Momastery » Page 40

There’s been a lot of crying this week. They’ve been good, cleansing, hopeful tears. But today let’s lighten up, Frances.

This is one of my favorite little miracles, because it reminds me how creative and playful God can be. It reminds me that this world we live in, this world that seems soooo big is actually quite small. It’s tiny and all of us are connected to each other in a big glistening messy intricate God-web.

You know that Sister and I went to New York recently to meet with all the fancy publishers. Since you also know me, you can probably guess that I was VERY NERVOUS. I applied twelve layers of deodorant and kept saying, “it will be okay” to no one throughout the whole train ride. I also kept repeating “Be Still and Know” which is my favorite scripture, but I kept hearing Be Still and know that this is going to be INSANE,” which is less helpful than the original.

When we finally arrived at Penn Station, Sister and I walked out into the bright sun and THIS was the first thing upon which I laid my terrified eyes. A Monastery.

Crazy, Insane, Right? Calmed me. Completely calmed me. Emmanuel. The rest of the week I was like EASY BREEZY….EAAAASSSSY BREEEEEZY. COOL as a CUCUMBER. Which obviously means juts a teeny bit less insane.

But when I came home and wrote about this monastery, all the monkees starting freaking out. They said: LOOK AT THE MONASTERY NAME. IT’S THE CAPUCHIN MONASTERY. IT’S A MONKEY MONASTERY!!!!

And I was like NO WAY.

So I googled, of course.

Capuchins are considered the most intelligent New World monkeys. With the exception of a midday nap, they spend their entire day searching for food. They are also used as service animals, sometimes being called “nature’s butlers.”Some organizations have been training capuchin monkeys to assist quadriplegics as monkey helpers in a manner similar to assistance dogs. After being socialized in a human home as infants, the monkeys undergo extensive training before being placed with a quadriplegics. Around the house, the monkeys help out by doing tasks including microwaving food, washing the quadriplegic’s face, and opening drink bottles.- Wikipedia

I MEAN C’MON.

- Super Smart. Naps. Eating AND Assisting ALL DAY LONG. OPENING (baby or wine) BOTTLES, WASHING FACES, MICROWAVING DINNER??? Are these not OUR MONKEE SPECIALTIES????? Tell me they’re not.

Kay. Now here comes the crazy miracle part.

So a couple of weeks ago, my agents called and said, “G, we just got a message from the FRIARS OF THE CAPUCHIN MONASTERY IN NEW YORK CITY. THEY WERE TICKLED BY YOUR POST. THEY CAN’T BELIEVE THERE ARE OTHER MONKEE MONKS OUT THERE. THEY’D LIKE TO RUN YOUR POST IN THEIR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER. IS THAT OKAY?”

IS THAT OOOOKAAAY?????? THAT IS FAN-DAMN-TASTIC!!!

People: The Monkey Monks contacted the agent of the Monkee Mama to ask permission to run a story about the Momastery Monkee Mama seeing the Monastery of the Monkey Monks.

Just, please.

Happy Friday, Monkees. And Monkey Monks.

The world can be such fun.

Love 4-evah.

*This one’s for Laura and her Sister. I forgive you, and I’m sorry, too.

“On Sunday morning, the gospel choir would walk by my cottage in their robes, singing Oh shout it out! The first time I heard them, I ran to the front porch in my bathrobe and started crying. They pulled children in wagons, their voices visible in the cool air. Every Sunday I waited for this.

All I needed of religion, I realized, was the beautiful sound of someone else’s faith.”

-Megan Mayhew Bergman, Birds of a Lesser Paradise

Sometimes, Love Doesn’t Win. Or that’s how it feels anyway.

Sometimes we desperately need a miracle that never comes. We pray, we hope, we believe, we KNOW and we are left empty handed and broken hearted. Beloved parents and sisters and brothers and children die. Where the hell is God? We hold up our WTF? billboard prayers to the heavens. We wonder why other people got their miracles and we didn’t get ours. When we hear people say that PRAYER WORKS or that LOVE WINS or that IT ALL HAPPENS FOR REASON, we feel, well, a tad homicidal. None of it makes sense. Anybody worth talking to will admit that from the human perspective, life makes no sense. As my minister friend Anna – who lost her husband in a car crash- would promise us, it’s all just ABSURD. GREAT word to describe life, one of my favorites. ABSURD!

For twenty years I knew I would adopt a baby. I tried actively for seven years. Craig and I poured our hearts and energy and time and bank accounts into this dream time after time after time. We never gave up hope. We trusted in God. We followed the signs. We fully expected miracles. As you know, our third adoption- this time from Rwanda- fell through last month. We were so close this time that I could actually FEEL that baby in my arms.

After a few weeks of mourning, we decided that maybe our fourth baby would be biological. We talked to my doctor who said, in so many words . . . “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND? You are chronically ill. You can barely take care of yourself. No. No, no, no, no.”

When we left I said to Craig: Hm.What do you think she meant by that?

Honey, he said. You know what she meant by that. Everyone in the office knew what she meant by that. She was YELLING.

Right. Optimism and delusion are sooooo close.

No adoption. No pregnancy. No miracle. And we know, in our hearts, that it’s time to let that fourth baby go. I’m not healthy. It’s time to stop obsessing about that miracle- it’s time to take off our miracle blinders, and use our peripheral vision.

Because sometimes we don’t get our miracle, and that hurts like hell. But the way the world works is- if we turn our heads, we can still find one. We can share someone else’s miracle. We can enter into it and claim it as our own. It takes some work and humility and a STRONG WILL, but it can be done.

Look. I’m not going to get that Rwandan baby for whom we all prayed so hard. But turn your head. Use your miracle peripheral vision and CHECK THIS OUT.

Look at her. That’s my baby Sister. That’s my lobster. Who was crumbled on the floor, three years ago, with no hope, no GLIMMER of hope, facing a divorce that would leave the faith of our entire family in shambles.

She moved in with me after the divorce. I hung a sign on her wall that said, “For I know the plans I have for you says the LORD . . . plans to prosper you and not harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11

And we would both look at that sign, crying together in a Sister heap on the floor, and we would silently say to the sign, to God - BULLSHIT. Just, BULLSHIT.

Now please look at her. Eventually . . . . after a while – she stood up off that floor. She trusted the absurd world again. She found her other lobster, John. He is as kind and as gentle and as strong as a human being can be. And he loves her so much that I can finally, for the first time in my life, relax. For the first time in my life, I KNOW that my Sister is cared for by a man in a pure, deep, forever way.

And now she’s seven months pregnant. We are having a BABY, MONKEES!

For John’s sake, I hope that the baby’s not Rwandan. But I’m not gonna lie- it’d be nice for me.

IT’S MY PERIPHERAL MIRACLE. Do you see? I didn’t get my exact miracle, the one in my direct line of vision. But sometimes PERIPHERAL MIRACLES are even BETTER. Because you can love them and love them and love them but you don’t have to send PERIPHERAL MIRACLES to college.

I am so in love already.

We’re HAVING A BABY!!!!!!!!!

See. Still. Love Wins. Just gotta keep those eyes wide open and sometimes – turn our heads.

Love you forever.

This essay will be shorter than it deserves to be. Like me, actually. I’ve got ten minutes till Amma wakes and tells me her stomach hurts horrifically and she can’t go to school, so instead she’d like ice cream for breakfast and to spend the day at the petting zoo.

MONKS-

Please flashback to our Love Flash Mob for the Croyles.

You gave TWENTY SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS in ten hours so that we could send this suffering family on their first family vacation.

Here is how your money was spent:

You bought thirteen (10 family, 3 friends) roundtrip airline tickets from Pittsburg to Florida.

You paid for a luxury beach house in Captive, Florida for ten days.

You rented two vans for the duration of their vacation.

You rented a golf cart for the beach house for easy travels to the ocean and around the island.

You rented baby equipment like a jogging stroller and high chair for the home.

You paid for seven hundred dollars of groceries to be delivered to the home.

You sent papa Croyle and his oldest son on a fishing expedition.

You gave them $2000 extra dollars to use for vacation spending money.

You sent a professional photographer to travel to Florida and take pictures. She volunteered her services, you just paid for her hotel room. She traveled SEVEN HOURS to be there and gave all of the incredible pictures to the Croyles free of charge. A picture blanket was made for Kristin out of the pictures to keep her warm.

Lou and Sister organized EVERY DETAIL above, down to the stroller rentals, so that all the Croyles had to do was show up and put their twenty-six feet in the sand.

When all was said and done, we had $1000 from the Croyle fund leftover, so we sent it on to the family to ease medical burdens.

Please remember that this miracle happened because each of you gave $25 dollars or less. That was the maximum donation allowed. It happened because each of you believed that your small act of love could make a difference. AH. It DID.

Now here’s the thing. None of that is the miracle.

Here’s the miracle:

Kristin was given a 3% chance that her chemo would work.

SO YOU’RE SAYING THERE’S A CHANCE…all the Monkees said.

It’s working. The chemo is working. Kristin’s cancer is SHRINKING and noone can explain it except for Kristin, who always knew it wasn’t her time, NO MATTER WHAT THE DOCTORS SAID.

Listen to me Monkees: there is no diagnosis stronger than the human spirit, stronger than Hope.