CHAPTER 12 - Crying Out
I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.
He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.
And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord[1].
A couple of days after miscarriage #5 (or was it 6?), I spent the entire night in our guest room kneeling against the bed in prayer, begging for peace of mind. I was there most of the night. Andy and I had been married 4 years and I felt like I was running underwater. That dang biological clock never stops. It never ever stops in your head. I could not stop worrying about the clock. Every day I would think “you have to keep trying, where is your faith Jan?” Every day I would cross off the calendar take my temperature, swallow the regiment of pills, snake oils and pray, pray, pray. Finally... the sun began to rise and this long night of wrestling with the Lord was nearly over. I had cried and begged and choked on my own slobber for hours. My knees were sore and carpet burned. My back ached. I was so dehydrated that I thought I would pass out. So I got up and sat on the edge of the bed and when I did, I heard it clear as a bell.... "s.t.o.p. w.o.r.r.y.i.n.g."
I heard it over and over again. It was spilling into my head from ear to ear.
It was resonating in my sinuses. It was like someone was trying to shout at me,
quietly
“S.t.o.p...s.t.o.p...s.t.o.p...s.t.o.p...s.t.o.p...worrying..stop
worrying,”
over and over again. I was not prepared for that answer. I felt
such peace wrap around me. Someone had been listening to me! I felt them hear
me. I rolled into the fetal position for another hour at least. The sun was up. I was calming
down. I was wrestling with what it meant to stop worrying. One thing I knew for
sure: Heavenly Father knew that I was seriously putting my faith forward. I
knew I could not go forward without Him.
So much easier said than done.
Within a few days I was back at the
guest bed. There was so much to worry about. What part of it could I give to
Him? Should I go off the fertility treatments? Would it be safer for me
mentally to go on birth control - just cut the head off the monster once and
for all? Should we start the adoption process? Should I quit work and try to
find some inner peace? (Yes - should have done that!) Should we get into the
foster program? Should I try to go off sugar again, or caffeine, or gluten, or
artificial sweeteners? Should we just ask one of my sisters to carry a baby for
us? Should we...could we...what about...what if...what do you think
about….????????????????
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
and then…...
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
but….
???????????????????????
???????
?
Only this time, an hour into the
[very one-sided] conversation, I started hearing “STOP WORRYING” and it was as
if I didn’t want to hear it so I just kept going. I realized I was behaving
like some of my students do when I’ve given them an answer they don’t like.
They just keep changing the question a little until it serves them by saying
“but what if….this or that…” I call it “What if-ing.” It drives me crazy. Here
I was sitting on the edge of the bed What-if-ing the God of All Creation.
I stopped. I smiled. I thanked Him
for listening and I assured Him that I would move forward in faith.
So as the “What-ifs” came along, I
dealt with them one at a time. For example, a friend of ours asked us to go to
an adoption conference with her. We did. I felt no pull toward adoption, no
warm-fuzzy, no bells and whistles went off for either me or my husband. In
fact, within a few minutes after we pulled away I started a grocery list on my
phone. My husband said “Do you want to talk about the conference? I did, I
said, but maybe after we were done shopping. I was going to let the whole thing
“live in my brain for an hour or two.” I hoped the Spirit would tell me what to
do while we were looking for lettuce?
I've spent so much time on my knees
about the ache in my heart and how to fill it! One night I cried out to the
Lord for 3-4 hours straight. I plead for him to fill my heart
with...with...something! Eventually I slept. When I woke up, I wondered why I
had a headache. I went all day trying to figure out the trigger for my
headache. Then as I was getting ready for bed the next night, I walked by the
guest room and there were all these pillows on the floor and I suddenly
remembered my night of begging. I realized that that wasn't the first time I'd
had a true stupor of thought. That re-direction of thought! How powerful! What
a blessing. I had been functioning all day. I had been lifted! My heart was
light. I knew everything was going to be okay...no matter what. Maybe it’s the
fact that Andy and I both do short-term adoptions every day all day. I don’t
know, but I’m not going to worry about it. See?
My part of the deal is that I try to
keep myself ready to be on the receiving end of any communication that needs to
happen between myself and the Holy Spirit because I am not strong enough to go
out on my own. Why would I want to? The
minute you get the Gift of the Holy Ghost you are immediately teamed up with
the greatest life coach you will ever have! Could there be anything more
amazing than that?!
He must have access to me to make
all the paths work. My friend Vicky said to me one day “I try to live in the
Spirit.” I just love that. I can see that in Vicky. She is humble and truly an
open vessel for the Spirit to work through her. I have since stolen that phrase
from her and it sure does work for me - “live in the Spirit.” Because there is
not “waiting around” for the Spirit to come to you. He’s with you. He’s there -
you just have to reach out - cry out - and there He is.
So
crying and whining aren’t enough? Feeling blue about anything isn’t enough. You
have to get it out of your system and put it in the hands of God. The transfer
of this responsibility is steeped in fear. If you let go of something you want,
you covet, you are desperate to experience - and you hand it over to God, it’s
scary. If you stop worrying about something you really want, a companion, a
child, a better job, a better life...do you lose control of it? GIVE THE WORRY
TO HIM. Tell Him. Cry out to Him. He needs to know that you are serious about
it. Spend some time on your knees. And I’m not talking about just your regular
three- minute discussion. Have a fast if you can. Be committed to finding the
answers. Show Him your commitment. This is the kind of prayer that must ascend
the heavens and pierce your doubt...it
must wrack your soul. YOU are a child of GOD - your divinity is inherent. Now, what about your identity?
O
Me! O Life!
By Walt Whitman
O me! O life! of the questions of
these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless,
of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching
myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light,
of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the
plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of
the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad,
recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists
and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and
you may contribute a verse.
The poem "Oh Me! Oh Life!"
was published in 1855 and part of a volume of poetry called Leaves of Grass.[2] This is my
favorite poem. Of the thousands and thousands of pieces of poetry that contend
to be #1 on my list, this is it. I first fell in love with this work after I
saw the movie Dead Poet’s Society in 1989. I was also taking a class in
Victorian Literature at the time and I was smitten with it all. Every single
time I read "O Me! O Life!" I am lifted. I feel that I am not alone.
It’s like an old friend that hugs you and says “everything is going to be
okay. You matter. You are enough. Contribute your verse!”
In the beginning, it sounds like a
poem of lament or grieving, maybe self-pity. In the first line, he summarizes
his conflict: What is the purpose of my life (O me!), if life is so hard (O
life!)? He comments about the “endless trains of the faithless” and “cities
filled with the foolish” and then he humbly notes that he is the most foolish
and faithless of them all and he is “forever reproaching” himself. I do that.
So by beginning with a question, he makes an unusual choice by providing the
answer to his questions:
Answer: (he gets the answer from himself)
That the powerful play goes on (life is powerful, choose it!)
And you may contribute a verse. (Everybody gets to equally contribute
something, anything – and I love that he says “a verse” because it suggests
that everyone gets to contribute something of value and something diverse – if
we were, all the same, he would have said chorus, right? I don’t know, but that’s
just what it says to me. I’m going to have a talk with Walt about it in the
next life.)
What I love about the ending is that
instead of wallowing in self-pity (What
good am I?) by leaving the question open and out there unanswered, he is
strong enough (don’t we always have just
a little juice in us to keep going?) to answer his own question but there
is no condescension about it. He pushes that universal button of empathy for
life’s futility, yet he manifests his belief that life is like a powerful play,
but he doesn't offer a quick fix to humanities problems he intimates, humbly,
that we (everyone one of us) are contributing to society just by being alive…each
one of us in a unique way.
But that’s only half of the emotion
it contains.
The tone of Walt Whitman’s famous
poem starts with the very first word, which is in fact just a single vowel: O.
This kind of O, the kind without the “h” attached to it, is special. You see it
in the scriptures, in Greek theatrical texts, in Shakespeare too. We hardly
ever think about its meaning because it’s just a single letter. But it’s so
much more than just an O. It has been given the formal name “Ecphonesis O” by
modern linguists. Sometimes it’s called the rhetorical O.
Ec-phonesis is Greek, and means “to
cry out.” It’s derived from “exclameo,” to cry out. “Ecphonesis is a pathetical
figure, whereby as the Orator or speaker expresses the vehement affection and passion
of his own mind, so he also excites and stirs up the minds and affections of
those to whom he speaks.”[3]
In John Milton’s Paradise Lost the
character of Eve, being told that she must leave her paradise, cries out,
"O unexpected stroke! Worse than of death.”
This O elevates the emotion
automatically! But why the heck is it missing its H?
This is what I teach my high school
kids when they come upon one of these monsters in their Shakespeare monologues
and scenes: Early authors used the single O as a placeholder for emotional
exclamations like “GRRRRR!” or “sighhhhh,” or “#!%*!” The Ecphonesis O is only
used when the emotion is so high that there aren’t words for how troubled, or
angry or happy a person is. Nowadays we might substitute the O with a piece of
music and call it musical theatre. But Milton, Shakespeare, Sophocles and the
authors of the bible didn’t write musicals. They couldn’t spell that moment in
time when your body is wracked with torment and you expel a guttural “YAWP” as
Walt Whitman would say:
The Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
The spotted hawk swoops by and
accuses me, he complains
of my gab and my loitering
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am
untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the
roofs of the world.
The “O” is “untranslatable” as
Whitman would say. Just like the feeling in my heart after a much-anticipated
baby has passed through me or a great job opportunity was given to someone
else...you see my drift. Ever wondered why you never see movie or stage
characters blowing their nose or going to the bathroom? We recreate life on
stage or in a book for entertainment or education. We don’t watch a play about
someone brushing their teeth or tying their shoes. There is no conflict in
that. We don’t learn anything from it. It isn’t COMPELLING. However…add the
Ecphonesis O to a script where Ruby the 8th grader goes to brush her teeth and
she lets out a deep throaty “OOOOooooo” there’s something to that. She looks
down and all her teeth are in the sink. WHAT IS HAPPENING? Now that's dramatic.
That needs an O.
See, storytelling is only
interesting when compelling things occur. So the Ecphonesis O is very useful
for a playwright to give the actor/reader a clue about the grand emotion that
is happening. There are upwards of 2400 Ecphonesis O’s in the Shakespeare canon
alone.
Here’s a few good ones:
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou
Romeo!
O what a rogue in peasant slave am
I…
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark…
O you beast! O faithless coward! O
dishonest wretch!
O reason not the need!
O let me be not mad, not mad sweet
heaven!
O brave new world that hath such
people in it!
O, O, O, I have lost my reputation!
The O didn't die with Shakespeare
and Whitman. We've all used it at points in our life. In fact, I contend that
without the Ecphonesis O my prayers, my grieving, my cries for heavenly help
would not pierce the veil enough to make that divine connection I need. Do I
pray like that ll the time? Haha! No. I mean, I’m a dramatic kind of
storyteller, but Heavenly Father sees right through me. My connection to Him
must be honest at all times. But there have been a couple of times in my life
when I tested the magnitude of the Ecphonesis O. One real doozy come to mind. I
was living in the basement of my parent’s home trying to save money to buy my
own home and I got a letter from one of my student’s parents rebuking me for
not casting her daughter in a play. Her daughter was a loud, angry and negative
soul. I think she enjoyed creating drama backstage and I just couldn't face
another show adding “put out [this girl’s] fires” to my to-do list again.
Thankfully she also didn’t sing well.
So I didn’t cast her.
One night, I was working late hours
trying to put up the show, give kids an opportunity, seemingly by myself, and I
was exhausted to say the least. In the middle of the night, I walked through
the dark school up to the faculty room to buy a Diet Coke to keep myself awake.
I grabbed my mail from my faculty box and sat down on a comfortable chair and
started going through it while I drank my precious life force. There was the
letter. It was addressed to me but no return address, and no signature, though
from its contents I knew exactly who it was.
In a nutshell it said I was
emotionally abusive and didn't know how to handle kids because I wasn't a
mother myself. She called me “useless” because I was “free-loading” off my
parents by living with them. (Everybody knows everything in a small town I
guess.) She punched and kicked and stabbed her words right through me. When I
had finished digesting the letter I let out a cry that certainly defined the
Ecphonesis O. It wasn't because the letter hurt me. It was because I suspected
the letter was true. I was at that point in my life where I suspected I was
useless except as a machine to showcase other people’s kids. And since I had
chosen not to showcase her daughter this time, she had chosen to stab at my
insecurities as an older, single, childless, LDS woman with no prospects in
sight to complete her version of who she thought I should be. (You can only cut
so close to the bone if you are also LDS, which she was.)
I sat in that chair for a good hour,
spilling Ecphonesis O after Ecphonesis O in heaps all over the floor. Crying
out "...The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me,
O life?" It was the kind of crying that makes your eyes pop out. It turns
your face into a swollen flat surface. It gives you a migraine. It's wet and
slobbery and you don't care. It makes you bend in half toward yourself, hug
your knees, wipe snot on your pants because you might be the only one that can
offer comfort in that moment. It makes you heave and gulp for air and whimper,
all at the same time.
In the midst of it all, I started
praying. I prayed that I could find out who I was and why I was truly alive.
What purpose did He have for me and if this was it – just being the machine – I
wanted o.u.t. I cried until I was finally able to ask Him to help me stop
crying. I felt the Spirit wrap its arms around me and I fell asleep.
Around 5 AM I was awaken by the
sound of custodial keys in the door. I bolted upright and looked at the clock.
I sat there for a minute in a fog as the good custodian laughed. I tried to
remember why I was there and then I saw the letter – still clutched in my hand
and it all came back to me. I laughed it off with “boy, that was a comfortable
chair!” or something ridiculous like that, and went home to shower so I could
come back and do it all again. My eyes were two tiny puffy slits but I was
emboldened with the kind of motivation that makes you write letters of
resignation, which I did…
I needed someone to notice me. I
needed change. I needed my absence to count. I needed to be enough. Something.
(That letter stayed on my hard drive
for years.)
My parents, long accustomed to me
spending the night at the school, were still in bed when I got home. No one
would know I had been gone all night. No one would care. No one would even
raise an eyebrow… except the laughing custodian.
It is in times like these I am
tempted to go on auto-pilot and tell myself that even my least passionate work,
just my instinctual work, is still good enough. And then the guilt of working
halfheartedly adds to the building disgust I have for myself. I create a
fantasy world in my mind where I have 3 kids and a mini-van. Where people say
“you’re kids are gorgeous!” or “your kids are so well behaved.” I crave
teaching my own children how to walk, ride a bike, sew, bake… (the grass is
always greener). But the only thing I could really do to take my mind off of
it, to fill the time, was disappear into a dark movie theatre by myself where I
didn't have to talk to anyone and someone else could entertain me. Ironically,
those moments only made me feel more sorry for myself.
You can imagine that the other
Ecphonesis O's in my life are not surprising and involve the years of
bitterness, loneliness, finally getting married and then subsequent
miscarriages and burying a baby. Those are obvious. But most of those O's were
filled with hope, faith and a knowledge that those blessings will be restored
if I am faithful and endure my trials. Some of those O's were bitter, but not
for long. They taught me so much. They actually increased my faith and gave me
strength, depth and empathy for others. Is that it? Is that it's function? I
might be onto something.
My favorite Ecphonesis O is taken
from the New Testament. The teacher in me appreciates what the O does to
elevate emotion, but the human in me, the person that has utilized the
Ecphonesis O a few time in my life as I have cried in desperation, grief or
gratitude to my Heavenly Father makes this particular "yawp," this
cry, so significant to me.
At the close of Jesus’ public
ministry, He found himself at the top of a hill overlooking Jerusalem, the Holy
City, lamenting. The children of Israel had rejected Him and the safety He
brought to them. As He looked out over the soon to be destroyed city, He was
overcome with emotion and expressed His anguish:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which
killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would
I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her
wings, and ye would not!”[4]
Just a few years later, the city was
obliterated by the Romans, fulfilling the prophecy. Imagine being able to see
that in the future and not able to prevent it because of the hardness of the
hearts of your people. Jesus Christ knew the Ecphonesis O. He probably invented
it; for "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we
did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted."[5] They
who saw Him suffer, instead of seeing the sacrifice in it, imagined that He was
suffering at God's hands. In His greatest agonies, they scoffed at His alleged
parentage, yet in His death He would save them all mercifully, graciously.
I often wonder who the atheists turn
to in the depths of an Ecphonesis O moment? What Omnipotent power comforts them
in their darkest moments? To whom are they grateful? I'm ignorant here and I
admit it. Who sustains them, makes them powerful? Maybe that's the big idea
here. The trials that bring on the Ecphonesis O are a necessary evil. They
bring us to our knees, they remind us who we are and that we are not alone. We
are simply building an unbreakable connection and lifeline to the endless power
from whence we came.
President Nelson has said it best:
“My dear brothers and
sisters, you have as much access to the mind and will of the Lord for your own
life as we Apostles do for His Church. Just as the Lord requires us to seek and
ponder, fast and pray, and study and wrestle with difficult questions, He
requires you to do the same as you seek answers to your own questions.”[6]
Let the mighty trials and
tribulations roll forth. We rejoice in them because we need peace. Another
great example is from my favorite missionary of all time, the Apostle Paul.
Nearing the end of his life he wrote (probably because he experienced this
first hand):
“Therefore being justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have
access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the
glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that
tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope:”
BRING IT! Though I will probably
always feel "foolish...faithless...intertwined
in the plodding and sordid crowds" but that’s my verse.
Chapter 12
The Crying Out Recipe
So
- Ginger is on the list of natural foods to consume when you are dehydrated.
The fact that they are rolled in sugar just makes me happy. Seems a natural fit
for this chapter!
Spicy and Chewy (!) Ginger Cookies
1 ½ cups unsalted butter - room temp
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup molasses
2 eggs
4 ½ cups flour
4 tsp baking soda
1 ½ T ground ginger
1 T cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp salt
Demerara cane sugar
Whisk dry ingredients together and
set aside. Cream first four ingredients together in a stand mixer until fluffy.
Add eggs to stand mixer and then dry ingredients about ⅓ at a time until
incorporated evenly.
Roll dough in long tubes of plastic
wrap about 1 ½ inches in diameter. CHILL dough for at least an hour to
overnight.
Let's talk about chilling - or waiting for cookies: No one wants to wait for a good cookie. But here's the thing: if you chill dough overnight or even for a few days, your cookies will taste SO MUCH BETTER. The flour will time to incorporate, the spices warm up together...trust me. If you have time. Everything is better if you can just...wait.
When
you are ready to bake, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Cut dough into 1 oz pieces (I weigh
them just so they cook uniformly) and roll them into a ball and then completely
coat them with Demerara (or turbinado) sugar. Bake on a parchment covered cookie sheet at
350 degrees for 8-10 minutes just until they start to crack on the top. They
will crack more as they cool.
Chapter 12 Homework
- Cry
out.
- What happened?
[1] Psalms 40: 1-3
[2] Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
[3] John G Smith, The
Mystery of Rhetorick Unveiled, 1721.
[4] Matthew 23:37
[5] Isaiah 53:4
[6] Stand as True
Millennials,” Russell M. Nelson, Ensign, October 2016
