Luke, 1999

The room is darkened because it’s meant to be homey but I feel like a stranger in a strange land.

“Push, push, push!” commands the nurse. My mind understands her but my body doesn’t know what to do.

I’m not ready, not at all. But no matter– it’s time.

The doctor stands at the foot of my bed and consults a nurse behind her clipboard. As if I can’t see. As if I don’t know. I’m not doing this right, don’t have a clue, scared as dark hell, desperate.

The doctor tells the nurse that if I can’t push him out soon, they’ll have to do a c-section. Tells the nurse. But I get the message. Come on, body, dammit. Do this. Do it and be done. Get this baby born, ready or not.

The baby is more than ready, waited long enough to grow fingernails beyond his tiny fingertips; he’s head-down, no stopping. Baby’s ready to emerge, come out of darkness.

Natalie, 2002

The tub has been warm, but I’m listening to my body, and it’s not time for comfort anymore. I make my way to the bed, where quilts have been tucked down, waiting.

I have no needle in my back, no medicine in my blood, and I am strong; I was made for this. The contractions come on heavy and my whole body feels them. Pain is too narrow a word, suggests localized precision. I am awash.

I tuck inside my own mind and see me there with my girl baby. We’re going uphill on a bike, and it’s steep like never. With every contraction in body, we trudge harder in mind.

It’s the hardest work of my life, and it feels like death. I need Jesus.

And there he is, somewhere between my mind and my body, but most certainly just to the right of my bed. He is there, and it’s the surest presence I’ve ever known.

Mia, 2004

I’ve been here before, this same room, this same bed. I know the plan, know the way, know myself.

This baby was a surprise, but I am sure of almost everything else. It’s a boy, for one; I just know it. This is my third time ’round, and it always goes faster each time– I’ve read it.

And I know how natural childbirth works, how spiritual it is. I can hardly wait for the romance to begin.

But the work starts and it’s just work. There is no super-woman power, no prenatal mind-meld; just pain and pain and push. No Jesus.

“It’s a boy!” cries my little guy, but I know he’s only seen the baby’s head. And now I’m less than certain.

And I’m wrong. All wrong. I see a beautiful girl.

Tessie and Scarlett, 2009

I’m in an operating room because I am necessarily high-risk. I asked, asked pretty hard, and the doctor said I could have my way– no epidural, nothing. But if we got into trouble, he’d have to put me under– and I’d miss it all. And that’s just too risky, missing life happen. So I’ve given up my “rights” and my “can-do’s,” and I’m under bright lights and it’s sterile beyond comfort. But I’m not here for comfort; I’m here for life.

Three pushes, easy, and out comes Baby A. She’s eyes-all-around, taking it in– oh, she is here, world, and she is ready.

A quick visit on my chest with the baby I’ve just birthed, but then she’s off to impress on the scales and the scores, and I’m still pregnant. Have to do this all over again, no rest.

Baby B has flipped herself sideways, cozied up close inside mama, no rush, not yet. Hands are all on me– ultrasound wands, and palpating palms. I feel pressure like mad, but the epidural I didn’t want has prevented the worst of the pain.

The doctor has her lined up now, and here I go, one last time, forever. And she comes out, looks just like the girl who came before, but she is her own person and it’s clear. She has no need to fuss about the world right now; she rests.

Tamára, 2013

The room is small but it’s enough. I have been a long-time coming. Pangs of soul-birth have washed and waned, and I have struggled, I have succeeded, I have failed and hoped again.

I know the plan, know the way, know myself. I can hardly wait for the romance to begin. And I’m wrong. All wrong.

I feel like a stranger in a strange land. I’m not doing this right, don’t have a clue, scared as dark hell, desperate. Pain is too narrow a word, suggests localized precision. I am awash. It’s the hardest work of my life, and it feels like death. I need Jesus.

I am necessarily high-risk. I asked, asked pretty hard. I could have my way– and I’d miss it all. And that’s just too risky, missing life happen.

Have to do this all over again, no rest. I feel pressure like mad. But I’m not here for comfort; I’m here for life. And I’m still pregnant.

But I was made for this.

Baby’s ready to emerge, come out of darkness.

 

 

They sat with only an eggplant pizza between them. The ricotta formed soft mounds; the savory sauce, intermittent; the strips off eggplant, fried, but not beyond holding their flavor. The brunette cut into her slice and really tasted the first bite. She used to eat pizza without thinking, but things were different now.

It was a Lenten meal, but no food was held back. The rolls were drenched in olive oil and seasoning; the salad was crisp and well dressed; and the pizza, too large for two people, promised another meal yet to come.

It was the season of relinquishment, but what the brunette had given up was God.

She knew God as harsh disciplinarian, disapproving father, distant deity. And she needed to know a God she could get close to, so for Lent, she gave him up. She gave up her ideas about God and asked for God instead.

And with only a good meal separating them, the redhead was close enough to see: There was something different about the girl enjoying her slice.

She folded her arms on the table and leaned in, marveling, kind. “You’re so brave. I could never do what you’re doing without a safety net. I could never be alone.”

The brunette shook her head, not out of modesty, but in so intimately knowing the truth.

“I’m not brave. But I’m grateful. It’s in the emptiness I’m finding God.”

“How?” The redhead leaned closer, if only with her heart.

“Because when I cast aside my safety net, I had nothing else.”

She thought of her long walk to the mailbox. Of the lonely space she felt in those steps. Of her sadness. Of her shame. Of her fear. Of the God who spoke and dispelled it all with the words, “There is nothing between us.”

“I had nothing else, and it made space for God to come close. And in that emptiness, that loneliness, that darkness, I could finally hear God. And I heard that God loved me, exactly as I am.” The brunette savored her single slice of the gracious pie.

The redhead had earnestly forgotten her dinner. She picked up her fork and knife and began to cut in to her soft, warm roll.

It was Lent, and in the emptiness was space for drawing near. And God would provide the meal.

She picks a flower from the ground,
begins the same old game.

Plucks a petal, thinks of her best lover:
He loves me.

Next petal plucked, and a question occurs:
He loves me not.

Third petal now and she holds it like hope:
He loves me.

But there’s reason to doubt ’cause she sees her own heart:
He loves me not.

She tries to remember the things that she knows:
He loves me.

It’s no longer a game and she fears the result:
He loves me not.

His stories she’s heard, they promise her good:
He loves me.

But the truth that she sees is she can’t measure up:
He loves me not.

The petals are spent and so is her heart;
she drops the bare stem to the dirt.

But growing beside it,
A perfect new flower.

She plucks a petal, thinks of her best lover:
He loves me.

Tara is perched half-stool, one black high heel to the floor, ready to get up and go as far as her small stage allows when the Stonewall spirit moves. She’s on about history like I’ve never seen even the most enthused civics professor get, and we can feel the vibration in our hearts if not in our media center chairs, because this story of drag queens and broken bottles and fuck the police is personal for Tara. They were her friends, and this is the story of her people; and she means it.

She has a thick, 63-year-old face, delicately made up, reading glasses tipped down at the end of her broad nose; she’s got ample breasts, but not much in the way of hips, but then, hell, neither do I, and ain’t I a woman. Her voice is Jersey baritone and it is all passion, words cut off only when age forces her to go retrieve them, and then it’s back to the story, to the dozen tangents she seems to need to follow out loud because we are listening. And if you don’t tell your stories, they die with you, gone. And Tara needs telling.

She was a little boy who loved dolls, and a boxer who preferred panties, and a married man who craved the closeness of men. And when she realized how she looked wasn’t who she felt, she knew she needed change; she needed to be Tara. But people, we look from the outside, and the world didn’t see a woman trying to be herself; they saw a man trying to be a woman. So Tara lost her friends, her family, her spouse. She got herself– but she still pays dearly for the trade.

Tara is off her stool now, beginning her Pride march across the wood floor, bringing it right to us. Her eyes light, triumphant and wistful, as she tells us how trans* people were honored in ancient faith traditions, “before the Judeo-Christian religions,” and this phrase comes with deep tremor of anger, and beneath that, deeper hurt.

She tells us of the Native American man who recognized her as a Two-Spirit person, who engaged her with warm acceptance, who held her hand as he spoke. She is all about the conference the tribes hold every year and how much she’d love to go, but it’s too expensive to get out west, and she’s already spent so much just to get her body right; her two spirits will have to wait.

Tara has a lifetime of hard, aching story to tell, and the tangents get out of control. I can see her mind is whirring, trying to keep up the pace of her heart, but it’s beating so hard to be known, she just can’t catch it.

She’s back on about the Abrahamic religions’ oppression of her people, and I consider, then reconsider, gently touching the black cross at my neck. I am not ashamed of my cross, of my Jesus; I am a little ashamed of my people. But mostly I am sad, sad that my cross does not speak to her of my Jesus, sad that she does not know His story. Because I know what happens to stories that don’t get told. And Tara needs telling.

So it’s time for Q&A and my organ-heart is so loud I’m afraid I won’t be able to get words out above it, but my soul-heart is louder, and I guess Tara has two spirits and I have two hearts, and I open my soft lips and speak in a soprano. I know only a small-tiny-something of the marginalization she has lived, but it’s enough that I can speak her language, connect, and I ask what can be done.

The intensity she’s worn on her face this last hour flashes in surprise; then it goes soft.

The whole room turns to look at me but I am fixed on Tara. I have jumped both feet alongside her on a hard and aching path, and I am asking for real answers, for Tara and her people; this is Jesus’ story. And I mean it.

I have been living through some real (not literal, but real) shit lately. The past few months have ushered in the most turbulent season of my adult life, and I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me, because a lot of it is my own dang fault–we don’t control the seasons, but how we weather them–but I just want the seasons to change, goddamn it all.

And so I find myself alternately sobbing in a useless heap or blazing reckless trails because I just want some step forward, toward anywhere but here, any time but now, anything but this. Because here, now, this is some real shit.

But despite my middle-finger jabs heavenward, my hiding, my harrumphing, it’s evident God won’t consent to damn it all, and I can’t even tell you how this frustrates me. He keeps it going, keeps it going, lets the season hold heavy in the air, and he seems rather a sadist if he even exists at all. But I just know he’s not and I know he does because I can feel him and his infuriatingly persistent goodness–which, incidentally, frequently fails to feel all that good–and why he won’t just damn it all and be done I don’t know, but God.

Damn.

So that’s how I found myself on the bathroom floor one night, curled over my knees as though I could wrap up my own heart for safekeeping if only I could wrap my body up into itself; or rather, that’s how I found myself managing to walk out.

The last time I had had a bathroom-floor cry, it lasted a good two hours– or, more accurately, an immobilizing, pit-of-hellish two hours–before I even managed to speak Jesus’ name. I was just too beside myself to think of asking him beside me too. I saw in immediate retrospect that this was a faulty, devastating, and, frankly, time-consuming approach to spiritual wellness. So this time when my sobs sank me to the bathroom floor, when it felt like hell washing over me, I sent up a quick and ineloquent prayer to the effect of, “Get me out of here.” And he did–he came in and got me the hell out.

The only thing I can call it is that peace that passes understanding. Not because it was so much peace or such enduring peace–it only lasted long enough to get me out of the bathroom–but because it made no sense, because it had no reason for existing within me. The way I felt, I shouldn’t have been able to stop crying after just a minute, shouldn’t have been able to move. But I was stuck, and I called “Help,” and I felt an inexplicable peace enter in–just enough to move a small and good step forward.

And that might be the way this season goes: Stuck-help-move, run-swear-stop, cry-pray-peace. There may be a hell of a lot more shit. There will likely be more middle fingers.  But it will not, cannot, remain here, now, this. The seasons will change, and I know that until they do, God, in his infuriatingly persistent goodness, will keep at me and keep over me and keep me. And I can yell it all I want, but God won’t damn this season–he’ll be in it.