The Slow Way: Seventy Percent Hope

If we’re brave we say we’re sorry, then we can begin to live the wisdom of peace we hope to see in the world. Perhaps our lives will slowly transform the story of everything.

for the frantic strivers, serial doers, and weary achievers

When I had little ones, I read every book I could find to shape my philosophy of parenting. Scratch that. I read the first seventy percent (if that?) of all the parenting books. I got the gist of them and moved on. Parenting books are boring. 

Seventy percent. 

My hopes of being a one hundred percent good mom ended long ago, or maybe I accepted what I was back in San Francisco in my therapist’s office when we talked about how I might survive the anxiety that pinballed around my ribs, the impossible demands of raising a baby with multiple disabilities, and two older boys with their own needs in a city where I had no family. I learned say a mantra to myself when all felt like too much: “I’m a good enough mom” I whispered, throwing the laundry in the wash, making the doctor’s appointments, and getting the school forms filled out (eventually). A good enough homework helper. A good enough dinner-creator. A good enough bedtime reader. A good enough memory maker. 

I’m a seventy percent good mom. Maybe even seventy-five? How can we know until they’ve grown? And maybe we won’t even then.

I failed several times this week. Lost my cool at two of my kids in moments of stress, snapping at one on Halloween because we were late, raising my voice, snatching the phone with its directions out of his hands. He cried.

Two days before, one’s carelessness caused a leak through the ceiling. “Do you even care about this family?!” I screamed. I wasn’t talking about the family, reader. I was talking about the house and how I feel about home repairs. I manipulated my words. I raged and confused my own sense of value: water damage does not demand soul damage.

Do you know what they looked like when they were born, these ones I scream at, those fingers I snatch phones from in my stress? They both had blue eyes and round noses. Sandy blond hair that fell out and came in lighter. Only minutes after they tore from my body, they found my eyes and smelled my skin and when I spoke hello, their fear of the too-bright white lights and the cold blast of purified hospital air faded and they knew me. Skin to skin. We knew each other already. 

I believe in confession because of this: I need to be absolved. I am a good enough parent, but I have failed, and will keep failing. My sons accept this sometimes. That their mom loves them and fails. That my sorrys will keep flowing as long as I am in their lives. I will try and fail, show up and still show up wrong, all my good intentions, all my love. 

The morning after I screamed about the careless water leak, he came to my room, dressed already for school and snuggled up beside me. I had already apologized the night before, but this was another kind of setting things right. He let me wrap my arm around his man body. (How secretly that body hides his still child-tender-center.) He was worried, no doubt still shaken from our fight. I need you to pray for me, he said.

So I did. Seventy percent of a prayer. Someone came into the room before I could finish my thoughts, my hopes for this man-boy. I didn’t say Amen. I’m not sure my prayer for him will ever finish. 

But we rarely get to finish, do we? Seventy percent. Good enough? Love and apologies and trying again. Hoping for grace to soften the edges of the thirty percent. What else can we do?

“The truth isn’t easy, but it’s simple,” Maggie Smith writes in You Could Make This Place Beautiful. What’s the truth of our attempts at loving one another? 

I wanted to write this week about Palestine and Israel, the devastation of watching one side protect itself by destroying the other. The story of the world playing out in real time. The brutal killing of one child, in the hope of the safety of another. The math never works. We don’t really ever protect ourselves by inflicting violence. I know this in my body and still I screamed violent words at the offender of the water leak. 

The truth isn’t easy, but it’s simple. We who see the devastation must of course act. We call our congressional representatives and speak with confidence, demanding cease fires. We send money to the places we hope will continue to stand and serve in the middle of the violence. We write notes to our friends who suffer the very real fear of antisemitism. We pray that the powers bigger than ourselves will choose another way.  

But peace starts with truth in our lives, the recognition of violence in our own lives. If we are brave enough we acknowledge our falling short of love. If we’re brave we say we’re sorry. Then we can begin to live the wisdom of peace we hope to see in the world. Perhaps our lives will slowly transform the story of everything. It’s never easy, this seventy percent hope. 

I used to pray that God would transform me so I would stop fumbling that last thirty percent. And now? I pray for love to saturate my apologies. And sometimes for my failures to be softer. Can I pray that for the world as well?

Not easy. But true. Perhaps that’s the transformation I’m under, more than halfway through my life and recognizing that the failures of humanity stretch beyond the choices of those in power. If I long for peace, then I must see my humanity caught up in the struggle for good. I’m seventy percent faithful, but asking for more. More simple truth, more hope, more faithfulness, more love. Maybe that’s my prayer for my life. For the world’s life. For yours. 

A Slow Practice

Today we’re going to practice a creative prayer of examen. I owe the original idea to my youth ministry coleader Tim, who has been doing something similar with our high school students, drawing comics as a spiritual practice. 

Take a sheet of paper or a journal and divide the page into two columns. On one side write: What I did. On the other side write, What I hope.

Take three minutes to write all the things that happened in the past 24 hours: good, bad, sweet, sour. You don’t have to describe it, just jot down the moments.

Now take three minutes to list what you hope on the other side. Maybe what you hope is the result of an encounter on the other column. Maybe it’s a hope for the people in your life in the past 24 hours. Maybe what you hope has nothing to do with what happened. Just write it down.

Take another sheet or page. Draw a line horizontally through the middle of it. 

Take five minutes to draw a picture of one of the events you listed in “what I did,” with you as the central character. (This is one of the rules! You have to be present in the picture.) You can draw it however you like, thinking about a comic sketch. 

Set another timer for five minutes. And for those five minutes write freely about what’s happening in the picture. How did they come to be here? What are they thinking about, hoping for one another. What are you doing / feeling / thinking? And finally, what is your hope for the people in the sketch? 

If this has brought anything to the surface that wasn’t there before, you may want to acknowledge that to God. 

End with a couple of minutes of silence.