Angie Kinghorn

Our Father

Prayer has never been my strong suit, but I talk to God a lot these days.  Throughout my childhood I thought prayer had to be liturgical or some childish rhyming thing at the dinner table, and for the important stuff, definitely something lofty, weighty, and memorized, or read out of the Book of Common Prayer, vetted by those who know better so that it would be worthy of speaking to God. 
I grew up Episcopalian and married a Southern Baptist.  In church math, Episcopalian + Southern Baptist = either Presbyterian or Methodist.  We’re not big on that whole predestination thing, so we joined the Methodist church.  My husband grew up in a much more religious household than I did, and one of the things he learned was how to pray.  I was startled the first several times we prayed together, at the way he seemed so comfortable with God, the way he spoke to Him as a friend—a lofty, revered friend, but not some far-removed authority figure.  My prayers began to emulate his, and gradually, I’ve come to think of God as someone to talk with, not someone to whom I should throw a prepackaged speech with an “Amen” tacked on the end.  But I still find myself guilty of that most common of practices, of being a fair-weather friend to God.  Maybe it would be better to explain it as being a bad-weather friend to God.  We all tend to do it, to ignore Him on the beautiful sunny days so that we can go out and avail ourselves of his bounty.  But the minute something goes bad, we’re on our knees, begging Him to fix it, pleading with Him that if He will just do this one teensy thing this one time, we’ll never do X, Y, or especially Z again.
I’m guessing this is not His favorite form of communication, because it’s not communication at all when you just talk at somebody, when you never listen, and when you only come to them in time of need.  I’ve tried to listen, but I’ve never heard a big booming voice, and no burning shrub has ever spoken to me, either.  Sometimes I think God may be speaking to me, but it’s hard to know whether that’s my little Jiminy Cricket chirping or whether it really is the voice of the Lord.  It always seemed to me that if God were to talk to you, it would not be something you could miss.  But now I think we miss it all the time because we can’t or won’t listen properly.  I’ve tried and tried to listen, and for someone who’s always been the consummate blabbermouth, it’s very difficult to shut up and quiet your mind enough to let God’s voice, however whispered, enter your head.  Most of the time, I fall asleep.
Somewhere along the line, when life got busy, my prayers became complacent.  I’d start to pray as I was drifting off to sleep, and all God got was “Dear Lord, thank you for this day and all the …..”  Then my father’s health started to slide rapidly, and wham, there I was, back on my knees with the fervor of a nun.  I didn’t know what to pray for.  Obviously, I wanted my father to live, but not like he was—not in agony, unable to rise from a hospital bed.  But could I really pray for him to die?  Was that right?
In the end I ended up on my knees, chanting “Your will be done, your will be done,” over and over again.   
There was a chapel in the hospital, a small, simple room, with rows of chairs and an ancient piano.  There was a makeshift altar, and on it was a notebook, filled with anonymous letters to the Lord from people kneeling there while their loved ones lay dying in the rooms down the hall.  Some were heartbreaking.  Parents lost children, leaving their pain behind, palpable in the ink.  Siblings wrote in broken English, praying to a God they may or may not have known, their words hesitant, their fear radiating from the unsteady chicken scratch in the low light. 
Then there were others, the letters that saw joy through the pain, even through extreme suffering and death.  Parents thanked God for the privilege of having their child in their lives, if even for a short time.  Others thanked Him for merciful release of their loved ones, and managed to have their joy at the thought of Heaven radiate through their pain and loss.
When my father died, I was downstairs in the cafeteria with my sister.  We had just ordered pancakes after spending a long night sleeping in the room with our father.  We sat down at the table, and a nurse walked through the door and came to us.  I knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth.
“Oh, my God,” I said, as I read her face.  “He just died, didn’t he?”
She nodded.
The first thing I did was look up, and I for once I didn’t have to labor over what to say. 
“Thank you, God, oh, thank you.” 
Later, I found myself at home alone in my childhood bedroom.  I couldn’t get my husband on the phone, and the nap I was supposed to be taking wasn’t happening.  Perhaps it was shock, or plain exhaustion, but I couldn’t think of what to say to God then.  So I reached for the Lord’s Prayer.  “Our Father…” I started, then stopped as it hit me. 
Now I have two fathers in Heaven.  I hope both of them can hear me when I pray.

A beginning

Like the commercial says, everything changes when you have a baby.  But nobody really talks about the seismic event that shakes your life to the core when you have more than one baby at the same time. (My guess is that mothers of multiples are simply too busy chasing after their children to sit down, much less put pen to paper).  When you have twins, your world narrows to the twilight zone between half-sleep and the fugue state of waking fatigue.  Days are indistinguishable, and you’re never sure whether the baby you hear crying is real or a figment of your remaining brain cells.  Decisions are an impossibility, pain and a hospital grade breast pump are constant companions, and your skin shines taught from swelling and is constantly sticky from night sweats, leaking breastmilk, or spit-up.
            My friends and family thought I had it all together.  Postpartum depression felt like a shameful secret that I only began to share when the worst of it was over.  During those dark days, I cried with no provocation, suffered from panic attacks, felt like a failure of a mother, and was ashamed.  What right did I have to be miserable when I had two beautiful, healthy babies?  I learned to put on a pretty good show and act like the supermom I thought I should be, but most days I felt like a mosaic of my former self, held together by caffeine, Touche Eclat concealer, Spanx, and Valium.  I suspect at least some of my friends, even those with singletons, were in the same boat, but admitting that mothering is difficult to the point of tears is to feel inadequate, so no one talks about it.  It is disconcerting to suddenly find yourself fat, leaky, blurry-eyed, and at the beck and call of tiny infants that seem to excrete ten times their body weight a day, and with no one to talk to about how, while wonderful, this experience is incredibly hard.  We are the daughters of first wave feminists, raised to believe we could do anything and everything we wanted, raised to expect that we could have it all, do it all, achieve it all.  To stumble seems disrespectful to our mothers’ generation, who fought so hard to claw their way up corporate ladders with business plans in one hand and baby bottles in the other.
To be honest, the first month of my twins’ life is a sleep deprived blur, punctuated by vivid memories in which I can smell the sweet warmth of their silky hair and milky breath as they were cradled to my chest, but I can also still feel the pain of a fresh c-section incision and the mental agony of a traumatic birth with complications.  My body felt alien and the engorged breasts and constant pumping left me extremely sympathetic towards and slightly jealous of dairy cows.  They at least had someone to clean their pump equipment!  My feet were so swollen that I had to wear slippers to my follow-up ob appointments, but I hardly noticed—I was too busy trying not to cry when my doctor asked me how I was doing.  I was shocked at the blast of icy air that greeted us when we left the hospital.  Thanks to three months of bed rest and a week in the hospital after the birth, I had no idea fall had given way to a harsh winter.  The world had gone on without me, and from that moment, I felt a little bit behind and totally unprepared.  What followed was a year full of the highest highs and the lowest lows.  Somehow, we got through it.  It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
            During the first 18 months of their lives, writing (not to mention a saintly husband, antidepressants, and a very good therapist) saved me.  When your baby dumps the dog’s water bowl on the floor for the fourth time of the day and he, his sister, and the dog end up soaking wet again, you can cry.  Or you can laugh.  Mostly I chose (or at least tried) to laugh, but it was often laughter through tears.  Each time I found myself in the middle of a twinfant crisis, I’d get through it by thinking how I could transform it into a funny story to email to my family, or in letters I wrote to my babies.
            Now my “babies” are three years old.  I have been flogged by postpartum depression, but in the end I’m proud to say I kicked its ass.  But my father died in September, so now I’m in the business of dealing with grief so that I can one day kick it to the curb.
            My tools are assembled:  I have my husband and family, my faith, my writing, a therapist who pushes me to rip off the band-aid by writing more, and last but not least, I have bourbon.
            God is good.  All the time.