My Mother’s Day Six Pack (of donut holes)

I think if a person writes  a long post about faith on the upswing, it’s only fair to write a post about faith on the downswing. So.

Life stays messy, and part of faith is acknowledging the mess and then taking some deep breaths and moving forward in the decision to remain content instead of living in the feeling of discontent. I will now take this opportunity to step away from the “we” and reclaim the “I”, since J has no idea what I’m about to write and may or may not endorse these feelings as his own. Probably not, because it involves sitting in the Lowe’s parking lot on the day after Mother’s Day with a six pack of Dunkin Donut holes (I said holes, babe! Not entire donuts!) and a kid-size cup of caffeinated coffee. In moments of high stress, I like to place as few demands on myself as possible, which means eating whatever I want and watching back-to-back DVR episodes of Revenge or something. Let’s get crazy.

The day after Mother’s Day, I continued to not be knocked up despite our prayers and hopes, and also that tiny little piece of us that clings to the could instead of the is. Denial or Optimism? Who knows. Either way, it should not be shocking, but somehow each time it still is. And each time this happens, I find myself telling myself: Fine. You don’t care about me? I don’t care about you. Especially you, adrenals, which I have been so diligently protecting since last fall. About every 4 weeks, I feed them donuts and caffeine. And also, Tangeray and tonic and some of those tiny cookies from Whole Foods by the handful.  Then I feel very sorry and tell myself I didn’t mean it. I buy myself annuals from Lowes and reschedule an appointment or two to get my shiz together, plant some flowers, water the yard, drink my kid-size caffeinated coffee, do some abdominal breathing, and take some walks. I confess everything to J that very night during the middle of some sentence about how I feel so fat, and he doesn’t judge. He says: Yeah. Sometimes it’s okay to do those things. I browse through some Prayers for a Privileged People to recalibrate my perspective (I am privileged. You are privileged.) and some tequila Anne Lamott to take the edge off. Then, eventually, I drag myself back to the salad train and resume normal life.

This process ranges anywhere from 3 hours to 3 days.

Sometimes a Dill Weed incident happens. You know things are bad when someone in the house opens the pantry door, and the Dill Weed falls out and shatters, and that person makes a joke about Dill Weed and laughs, and then you explode, like, 8 minutes later to the Dill Weed person, because your computer died and you blame it on the Dill Weed spill. Displacement much? In our house, we now call each other Dill Weed. We also apologize to guests for our lack of screens on their windows and make references to buying children instead of screens. We would very much like screens, but we have to purchase a child first.

Operating Instructions: First year of Marriage #18: If you can make each other laugh, you’re already through it.

The point to all this is that: a) coffee and donut moments exist even when you know that you know that you know God is good. It’s okay. Just try not to get stuck there; and b) God sometimes moonlights as a DJ. When I was sitting in the car at Lowe’s that Monday morning with my mini-coffee and my 6 holes, nurturing the disappointment in a way I can only do all by myself, because all by myself is the only place I’m comfortable grieving something that never was, God sent another song to me on the radio. I’ve heard this song a thousand million times, but it especially mattered that morning, and filled up all those tiny holes inside the coffee and Dunkin were pouring through.

I’m not real sure how to wrap this up except to say that sometimes donut holes in parking lots carry me to the next place God will meet me, because He always does show up.