she points at me
like a celebrity
on the red carpet
and grins her sweet grin
then toddles to me
and reaches her arms up for me
to lift her onto my hip
we go out to the deck
and sit in the sunshine
and I sing to her an old Beatles ballad:
“Who knows how long I’ve loved you…?”
and she bops her head to the beat
and then rests
her head on my chest
and I melt with the sweetness of it
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
So here I am
at 5:20 in the morning
one cat asleep
the other pacing for breakfast
and the world is still dark
age-old questions weaving
through my thoughts:
why are we here?
why am I here?
Does the universe exist because
of a random series of physical events
that brought us to this place
where I sit in the dark and wonder why?
Some of my friends would say
that to ask “why” is to start
in the wrong place. Does there have
to be a why? They would ask.
Does it have to make sense?
Does there have to be a purpose
to this existence?
But it is built in me to ask why,
and so I ask.
And all the questions – the whys
and whats and whatifs,
the whos and wheres and
even the whens,
always lead me back to Love.
What? Love.
Why? To love.
Who? To love all.
When? To love all now.
Where? To love all now and here.
It is 5:34 now.
One cat sleeps,
the other paces for breakfast.
They are here to be loved.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
We disagree – my friend and I.
I ask, “Are we okay?”
“Of course! All this is temporary,” he says.
And I realize he’s talking about
something bigger than this life
on this planet
in these mortal bodies.
And my thought zooms out
beyond this planet,
this solar system,
this galaxy,
until our little Earth is no longer
even a tiny blue dot
in infinity.
And all there is
is Love.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
(Below: NASA photo.)
Grandbaby is cuddled up next to me in the crook of my arm. She’s practicing different sounds with me – brrrr, thhpt, wudududuh – and watching my mouth as we make sounds together. Then she slides down off the couch and heads for the door. She looks back at me when she makes it to the door, and reaches for the handle. She’s telling me she wants to go outside. When I get to the door, I look outside and see my son has come home from a day of filming. “Daddy’s home!” I say to my granddaughter.
I pick her up and take her to the end of the driveway. She sees her daddy now, and her mommy standing beside him. She starts grinning. I set her down, and she race-toddles to my son – they’re both laughing. The son gets down on his haunches to welcome her into his arms, and she settles inside his hug.
And I have a sudden memory of greeting my daddy the same way when he got home from work.
Here’s a photo Dad captured of me on one of those occasions…
So here’s where I was when I woke up in the middle of last night: I was feeling discouraged about the hate and lack of civility in the world; feeling disappointed in my own flaws and failures; feeling a deep sadness. Then I noticed Clara Cat wasn’t in her usual place on the chair. I thought maybe somebody had let her outside and she hadn’t gotten back in before we all went to bed. I looked for her on the back deck and on the front porch – but nada. And I got scared. We have coyotes and bobcats and eagles here.
I decided to read the weekly CS Bible lesson-sermon. This week’s was on “Love” – my favorite topic! And I got all wrapped up in reading and thinking about the God who is Love and Her love for us. And when i finally finished and looked up, I saw Clara lying on the top of the chair – all stretched out and casual – looking at me.
And that one thing – seeing Clara healthy and content — put everything else in perspective and made the world look better. It was like a gentle pat on the back – a pat of reassurance from the God who is Love.
Right now we’re in that place – that desperate place – where we can see no way out. The greed, hate, and selfishness seem relentless and it seems inevitable that they will win. But, more than once, I’ve been in a place that seemed hopeless – I’ve been in a place where I could see no solution and no way out. More than once I’ve been in a desperate place. And every time Love has opened up a way through. Every. Single. Time.
Love owns the “waiting hours,” too.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
***
Mother’s Evening Prayer
“O gentle presence, peace and joy and power;
O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour,
Thou Love that guards the nestling’s faltering flight!
Keep Thou my child on upward wing to-night.
“Love is our refuge; only with mine eye
Can I behold the snare, the pit, the fall:
His habitation high is here, and nigh,
His arm encircles me, and mine, and all.
“O make me glad for every scalding tear,
For hope deferred, ingratitude, disdain!
Wait, and love more for every hate, and fear
No ill, — since God is good, and loss is gain.
“Beneath the shadow of His mighty wing;
In that sweet secret of the narrow way,
Seeking and finding, with the angels sing:
‘Lo, I am with you always’ — watch and pray.
“No snare, no fowler, pestilence or pain;
No night drops down upon the troubled breast,
When heaven’s aftersmile earth’s tear-drops gain,
And mother finds her home and heavenly rest.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
A woman of about my age or a little younger was walking in front of me on the boardwalk and I suddenly had this vision of her as a little girl. It was like I was seeing her through the eyes of her mother.
I happened to run into her again at the coffee shop. I was impelled to tell her what I’d just experienced.
“Hi, this is maybe going to sound weird, but I just saw you walking in front of me as your mother saw you when you were a little girl and she loved you very much.” And then I started tearing up, and I think she started tearing up, too. There was something really profound in that moment.
When she left the coffee shop, she passed me and smiled a big smile and wished me a great day. And I wished her the same.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
My dear Humoristian hooligans –
Look! We’re still here! We have another day to do good things!
May your irrepressible joy bring hope to the weary and worn. May your kindness reach the forgotten and lonely. May the bossy, bigoted, and bullying be transformed by your good will to all. May the ascared and discouraged be bolstered by your courage. May you bring laughter to those in desperate need of a good laugh.
Go out there and work your magic, my friends!
It’s not over until Love wins.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
This morning Baby Linh raced up to me on all fours, pulled herself up on a basket next to my chair and looked at me with a big grin on her face. Then she started laughing. She laughed and laughed a big rolling belly laugh mixed with happy squeals for a good three minutes. And I laughed with her. We laughed just for the sheer joy of laughing. It was the most therapeutic three minutes I had all day.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine…”
– Proverbs 17:22
My offering for Mental Health Month:
(excerpt from The Madcap Christian Scientist’s Middle Book)
A few months after my fifty-first birthday, I no longer knew who I was. I don’t mean I had amnesia or anything, but the person I’d always thought I was didn’t seem to exist any longer. As my sons had become self-sufficient and independent young men, my role as their mother was different, and, as the only female in my family, I sometimes struggled with trying to figure out how I “fit in”; my profession had changed so much I no longer felt I belonged in it; and two close 20-year friendships, that had once defined who I was as a friend, had ended abruptly, leaving me feeling unworthy of friendship and unlovable. There were all at once a lot of holes in my life, and I felt like a loser.
Who the heck WAS I?
During the Year of Insanity I put a lot of thought into that question. Just when I’d start feeling like I was hopelessly lost in the wilderness, and would never find my way back to my real self, one of my fellow classmates in “Earth’s preparatory school” (as Mary Baker Eddy described our time here) would drop a crumb on the forest floor that would help lead me the right direction. I don’t think many of these classmates had any idea how important those crumbs were to me. So, to those of you who dropped the crumbs, I want to take a moment and tell you that you saved my life, and I whole-heartedly thank you for that.
Henry Drummond writes (in The Greatest Thing in the World): “The people who influence you are people who believe in you… To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in them…The withholding of love is the negation of the Spirit of Christ.”
I have discovered, as I’ve lived my Middle Book, that I am over-the-top wealthy with friends. There have been times when I’ve felt my friends’ expressions of Love towards me lifting me up and supporting me – giving me the buoyancy I need to stay afloat – and when I write “lifting me up” I mean that in a literal sense – I have felt myself – not my body, but my thoughts – literally rising.
I’d like to share a couple of instances with you of times when this happened for me – and I’d like to ask that as you read through these examples, you insert yourself into them – insert yourself as the person who is being shown love, and then insert yourself as the person who is showing love. Because, dear reader, the love that was expressed towards me is yours, too. You are the loved, and you are the loving.
***
On New Year’s Eve, 2007, I was hit particularly hard by the belief of depression – caught up in weird and intense feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. I don’t know what led me to check out my book on Amazon that night, but when I clicked on Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist I found that just that day someone had added a new review for my book. The review read, in part: “Karen becomes your friend, someone you know and love and you know if she knew you, she would love you the way you want to be loved.” I read those words and was so touched by them I began to cry. This was exactly the message I needed at that moment. If I could love others, I had worth. If others could love me, there was hope. I’ve always felt that the man who wrote that review had been listening to the voice of Love that day. He’d been guided by Love’s direction to take the time to write a review for my book – and, because he did that for me, he helped to bring me out of a place of deep despair.
We all have access to an incredible power to bring good to other peoples’ lives. That day my book’s reviewer had tapped into that power.
***
I emailed my wise friend, David Allen, to get his thoughts on “identity” – he always has good stuff to share with me. I told him that I’d reached a point where I didn’t know who I was, anymore – it felt like all my anchors were gone – my job wasn’t the same job, my role as a mom wasn’t the same role, I wasn’t really a mountain-climber, anymore – who was I?! His response was one of the most profound pieces of writing I have ever read, and I’d like to share it with you:
“Karen, I know this feeling. A few years back, before I met you, I went through a similar experience. Up until that time I had identified as a completely self-reliant runner and professional designer who could succeed at anything I wanted to. That was me, or at least, that was who I thought was me. Suddenly, all that was gone…I felt like I had lost my entire identity…Then, one day it hit me. I am not any of those things. Those are things I do, not things that I am. Here is what I am: I am creative, curious, and kind. I like children and I like teaching. I enjoy physical activity. I am a storyteller and I like to make people laugh. I like to do things. I like to make things. I love to learn new things. And I love my family. Whether I am working or running, I am still all of those things. No matter what others may say or think, I am still all of those things. These are the things that never change. These are the things that make me, me. Sometimes I make mistakes and screw up, but that doesn’t change any of those things, either. I am not always happy, but I am always grateful for the things that I am. And I don’t worry anymore about the things I am not.”
***
I’d met David on a religion discussion forum – he was a self-avowed atheist – but other than our difference in belief about God, we’d found we had a huge amount in common with each other. There were several other people I’d met on the forum – most of them atheists, like David – who had become valued friends to me. One of these valued friends was a brilliant wit named Jamie Longmire, who lived in Nova Scotia with his talented artist-wife, Kathi Petersen. Not long after I met Jamie, he “brought me home” via email to introduce me to Kathi.
Before too long Kathi and I were email buddies – emailing each other regularly twice a day. Kathi had been through some pretty major challenges in her life, and could relate to a lot of what I was going through. She understood my thoughts about not wanting to use medication to get relief from the depression – understood that I felt there was something I needed to learn from my experience. She understood, too, when I told her that I’d found I could be happy even when I was depressed. Kathi wrote:
“…something… that occurs to me … is that we all have to live our own lives, and grow from our own hardships.
“I was in a Jungian dream group once and one of the women was saying something about how she could be just as conscious and psychologically grown without having had a dark night of the soul, and you could tell people were thinking ‘yeah right’ … I hear peoples’ stories sometimes, maybe some television interview, and they end up talking about their really pivotal growth ‘dark night moment,’ and it is something that seems so insignificant …but you have to have the whole context of peoples’ lives. I think it is hugely important for people to grow from their own experiences…
“I actually think in a way that it is very important not to tell someone, when they are upset about the bad time they are going through, ‘Well look at that guy, he has no arms or legs and he is a professional motivational speaker and has written two bestseller books’ … I’m saying this because I think in a way, the hardships (while all different) have a BIG sameness about them, and that the answers have a HUGE sameness about them. It is… about people who are suffering, and people finding out that the suffering isn’t a necessary part of life. The hardships may be … but the suffering not necessarily. I have thought that having bigger challenges can sometimes allow people to learn this more easily (trial by fire?) – to learn that life can be full of joy regardless …”
***
I remember clearly the moment when I began to wake up from the depression: I was talking with my husband, Scott, about how the people around me were telling me these wonderful things about myself, but I just felt detached from their words – like the words had nothing to do with who I really am. I told him I felt like a fraud. He looked at me and started laughing. “Karen,” he said, “everyone else knows who you are, you’re the only one who can’t see it!”
The way he said it – with such conviction and so kind of matter-of-factly – I felt something lifting from me, some burden that had been weighing me down. I went out for a walk, and everything around me looked lighter and brighter. I felt stirrings of joy. For some reason I’d been feeling like I had to “steal” happiness – as if I didn’t deserve it. But I think that it was at this moment when I began to accept that I had every right to be happy.
***
“Be happy at all times and in all places; for remember it is right and a duty you owe to yourself and to your God to retain the right, no matter how loudly the senses scream.” – Edward A. Kimball
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 