Lame Duck

For almost five years, I’ve been the preacher at the church my husband grew up in. I’m not ordained; don’t even have a degree, but the denomination is one in which the congregation can vote on a lay-person to fill the pulpit while searching for a ‘real’ Pastor. They voted me in unanimously, and I’ve doubted the wisdom of that corporate decision almost every day! But I regret not one day of it. I grew more in the last five years than I did in the last 15.

I’ve stated to them from the start that I knew I wasn’t what the congregation needed but that I could fill the hole for four or five years until we found someone who was. I never made any promises…like that I could be their pastor, but I did often feel the compassion to step up to the plate and be more than I ever thought I could. Even though I tried to be honest with them, and tell them that my first priority was to my children, I still felt (feel?) that some of them were always very unhappy with me…that I could do better if I just put forth a tiny bit more effort.

Like I’m compulsively late – always have been, and, likely, always will be – but that as much as I’ve tried to be on time, and keep regular office hours…I just…can’t. I cannot make myself get in there on time – I’m always late.

[I’m suspect it’s one of those self-defeating tendencies that perfectionist-underachievers display, because to succeed tends to scare the hell out of (us).] But I was thinking about it today – I called in sick, even though technically I don’t guess I’m really sick… I just am exhausted – and I realized, after one of the parishioners called and offered to be of any kind of help – even to picking up my kids from school and keeping them for a little while! – that maybe…they wanted me to reach out to them a little more often, ask for help from them, lean back on them just a little…if it meant they’d get me to the office on time!

I don’t ask for help…unless I really, really, really need it. (Maybe that’s why I’m so tired?) And maybe they kind of wish I had, more often. Instead of just asking when it was basically an emergency.

Well, we found and voted for, and hired a ‘real’ pastor. I’m very happy. I look forward to becoming a better mother, wife and writer with a bit more time in which to wallow around in it all.

But I cannot help thinking…or wishing that I’d figured this whole thing out before now, when I’m on my way out the door.

My husband went to pharmacy school and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

There was a dearth of pharmacists in this country roughly six years ago; an alarming trend that the industry sought to change through heavy recruitment of new pharmacy students. My husband was one of them who, in mid-life, discovered a job change would do him good...and six looooong years later, he's (we're) almost there.

He graduates in May (god-willing-and-the-crick-don't-rise, knock on wood, turn around clock-wise three times and then spit over your left shoulder as you say 'shelaleigh' real loud*) and he doesn't really want to walk the stage to get his diploma. I told him he must walk... for me, so I can take his picture. He's acquiesced to my request, but not real enthusiastically. To him it's all cake at this point -- useless and filled with a bunch of empty calories. He's jumped through hoops for that school...and he's done.

I know it seems easy for me to say, but I've gone through it with him. He did the studying and the testing and the projects and the butt kissing, yes. But I endured as well. I endured being a de facto single mom for all the many weeks he's stayed at school to save on gas. I've endured long nights alone in our bed, sleepless and lonely. The severe weather warnings, and worry -- no, not for us, here -- for him up there, in that tiny little camper probably being buffeted about by the golf-ball sized hail.

Yep. I've gone through it, too. He's got the knowledge, tucked safely in his brain; the credentials are his, and his alone...But I walked that path with him and dreamt of seeing him at the finish line triumphant. And I want to take that picture that simply wouldn't be the same if staged after the fact.

So, yeah. He's gonna walk, and he'll do it with a smile on his face. Because for him, it'll be all about the pride he sees in my eyes when he catches me looking at him; all about the many times that he thought he might not make it, but I knew he could. I'm his biggest fan, and he knows it. He would blow it off if it was just for him.

But it's not. It's for me, and he knows giving me that gift is way better than a t-shirt.

*I made that one up.

The tree outside my office window has a hand that flips me off

No -- really, it does.

Where I live, the trees are in full bud-mode, but there's this one that is still winter-bare, and on the west side of the tree there's this bony hand flipping me the bird. Considering my vantage point for this treehicular insult is the spot where I attempt my writing...well, it's just not a very good omen, I don't think...

I'm in a writer's group now; a local group of women, young and old, bonded together by the nebulous desire 'to write'. Some want financial success, some desire personal success and, for most of us, the goal is simply 'to have a goal'.

I have a goal. Oh, yes. I've always simply worded it 'to be published'. It's always been enough, because, see, I'm a procrastinating perfectionist (re: evidence: this blog's dearth of posts) -- I don't need a goal more specific than that because then I'd actually have to back it with action.

And that is where the real fun begins.

I've got this guitar -- It's a travel-size Oscar Schmidt Washburn acoustic steel -- that I saved up for over many, many months. I put aside every little bit of spare cash I had -- birthday money, Christmas money and lint-furred spare pocket change -- in the hopes that I could afford a guitar on which to learn.

Being 43 years old, and having already taken up the guitar in my late-teens for a couple of years, I didn't walk into this blind; I knew of the blinding neuro-pain I'd have to endure in the fingertips of my left hand... (although I wasn't fully aware of the mid-to-severe arthritic complaints of my left shoulder and elbow that would accompany this journey at an older age, but that's another story)

I knew practice would be hard, and finding time for it even harder. I knew to expect slow progress because, let's face it, the 43-year-old brain doesn't catch on as fast as the nineteen-year-old one. (come to think of it, neither do the 43 year old fingers...) I knew I'd probably never be Eddie Van Halen, but I'd hoped I'd be the best Solard.

And yet... I walk into that office (the same one that I avoid writing in. Coincidence? I think not.) and stare at that guitar and --? Turn around and walk out. That's exactly what I do. I get all gut-twisted, and I walk away. Because...?

Same thing with the writing. Someone in my writer's group said, "Tell people you are a writer when they ask what you do... that way you'll be too embarrassed not to write." Good advice, yes. The problem is, when I'm sitting in front of the laptop in that office with that bird waving at me from the tree outside that office window... I get the familiar gut-twisty feeling and I walk away. Because...?

Fear...maybe. Who wants to fail at something they want so badly? Not me. Who wants to spend hard-saved money on something you've anticipated for years only to discover it's actual use is as a really unwieldy door stop? Not me. Who wants to spend months churning out 150,000 words only to realize it would make a great Bezoar*? Not me. Who wants to stare at the bony hand on that tree outside that office window waving the Finger of Epic Fail?

...................................... ''/

Who thinks that you have to be under 20 years of age to be a whining emo brat-tard? not me...

*Ep 2.13 Grey's Anatomy. Also...a pretty darn funny word.