I Give Up It's Your Turn or Just Listen

I’m going to preface this by saying I’m not what you’d call super religious. I haven’t read the Bible. I have had periods in my life where I haven’t gone to church in years. I couldn’t sit in a debate and use the Bible intelligently to make a point. I was raised Catholic, got tired of the judgement and found a church instead that seems to focus on giving to others and accepting all people. I’m not sure if I’m doing “religion” right, but I do it my way – I feel like I’ve got a personal relationship with my God, or higher power, or whatever you want to call it. But what you are about to read probably doesn’t follow any specific religious belief other than my own. Oh, and there will be swears. Because that’s how my God and I talk.

I’m not sure how religion is really supposed to work. I’ve always believed God feels like you should be a good person and not judge others. That’s basically what my beliefs are based on. And it feels weird to say that I believe I’ve had moments in my life where I feel like God has talked to me because that seems like something that would only happen to devout people. I swear a lot, can be mean sometimes and am not perfect so why would God talk to me? But all I know is that I don’t know who else was talking to me in those conversations because super smart things were said that I didn’t come up with. Is this normal for everyone else? I don’t know. Either way, it’s happened in some of my worst times, and it’s how I know that there is a point to all the craziness of life.

One of the first times I can remember having a chat with God was after I had my miscarriage. I was out running a 13-mile run (as one often does after a significant medical event like an idiot) and really, that run was for punishing my failure of a body. I was just so angry and sad and miserable. I was out running because I could control my body for 13 miles when I couldn’t control it to have a baby. That miscarriage was when I learned true sadness. I remember thinking, “What in the fuck God? How could I have a baby taken away when there are so many people out there that do drugs and are bad people and they have babies just fine?” And I distinctly heard, “You got what you wanted.” I remember exactly where I was when I heard that. I was out on a gravel road, with the humming of the power lines overhead. If I were being cynical, I would chalk this whole thing up to the extreme voltage coming off those lines, but instead I said, “Excuse me? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I did not get what I wanted. I’ve never been more sad in my life.” And the reply, which I honestly do not think I would have thought of on my own at that moment was, “You wanted a healthy baby Jenny. And you did not have one. So this one is gone. You are getting what you wanted” I actually stopped running, put my hands on my hips, and just processed that. This voice was right. All I wanted was a healthy baby. If I was going to get what I wanted, then I must need to let this baby go. Always wanting the last word, I think I replied, “Well, you could have just given me a healthy one in the first place.” I think God chuckled. But I knew God was right. It was this moment when I saw that maybe someone did have my back. I may not be getting what I wanted right now but ultimately I was getting what I wanted – and I did. I have two amazing sons that own my heart.

Years go by and it’s pretty much radio silence. Which is fine because I’m good. I remember that voice on the road, but we don’t talk a whole lot. Maybe we are like when you have that friend that is your best friend so you can go years without seeing each other and then when you do, it’s like you were never apart? There is this part of me that wonders if God needs more from you than that, but God is a busy person so maybe it’s a relief when you are status quo. But then the Squirrel was born. What an epic disaster. He had a prolapsed cord and a true knot. This baby wanted to crash into the world (much like he lives every day) and he did. One of these medical events is an emergency on its own – to have both things happen with one baby requires more statistics than I can handle. I woke up from surgery and I don’t know if it was the drugs or if it was God but all I felt was peace. While everyone around me was telling me how terrible things were, how the Squirrel probably had brain damage, that everything went wrong, I knew it would be alright. That whatever happened next, it would be fine. When people would tell me how nothing went right, instead I saw intervention. I was able to use a surgery room that was already prepped for the pregnant mother who was being wheeled down the hall for HER surgery. The doctors were changing shifts, and the next doctor hadn’t arrived yet, but they caught the one leaving as he was almost out the door.  There was just a second of air left in the umbilical cord that saved the Squirrel. I had a nurse who quickly recognized an emergency and knew exactly what to do – she held the Squirrel’s head up while she rode the bed with me down to surgery. Nurses would come up to me during my stay at the hospital and would tell me that the whole floor was praying for me. The Squirrel was perfect. No one could believe it. I tell him he has to do great things now because he was saved for a reason. If you don’t see God in that story, then you need to read it again.

So now I come to present day. Soon I won’t need to keep writing about my divorce, but right now it’s how I process things. You guys. It was pretty rough. It was a year of truth after truth after truth. So many revelations and horrible moments. One night I took a walk.  And I said to God, “I can’t believe you threw me under the bus like this. I thought you had my back but you don’t. Screw you.” We were done. We were not friends. Don’t even say the word God to me. God had left me when the chips were down. Don’t tell me that bullshit story about footprints in the sand. It’s not true and I was only searching for truths at that point.  

Well you can probably predict how this went. It didn’t go well. It was a year of treading water while waves kept washing over me, choking me and sending me down. Every day it was a struggle to keep believing things would get better. Around the end of that year, I was in spin class trying to block out the fact I was in spin class. I was thinking about how hard everything was and how I really didn’t know how I had the energy to keep trying, to keep smiling for my kids, to take more hits that just kept coming. How do you keep standing up when you keep getting knocked down over and over? And all of a sudden I thought, what do I have to lose? My way wasn’t working so that means it’s time to try something different. And I said, “Okay God. Nothing is working. I give up. Your turn. I know I told you to screw off but that’s because it seemed like you were really shitting on me there – how could so many bad things happen to me when I was trying to be a good person? And now I feel like an ass because I’m giving you a second chance when all I’ve been doing is giving people second chances lately and frankly that has brought me nothing but pain. Trying to trust anyone feels like a mistake. But I have nothing left to lose. Let’s see what you can do.” Not my most gracious conversation but God overlooked that.

I went home and I opened the Bible. I didn’t even know where to start. I read a few Psalms. Wow, people felt like garbage back then too. My heart too has been turned to dust. I get that. My enemies have tried to destroy me too. Sounds like God has seen this before. I started talking to God again. “Dude, I just need the energy and the patience to make it through this day without being ashamed of my reactions. Help me stay true to the person I am while I go through this.” “God, what the fuck was that? You are going to have to handle this one. I need a trust fall.” “I am freaking the fuck out. Just make it better. I’m going to trust you to make it better.”   

You know what? God showed up. Turns out I don’t think God bailed on me at all. That damned footprint story was right. I see now that everything I experienced simply reinforced the kind of person that I am, what my values are, who I am deep down. I wouldn’t have learned that without going through the darkness. What a gift. God gave me the courage to start telling my story and my one regret is that I didn’t talk to my family and friends sooner. I am humbled by the amazing people in my life and without the strength they lent me, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today, which is a good place. On one of my lower days, my little brother, who I hadn’t talked to in more than 2 years, called me for the first time. All day I had been crying tears of sadness and all of a sudden I was crying tears of joy. Thanks God. If that would be the only good thing to happen through all of this, it was worth it. Everything I went through showed me that the only way was to walk a new path instead of getting lost following the same path again. Instead of throwing me under a bus, God was saying, “Jen, I’m trying to convince you there is another way. Unfortunately, you are stubborn so I’m going to have to almost break you first to get you to change.” I see that now. And when it gets blurry and messy, I just say, “God, your turn. You are going to have to get me through this one today. I trust you to not fuck it up.” And so far, God hasn’t let me down.

On Palm Sunday I was feeling pretty frustrated. I said a quick prayer before going into church, “God give me patience.” It is my go-to prayer I say almost daily. I sat in church and realized I had forgotten what had made me mad already. And then I heard that voice. “Now you are going to do great things.” Huh? What was that? Where did that come from? “I’m giving you a second chance. Now you are going to do great things with it.” Okay. I know that voice. I’m getting a do-over. Life is going to look different. I get that I’m going to get some time to heal, to detox from these past 18 months of stress and turmoil. But then I am expected to do great things. Maybe it just means being that friend to others because I learned how to sit with sadness. Maybe I’m going to help people who feel lost and need help like I did – to show them they have strength they didn’t know they had. I don’t know. But I do know that God cleared the way for me to live my best life. I’m not going to squander it.

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too was a gift.” – Mary Oliver

A Letter To My Babies or #metoo

Dear Babies,

My Dear Boys. You are growing up in a time when innocence is hard to protect. Every time I turn on the news I risk you learning about the evils of the world. We rush to report the tragic and insane and ignore the beautiful things around us. There is no shielding you from human behavior anymore because even if I don’t watch the news, it’s on the radio, discussed in school and on the playground. So instead of blocking it, we are going to talk about it. We are going to make sure you understand empathy and compassion for your fellow human beings.

A perfect example of this is the news about Joe Biden. We love Joe Biden. And Joe Biden is being accused of touching women without their permission. “But what’s the big deal? Look at what Trump did!” you say. Sigh. Yes. But it still doesn’t make it okay. We need to respect personal boundaries, even if you are Joe Biden. Now I have the task of explaining the male-female dynamic to you, in a time where you are also influenced by people who think it is overblown and silly. How do I explain the #metoo movement to you? Do I start with the history of how women have been constantly harassed? Do I explain your role in society and how it differs from mine? Do I point out every time a woman is marginalized so you begin to see it? I need you to understand it with compassion and the only way I know how to do that is to make it personal. Maybe I just start of by telling you what my experience is like as a woman.

Let me preface this by saying that I am so lucky that I am a woman living in the United States. And nothing truly traumatic has happened to me. What I am about to tell you are stories of what women consider just common occurrences about growing up as female. But I know they are things you will likely not experience because you are boys. And that is the entire problem and why we have #metoo.

I’d like to start off by saying I love men. Men have been some of my favorite friends. I love joking with them, sharing stories, getting their insight. I guess I’ve always looked at people like they are people and not so much as their gender. And I have some amazing men that are my friends and family. And look at you two beautiful boys – I love you like you are the breath I take each day because you are. So now that that has been said, let me tell you about some not so awesome moments that are normal for women to experience.

Do I tell you about the time I was working in a restaurant and one of the kitchen workers shoved me against a wall and held me there to try and kiss me? I pushed and shoved and squirmed until I got out of there and then, went back to work with a smile on my face because when you are a girl, you “man” up and do what you have to do, no matter how fast your heart is beating. There wasn’t anything to report to the manager because I got away. And even if he had kissed me, unless it’s rape, you don’t talk about it because you are just "overblowing" the situation. You should want to be kissed by whomever and whenever. Except you don’t.

There was the time when I lived with a roommate and someone left a threatening note on our hall floor by our door that said he was coming to fuck the blonde bitch in the black leather coat. My roommate looked at me and said, you are the only one wearing a black leather coat Jen. We called the cops and I started carrying mace because simply living in my apartment had become dangerous because some random stranger decided that he could inflict fear and threaten my safety. I felt silly that my roommate called the cops despite a threat on my safety. Until something actually happens, you are just supposed to put up with unwanted comments like that. But you shouldn’t.

How about the time I was doing my observation hours for the athletic training program at my university and I was watching a football player receive a treatment in the treatment room. The head professional athletic trainer for a Big 12 university looked at me and another student doing her observation hours and tilted his head at us and said to the football player, “Which one of these is yours?” Before you think this is simply a case of misunderstanding, we were both in the athletic trainer uniform of unattractive khakis and red, blue or white polos. The football player just looked puzzled and the trainer said, “So neither of these is yours?” No sir, neither of us “belong” to this football player. Clearly we are here to watch you as a professional administer therapy and evidently treat us like we are just a piece of property to be claimed. It was then I decided that athletic training wouldn’t be my career field. I couldn’t deal with the sexism I was realizing I would experience. Hopefully things have changed greatly since the mid-90s. Women are not property.

And remember when your dad and I were talking about whether it is appropriate to “wolf whistle” at a woman? Let me clear that up once and for all. It’s not appropriate. First, women are not dogs to be whistled at, even if you approve of how we look. We don’t actually care if you like how we look because we got dressed for ourselves that day. If you think we are pretty or smart or funny, be a human and come up and tell us to our face. If you can’t do that, then you aren’t mature enough to talk to us in the first place. Second, it is a “wolf” whistle and wolves are predatory. Nothing in the name says this is a nice polite gesture. Third it makes women feel uneasy and like we are a piece of meat that has been noticed and now we are on guard. That reason alone is enough to justify that you never wolf whistle at a woman. Show respect. Always.

Do you know why I always lock my doors when I go in and pay for my gas or drop off library books? Because if something bad happened to me, it is always assumed to be my fault first for not being extra cautious, or for wearing a skirt or for having long hair. You will not know what it feels like to always scan a parking lot before approaching your car. You will not know what it feels like to second guess getting into an elevator with a stranger. These are my realities. They are the realities of women everywhere.

Let me say it makes me roll my eyes to hear that men don’t want to mentor women now because they are afraid that we are demanding to be treated with respect and apparently, they just don’t know how to do that properly. So it’s not okay to make a comment about how we look anymore? “Well I just can’t trust myself to not be a douchebag when I am in a position to mentor this person.” Look buddy, if you can’t trust yourself to not be an ass, you shouldn’t be a mentor in the first place.

Are these all of the instances of my experiences of being a woman? No. But I don’t need to share all my stories. You see I’m not looking for protection. I’m looking to raise sons that don’t treat people like they are objects or things to overpower. Instead I want you to treat people like they are of value, whether they are men, women, trans, straight, gay, bi, black, white, Christian, Jew, Muslim. Treat people like they are of value until they prove otherwise but I’ll be damned if you will treat them with disrespect because of their gender, orientation, ethnicity, race or religion.

I know it seems like sticky waters but it’s not. It is simply following the Golden Rule, treat others as you wish to be treated. I can guarantee you don’t want to be shoved into walls, dismissed because of your gender or made to feel lucky that “nothing worse happened.” We women are warriors because you do not hear about those every day things we put up with. And now everyone is shocked that women are starting to speak up. But you My Loves are the future. And it is your job to make sure that the people around you feel uplifted and safe. Am I asking for you to treat women differently? I’m not asking for special treatment but I am asking you to watch for instances when you see a woman marginalized or threatened and you are going to be the one to step in and put a stop to it. With great power comes great responsibility. And you were born white males in the United States of America. You were born into privilege. From the beginning I told you about the Four Golden Rules in our house and one of them is to Always Respect Women. And My Loves, this is why. If you love your mama then you love women. And that means being better than the people who came before you, even Joe Biden. #metoo #iloveyou