedly, the title was off-putting for a woman fresh into her first steps as a graduate student and unwilling to concede any failures at all.  And besides, I had spent most of the last two years wallowing through some form of failure or another, and I really wasn’t anxious to read about someone else’s.

 

Much to my surprise, I found it to be beautiful; these artfully crafted essays describing his experiences and observations of life were easy to enjoy.  As I delved into the pages, reading short essay after short essay about people in Mr Holm's life, I found myself reworking my definition of failure.  What if failure wasn't a discordant tone, but rather a flowing harmony?

Failure can come in many forms, but much of failure is up to each of us to determine.  Choosing the right frame to view our successes and shortcomings is key in finding the inspiration to continue.  Framing is not just about applying the right frame of mind to the task, but also in applying it to performance evaluation.  Perfection is not possible; success under that frame of mind will surely never come.  But completion of a task is success; achievement of certain outcomes is a success; and allowing oneself room for growth and the ability to try again is success.

Once, in a conversation with my chaplain, he told me that “failure is defined as not getting up one more time than you are knocked down.”  Amen, old man.  I tucked that gem away in my heart, to be retrieved later when I needed it over and over again.

So, on we will go, marching through the peaks and valleys of dating, carrying our failures with us like a background chorus, and remembering the sweet harmonies that overlay the chorus when the divine meets Earth and sparks fly.  That optimism, paired with the defiance of not staying down, is the mark of an exceptional person.  And each of us is capable of exceptional.