What Do I Do?
July 16, 2008
In an attempt to procrastinate from doing the things I should be doing I’ve spent the last hour blog bouncing and slurping iced espresso. I spent some time over at Suddenly Christian where John’s minions has been debating whether as good Christians they would attend a gay wedding if invited to one. I just removed the last wood splinter from the bottom of my foot from jumping up and down on my soap box over there. Next on the list was Closeted Pastor where Cecilia wrote a really sweet piece about her garden though I can’t relate at all since the only thing I have growing in mine are weeds. Speaking of synchronicity (we weren’t but now we are because I say so) I happen to be preaching at church this week while the pastor is on vacation…the parable of the wheat and WEEDS. Naked Pastor shared one of his amazing watercolors that captured my own feelings last week when I was so far from home away and from everything familiar. Then it was onto A Wonderful Journey, which always is, and a touching post on internet friends that I wish I’d written but leave it to Kelli to beat me to it, and finally I stopped off at *! [Emphatic Asterisk] and Lindsey’s ponderings on the Joys of Domesticity.
Because I loved what Lindsey wrote I thought I’d share a piece I wrote last week during the writer’s conference that expresses something of the same. We were given 15 minutes to write on anything and so I wrote on a question that I continue to get asked and never know how to answer. Until now.
“What do you do?” you ask.
No, I don’t paint. I don’t sketch. I don’t garden. I don’t play an instrument. I don’t have a job. Not now, though I had one for twenty years. I was successful and accomplished. My parents were proud and my friends were impressed. It was a fulfilling vocation, a calling if you will, but then one day it stopped being fulfilling and it stopped being me, so I left.
So what do I do? Am I a writer? No, not really though I write a little. I write about grace mostly. About God’s reach that extends beyond all human limitations, embracing everyone without exception with extravagant wild love. I write about what the world could be if we let it be and how we could love each other if we allowed Love, with a capital L, to flow through our beings, to be our very beings.
So what is it I do? I love my beloved. It’s the thing I do better than anything else. I took colored chalk once and wrote “Anita loves D” on the stoop steps that led up to my graduate school studio apartment in the Berkeley hills and all around love’s declaration I wrote of her virtues and charms. “Beautiful, sweet, funny, tenderhearted, compassionate, loving, adorable, brilliant.” When we moved into our townhouse condo out in the Northern California ‘burbs, I did the same again on the driveway in front of our house. “Happy Valentine’s Day to the most beautiful woman in all the world” it read surrounded by childlike hearts in pink, red, and purple chalk dust, and “love” and “love” and “love.”
What do I do you ask? I love my beloved and I love her well. I surprise her with dinner reservations at our special restaurant. I buy her those over-the-top adorable little clay mice figurines she collects and don’t complain as they fill up the shelves in our bedroom. And in the evening when I hear the electric garage door grinding and clanging open I go out to welcome her home with a kiss and a smile. I get up early in the morning to pack her lunch and I make dinners of her favorite foods and put it all with care and a dash of flare on the plate. I keep the house running, things working, the cupboards full. Our lives are like some Sapphic parallel universe of Ozzie and Harriet, and I’m Harriet in an apron though she called me her lesbian husband.
I love my beloved. I adore her; her tenderness and humor, her brilliance and compassion, and she knows it and knowing it sweeps out the cobwebs from the darkened corners of her heart. I notice every bit of her and savor it all. I take care of her and love her even as she loves and cares for me.
I’ll never make a name for myself by loving my beloved. I won’t leave a body of work that will outlive me or change the world. But if I do nothing else for the rest of my life, if I never write a book or publish a story or paint a landscape or sing a song or plant a garden, if I do nothing else for the rest of my days but adore my beloved, bringing little bits of happiness into her days, comforting her in the painful seasons; encouraging her in her every endeavor, cheering her every accomplishment, if the only thing I do with my life is loving this one human being so that she feels treasured and loved beyond measure then I’ll be more than fine with that. So what do I do? I love my beloved and I love her well.
My only wish, my selfish wish, is that I could write it well, but the journey from my heart to hand seems too difficult to travel. I lose too much along the way, not saying things as they really are, of how deep and wide love abides so write for me Universe, write for me of my love for my beloved and let my life be my words.
Posted in Anita
July 16th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Wow anita, What a wonderfully written essay. Bring on the tissues. You and D are lucky to have each other and the wonderful love you share.
I do have to disagree on several issues: You may not be published in the who’s who of american literature, but you are a very gifted writer. You may not garden, but you have helped to plant many seeds in people that are growing and blooming into wonderful things. You may not be a carpenter, but you have built for us this wonderful place of peace at sisterfriends. And you have filled this place with acceptance, information, peace, beauty, and Love. And you have already made your mark on changing the world; I know because you changed mine.
But I do have to agree that the most precious thing you have or will ever do is Love your beloved well. Blessings to you both.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:35 am
WOW! I dream of a love like that. I pray for a love like that. To love and be loved like that. Wow!
July 16th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Anita, you have put into words so eloquently what it is to love and be loved in return. I was so touched that I read this out loud to my girlfriend. We were both nearly in tears. It was all I could do to read right through to the end! Your writing is beautiful and touching. I look forward to reading more of your pieces. You are an inspiration. XXX
July 16th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Kelli–> Okay. That was really sweet. I’m totally touched by such kindness and really, the same applies to you and everyone of the women in our growing circle who are blogging so articulately, honestly, and with such a powerful collective witness. While it’s never easy for a gay Christian to come out, with so many of you carving out spaces all over the internet, it’s providing a powerful resource and community for people so they know they aren’t alone. It’s an amazing thing.
Joni–> I hope the same for you Joni. I really do. I wish it for everyone who wants to be in a relationship whether GBLTQ or straight. I consider myself so very fortunate and thank God every day for what was given me in D and our relationship. It’s a humbling awesome thing.
Susie–> Oh boy, do I feel good about myself…making a couple lesbians cry!
July 16th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
You made a straight girl cry, too! This is such a very touching post. And while loving someone well and thoroughly may not leave it’s mark on the world in the way that the pyramids of Giza or the Great Wall of China does and will, it leaves an eternal mark on the spirit. Angels sing songs of love, God’s spirit moves in love. You are moving mountains, Anita, even if it doesn’t LOOK like it.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
That was a beautiful essay! I have to say that you do write very well, very well indeed! You do have a gift.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Lindsey–> I made a straight girl cry?! Then my work here is done! And thank you for all you said and more of the same right back to you!
Lori –> Thank you and may I just say, and I will, you have two ridiculously adorable children!
July 18th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
awww. This was beautiful and exactly how a relationship should be. It is what any couple should accomplish, but so often seem not too. Great job~
Oh, and yes, I am stalking and hijacking your blog too, lol
July 18th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Arlywn–>Oh no. I knew I should have hung camouflage tarp. I’m so busted.
July 19th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Smiling.
That’s wonderful.
July 20th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Awww!
You lie, though: You DO write it well!
July 25th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Ok so it took me a few days before I could respond to this wonderfully romantic and tender testament of love.
Like the others, I do believe you to be a great writer but I also am very impressed with your photography. I snagged a few of your pics for my desktop wallpaper.
I wish that you could give my partner a few tips on being romantic. LOL she claims to be too “practical” for romance. Ahhh but I love her and she loves me well. She is my gift from God.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:22 am
DragonLady –> Thank you so much for the compliment on the photography. I love taking photographs because it makes me slow down and appreciate things around me I’d normally miss. I suppose I do fall heavily on the side of being a romantic but we find our ways to express love and whether it comes in the form of a surprise dinner by candlelight or just coming home to find your jeans have been washed and folded, it’s all good. A gift from God is a gift from God so just keep on cherishing each other in the way that fits you both best.
August 9th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Anita, you’ve made yet another straight girl cry.
And you are a most eloquent and gifted writer, though your modesty about it is a good, good thing.
August 10th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
e2tc–> ::::Blush::::: Seriously though, thank you for the encouragement. Writing doesn’t come easy for me unless I’m writing about something I’m passionate about and it just so happens that covers just about everything about God and about my beloved. Easy topics.