Is My Life Supposed to be This Way?

Yesterday I spent a large part of my day on and off painting on two different paintings in my studio – one a commissioned wedding event painting, and the other, a landscape started in Buckannon, West Virginia a week ago today.

On any given day, I have a lot in my mind. I’m just that kind of person, I suppose…

Lots of contemplations of all sorts – often both comedy and tragedy, filled with both humor and deep empathic thoughts, feelings and ideas – always, juggling many tasks and working incrementally as I bring ideas to completion and pursue new ones and projects. Especially at this point in my life and situation, I seem immersed in so many forms of creativity and an ever-deepening continuation of creative, spiritual and other life explorations.

I typically listen to music through Spotify when painting, and when I intend to do a larger block of artwork painting, I generally pick music that is more contemplative. Yesterday, I selected Rhiannon Giddens, an amazing musical artist I discovered last fall but have not listened to much recently. When I discover new music and new musical artists I tend to listen to them constantly at first, until I move on to another, and then, I saturate myself in yet some older or other new music artist/genre.

Spotify’s playlist feature is wonderful, too. And often, as I start with one artist and Spotify keeps bringing out other similar works, there may be a piece that so strikes me in some way that I hit the “loop” feature. It is common for me to play one single song on loop throughout an entire day, if that piece strikes my mood or works well with my contemplative or other creative/work-flow processes.

Once, I put some Irish jig on for an entire day and it energized me in certain ways. I later learned it is a pretty well-known piece, apparently, and while it was some other version of it, this performance by a musical group I’ve enjoyed give you a good sense of The Swallowtail Jig, that I connected with…

Back in 2021, on the day I chose to tackle very overwhelming and complicated tax return tasks, I put (my nick-named) “Screaming Jim Morrison” on loop all day long! Break on Through to the Other Side. I’m a moderate fan of The Doors, but when I’m frustrated, or even angry, that song seems to be a go-to track to put on loop…something about it keeps me moving…and helps release pent-up energies and frustrations…

There are a number of blog pieces I currently have in process, several relating to my personal trip/journey last weekend for a getaway to Buckhannon, West Virginia. This is the town my mother’s family was from, and since I am currently writing some of my life stories and reflections, and processing some current things in my personal family life, I felt a draw to visit in person: to explore, listen, learn and contemplate. I had some particular things embedded in this personal quest, and the trip was fantastic, though I don’t know that I walked away with the clear answers I had imagined I might acquire, but I did walk away with some new thoughts and new things to continuing exploring…I do hope and plan to make another trip there within the next several months. When I finish up some of my blog pieces currently in process, the reasons for further exploration will be better set forth…

I did walk away (drive away, that is!) from Buckhannon, West Virginia last Monday, July 4, Independence Day…with more to contemplate, pursue and write about. And, it frustrates me that I cannot simply devote more time to that process. Yet I recognize, it may be the very best thing to put some days and weeks of sitting with some things, in order to best and properly finish up these writings.

However, too much lag time creates more expressive frustration, and I think there is value in real-time expressions and not allowing too many unfinished works of any sort to overtake us artistic folks...whether we be visual artists, musicians, writers, deep thinkers, critics or some combination of all of these.

Last fall I wrote a piece called My Life Wasn’t Supposed to be This Way.

Often, as I go through my days and group together certain thoughts and expressions for desired writings, I think of titles. I may send myself an email with a title for a blog writing, and a few thoughts…or…sometimes lengthier microphone dictation that I will return to and edit at some point. Hopefully.

Or, I simply go into WordPress and create a draft. With that title and thoughts. So many works in progress.

Our lives and our story are works in process. It is unwritten…our future…yet we wonder and ponder.

This piece seems to have found a title yesterday that makes it a companion piece of sorts to the piece I wrote last fall. That piece was about how I never could have imagined my life and situation and much more being in the place it seems to be.

So the title of this piece, Is My Life Supposed to be This Way?, builds somewhat on my expressed thoughts of last fall…and I will tell you how this evolved…from one new song that came into my life and sphere of thoughts yesterday…

It was Saturday’s discovery of such a beautiful, beautiful intimate and romantic song called Count on Me, written and performed by Rhiannon Giddens, apparently connected to a Nashville Show as well as recently being performed at a 2022 Memorial Day Concert for Veterans in Washington, DC, that became a very powerful basis and base note of the personal reflections in this writing.

As any single woman at my age might find themselves thinking, what is my future?

• Would I dare ever marry again?
• Where did things go wrong, when I know myself well, and what I think I offered to each of my former spouses, though imperfectly and with specific human faults and failings, of sorts?
  

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Yesterday, in addition to painting and various other tasks and projects worked on in increments, I also did a bulk cooking of a creative, tasty beef-rice-lentils-salsa-peppers stir fry. I will be eating it for three days, at least…and eventually, my chickens might get a taste of it, too. I have sometimes thought of writing a piece called I Was Meant to be Married and to Be a Wife and Mother.

Prompted by a statement my second former husband said to me in some brief conversation of post-divorce closure, they had stated at that time that they had learned they were not meant to be married. Of course, being the person I am, I responded in affirmation that God has a plan and that their kids were conceived of, essentially, in the mysterious mind and heart of Father God and that they were meant to be…perhaps this piece I wrote called The Rubik’s Cube of Divorce lays out my thinking about this.

But, I thought to myself and often still think, that despite my many other artistic and various life endeavors, at the heart of it all, from a young age, I wanted to be a wife and a mother. If I were to write the piece, it would be how I am essentially wired to be a “keeper of the home.” I essentially want to create beautiful domestic spaces, cultivate intimacy and family, and more…and love all things domestic alongside the other facets of who I essentially am.

Yet, I find myself in this situation, currently. Another previous writing comes to mind, Growing Old With Oneself.

__________

I think of two conversations I had with two trusted spiritual people, a woman, and a man, back in 2017. To the woman I had said, “If this falls apart I would never marry again.” To which she replied, “Yes, maybe you can’t trust your man-picker.”

The conversation with the man involved positions of marriage and re-marriage within the Episcopalean Church. It was simply a conversation about views, since I was new to the Episcopal Church. I have since gravitated, post-divorce, back to other spiritual roots and currently, Church of Christ semi-orientation (when I can attend), but, I recall that conversation as it related to Episcopalean practices. If a divorced person seeks re-marriage once in the Episcopal Church, that is not a super big deal. But, if a twice-divorced person seeks re-marriage, that would likely prompt a deep pastoral exploration by each party what went wrong in the first two marriages.

I do fully believe marriage is intended, in the origination and biblical model/ideal, to be a singular, life-long holy covenant, yet, I own that I have now failed (to some degree, which is the ground that all divorcees pace and tread back and forth, back and forth over…in their post-divorce minds, hearts and recoveries…) twice in this.

And I have twice been the party to initiate the exit (but of course, those who divorce know full well that the death null of a marriage happens long before one of them “calls” the literal or metaphorical “time of death…” with legal action…) from a marital covenant that was deeply desired and from a person I was deeply in love with and was fully invested in – as they say in poker terms – I was “all in.” Literally, figuratively…emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and materially deeply invested in every way I can imagine.

Which is what makes it twice now, such a devastating and confusing loss – riddled with all types of post-divorce struggles.

Early in this writing here today, I believe I had begun a line of thought that was not completed…basically, any woman at my age and in my situation might wonder at times, what does my future hold?

• Would I want to enter into another relationship with a man, ever?
• And, what might that look like?
• Would I ever consider re-marriage, and what might that look like, also?

So this companion piece to My Life Wasn’t Supposed to be This Way for now, raises the question “Is This What My Life is Supposed to Be?”

For now, and unless God would work and make it clear to me otherwise, the answer is yes.

“Yes,” this is what my life is supposed to be:

• I am alone (but not lonely, and there is a difference…)
• I am trying desperately to salvage my personal life, my business life and career and my personal dreams, at an age where I border on wondering is it too late for me? Too late for any of this?
• I have a younger son who says he is transgender, who has completely blocked me from his life for reasons including this (I think?) but not limited to, this…and he has recently fathered twins with a woman, and unless God moves in the situation, I have no real hope of holding these precious grandchildren or having a healthy and active relationship with this son and his partner.
• I have a fairly decent relationship with my older son, but he is super busy. There’s a song Cat’s in the Cradle which reflects some of this which is so typical at my stage in life, where now I am wanting more time with my grown children in ways that younger motherhood made more difficult, perhaps, for various reasons, and, I do worry for him and his life also. I suppose that’s what (most) moms do.
• It feels like I have lost ten years of my life in what I thought was some type of fairytale-happily-ever-after second marriage; yet, I have learned and gained so much from that. This was to be the intimate marriage partnership and context for healing the deep personal and family woundings our first marriages brought, yet, in a very real sense it only deepened the number of wounds and scars from the first. The Shalom of God we (or at least I) seemed to seek for our lives going forward only became, ultimately, irrepairably complicated by the things of the past brought into the present and that second chance at love I so longed for…leaving me now to seriously wonder…after all this…would there ever be a third chance. I’m both rightfully and reasonably skeptical, yet remain consistent at least…I’m a hopeless romantic of sorts. But now, feet solidly on the ground…I suppose…but not without occasionally immersing myself with this marvelous music expression on loop…too…Ballad of the Wildwood… This is a piece that in my view could only have more deeply evolved in my heart through the pains and sufferings and non-Shaloms of my two failed marriages and the maturity of a fully-formed adult woman who yet holds some remote chance at someday coming into the most beautiful and true love of my life. (This piece featured also at end…wonderful lyric referring to the biblical “gate” that keeps us from naturally entering into God’s Shalom found in pre-fall creation: “No gate’s too tall, no wait’s too long”) Did I say already…I’m an artist…and with that I suppose it necessitates being a hopeless romantic? At least, I’m consistent. I suppose I should make this expression even more vulnerable by including (at the very end of this piece) a poem I wrote for my first husband…the love of my young, unformed life, self and womanhood…and father of my children…see my blog piece White Lace and Promises. Indeed, if I were to analyze my evolving-yet-enduring ideas about love, marriage and life-partnering through music, I think the expressions would age with time (like wine, perhaps…) and new music genres, styles and pieces yet be kind of the same, too. The first love song shared with another – my high school boyfriend – was The Rose. In more recent times, the expression of intimacy and rose imagery found in the ee cummings poem “somewhere i have never travelled gladly beyond..” seems to express more clearly a maturing view of personal intimacy. And as I would hope I would be up to the task, and so desire its outcome, yet after two divorces and a variety of other experiences, I am left to wonder…am I so fatally flawed in some way and will never give nor receive within a lifelong partnership the love I so desire to give and receive? As I am thinking of other song expressions I identify with in post-divorce times, I also think of this beautiful expression by Kate Wolf called Give Yourself to Love.
• I am currently not interested in many communications with my first husband and his fiance.
• I have placed highly significant limitations on communications with the second man I made covenant with…and ironically as I was in the middle of writing this piece he reached out to me today to inquire about the future preserving of a wedding bouquet for his daughter, offering to book it in, and congratulating me on being a grandmother. I replied that I already told my step-daughter I would be gifting her a bouquet preservation and other wedding arts such as calligraphy, explaining to him we had already been in touch. In my mind, there is no such thing as a “former step-daughter.” As in all divorces – first, second…third…tenth…twentieth…it is not about children of any age, but, it is about the failures of intimacy and true partnership between the two in the marital covenant…I had told her back in 2018 when she watched me preserve flowers and asked if I would someday do that for her, “yes…of course…” And so I explained to the second former that I already had it covered… And, I thanked him for his well-wishes on my grandmotherhood. Of which I only know that the babies are due the end of this month, July…
• There’s been a lot of losses…a lot of griefs…yet many continued joys, too…I seem to be essentially, despite the outward appearance perhaps at times, otherwise, to be a person of generally deep and abiding peace and joy…though I may toss and turn and do various gyrations…like a piano tuned a certain way, I seem to have a resilience that keeps bringing me back, eventually, to a position of hopefulness and optimism even when deeply tainted with thoughts and contemplations such as these found herein.
• I continue to have a small circle of whom I consider very close and meaningful friends – women whom I trust and connect more deeply with. I’ve never been one to have platonic men friends on any regular or deep level…it really is not in my make-up as a woman. While I’m free-thinking in many things, I’m complicated and conservative in many others. There is just too much boundary danger in the private cultivation of intimate male “friendships” beyond social situations, practical situations, occasional brother-in-Christ private communications, and pastoral relationships. We live in a messy world, and I think the comical-and-insightful plot/and these two scenes of When Harry Met Sally might best summarize it, rather than some non-absolute biblical rule….that in many ways, men and women can never be just friends. While we may name it otherwise, it doesn’t change the inherent relationship. A well-loved quotation by CS Lewis reminds me generally of these thoughts about how we “name” something – and also Shakespeare, too…. I am not saying that it’s not okay to share intimately and vulnerably at times and from the heart, and personally and spiritually, in male-female friendships of all sorts. What I am saying is, that at least for me, I’m pretty much a loyal, faithful, single-relationship kind of woman. So too much of ongoing and deepening friendship with a male, doesn’t sit well with me apart from a certain context, and conversely, makes it very difficult and messy, though not impossible, to backtrack into simply a caring friendship.

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Which I suppose brings me to this song I discovered yesterday called Count on Me, (performed below, by Rhiannon Giddens, and also as Spotify background music last night in my own twelve minute video, also below, of glimpses of my life here…) in terms of wondering for myself…what now? What ever?

• Who would ever tolerate me, with all my quirks, strengths, weaknessess, failures and successes?
• What divorced person who essentially believes in marriage, faithfulness and the value of lifelong partnership and growing old with one’s best friend and soul-mate, has not thought on this?
• What is it about this song that drew me in?

Well first, Rhiannon Giddens is an amazing musical artist, demonstrating outstanding training and mastery in a number of genres, vocal expressions and instruments. I love that most of her music has both a ballad quality and master folk-music performance style. (For a sense of her range of talents and styles, this piece is amazing…Pretty Little Girl with the Blue Dress On – Rhiannon Giddens) She’s engaging, intense, and there is a kind of dignity I hear in her vocal expressions and performance of her unique works, and occasional covers. I have previously made blog commentary or mention of other works of this musical artist, within these three pieces, SLIPPING THE BONDS OF EARTH and THE CHOIR(S) KEPT SINGING FOR FREEDOM and YE BLIND BEHOLD YOUR SAVIOR COME AND LEAP YE LAME FOR JOY.

“Nothing to hide from me…”

-FROM COUNT ON ME, BY RHIANNON GIDDENS

For me, lyrics must marry well with the musical piece, to draw me in. I have heard the same lyrics of a song performed by two different musical artists in such divergent ways that I adore the one piece and find the other, mediochre, at best. A good example of this is Hurt, by Johnny Cash. The Nine-Inch Nails (original) version does nothing for me. But, seeing Johnny Cash perform this piece in music video, with his second wife, June Carter, by his side, close to his death, and knowing his life story and how many people he did in fact, deeply hurt…I find this such a powerful expression.

So this song Count on Me that I put on loop yesterday had a number of beautiful lines and thoughts…the first lyric that really drew me in was “nothing to hide from me…”

We all want to know and be known. The intimacy we all seek, as humans, comes from being created first, in the image of God. In I John it says, “We love, because He first loved us.” Throughout Christian Scriptures, the theme of intimacy between God and Man is on full display, if one is attuned to looking for that, spiritually and otherwise.

In the Garden account of Creation, God made us male and female, and the literal/symbolic reference (it is not the purview of this piece to discuss whether this is a scientific or poetical expression, or possibly in some way, both…) of our Creator taking a rib from Adam to form Eve and his response, “You are now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh…” and, “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife…” depicts such a beautiful soul-mate type connection with “no where to hide…”

So why is this intimate, unconditionally mutually loving, mutually trusting, mutually nurturing, mutually providing for and protecting, mutually knowing and being full known relationship seem so elusive? There are even lifelong marriages that upon close examination, have lacked this longed-for quality, leaving one or both partners so very empty, but yet together, in their old age. And perhaps it is better to still be together – as in some cases, perhaps there are essential, formative wounds in one or both marriage partners that prohibit the kind of connection all humans long for and need, to fully thrive in their internal and external worlds. But, I don’t know. I suppose I have no room for opinion nor talk on this?

That is a topic for endless discussion, I suppose…but, there’s that…

Back to the lyrics of Count on Me…

Expressed in this musical piece are ideas of:

• faithfulness
• loyalty
• waiting
• trustworthiness
• friendship
• helpmate (it is not good for the man to be alone…and for me, sometimes I wonder, “But what of an Eve with whatever she has to offer, finding no suitable and receptive Adam…?”)
• cleaving through hardship, adversities of life…and especially…the dark places…the places we want to hide from others…the places that only the calming and balming of a single person with whom we surrender will bring relief…that we open ourselves to…worts and all…failings and strengths….
• there also seem to be references in the lyrics to echoes of the past…I get the impression from this love song that these are not young people starting out…these are two that have suffered the various woundings of life and failed relationships…this is an expression of one willing to walk through the painful pasts with another human being in a sacred and singular way…to be in it, so-to-speak…with the other in those inward places of past, present and future…for as long as that person needs and when the ugly scars rip open time and time again…therefore, this piece has found its way into my Blog Category of Beautiful Song and Poetry Lyrics, as I find it worthy. In fact, I find this piece so very worthy of contemplation…

“When yesterdays won’t burn away

Like they used to do

I’ll walk through them too

When the echoes pound

Drown out the sound of love so true

I’ll whisper to you…”

While I thought perhaps I would outline all the titles of blog pieces I either have in process, currently, from both before and during my trip last weekend to West Virginia, or am contemplating, simply by a title (and sometimes…several roll into one expression, and seem to undergo title changes as the piece evolves in my mind…almost making the evolution of their thematic titles in-and-of-themselves worthy of being stated…), I think I will conclude here with a statement worked into a short story I wrote in 2005 during the process of my first divorce.

This statement was made to me by a spiritual person who well knew the situation I was navigating, in 2003. This short story called The Mirror dealt in an interspersed, back-and-forth internal dialogue-ish way, with details and life-themes surroundings my own mother’s death in 2001, and the death of my first marriage in 2005, after a twenty-year marriage and two children together. It is a very personal story I have always considered my magnum opus of writings...and I am working on sharing it with redacted parts, keeping the main focus on the parts relating to the death of my mother and my complicated relationship with her.

While I do not like or prefer to ever or often “directly” quote others in my writings from things spoken in confidence…it has been a number of years and I have lost touch with this individual. Their words to me, in 2003, were significant to me at that time. (As well as the same person’s words to me, also worked into the story “The Mirror,” which were spoken privately to me as I sat in the front row at my mother’s funeral: “You have been a faithful daughter to the end.”) So much so that when the divorce and messiness was in process two years later in 2005, I included their specific words to me within the many swirling thoughts, ideas, happenings and words ringing in my heart, mind, ears and memories, during that time period, and worked their words into my creative short-story expression, called “The Mirror.”

So, I do think this one lengthier statement belongs in this blog piece, however, as it feeds into my contemplations of yesterday and the repeated circulation of these type of thoughts and personal questions, going forward in my personal story (and that of my dear children and, grandchildren…) which, although at the moment, until I know otherwise, seems somewhat set-in-stone, but, with good reason…like all of our futures, is yet unwritten…reminding me somewhat also of this piece…expressed last December…Is it Written?

Once my Pastor said, “I read with mounting sorrow your recent emails…I am sorry that I have not responded to them until now…There is a great deal in the two messages. They are filled with the story of your continued efforts to love and support your husband and also to care and provide for your children. They also tell the story of your helplessness in a situation that seems to have no end and no hope….if there were something that I knew to suggest that would help you to help your husband, I would quickly tell you that. But, I do not know what can help. I guess, over these past several months, as you and I have been meeting, I have just hoped that I might be of some small support to you. I find you and your family very dear people. You are obviously sensitive, sincere, and deeply faithful. I believe that you are a woman of deep and strong faith, and that your faith has been a guiding force and a powerful strength for you over many years. I can testify to your faithfulness both to God and your husband…Please know of my continued prayers for you and my readiness to be of any assistance that I can be. I do not want to lose contact with you or your family.”

-from the mirror, a short story by Eileen Slifer, written fall of 2005

Count On Me

(performed by Rhiannon Giddens)
(from “The Music Of Nashville: Season 5, Volume 3” soundtrack)

When shadows fall
And blue skies all turn to gray
I’ll light the way
When night rolls in
And you need a friend who’d wait for days
I’ll always stay

Right by your side
Nothing to hide from me
Through thick and thin
There and back again
You’ll see
You can count on me

When yesterdays won’t burn away
Like they used to do
I’ll walk through them too
When the echoes pound
Drown out the sound of love so true
I’ll whisper to you

Right by your side
Nothing to hide from me
Through thick and thin
There and back again
You’ll see
You can count on me

You can count on me
When the fire’s on the ground
You can count on me
When the ashes won’t stay down
When smoke and darkness
Cloud all you see
When eyes won’t stay open
You can count on me

When dawn draws near
I’ll calm the fear that holds you tight
In the dark of night
When the morning comes
We’ll let the sun shine so bright
We’ll walk in the light

Right by your side
Nothing to hide from me
Through thick and thin
There and back again
You’ll see
You can count on me
You can count on me
You can count on me

Written July 17, 1984 by Eileen Slifer, a twenty-two-year-old but not fully-formed adult woman:

Among your ribs,

bones strong, somewhat inflexible,

forming a cage that guards your heart,

Was there one left missing?

Where the flesh was closed up,

was there yet a gap left

where another might one day enter?

Gently and freely to walk about?

And was I the one

whom the LORD God fashioned from

your missing rib?

Am I your suitable helper,

your companion,

your counterpart?

Am I like the rib

that protects and guards

the secrets

and depths of your heart,

Having access through love?

Here I am, what shall you call me?

Please let me love you, let me in.

Let me tread softly about the

rooms of your heart.

Let me grow in understanding, acceptance,

and love of your innnermost being.

Put me as a seal over your heart,

and as a rib in its place.

__________

“I’m waiting now like you waited before

I’ve waited long, I’ll wait some more

No gate’s too tall, no wait’s too long

No gain’s too small, no chain’s too strong

Chorus:

I want to walk in the Eden of God

Clothed in wind, my feet unshod

I want to stand where Angel’s stood

And dance with you in the wild wildwood…”

–BALLAD OF THE WILDWOOD, BY JEAN AND MARY JAMES