A girl gets up at three A.M....

It was three in the morning last Friday when I got up to go to the bathroom - but didn't get much farther than, "Ow! Ow ow ow ow ow..."

Somehow, I had moved in such a way that sent a sharp pain splitting down the right side of my neck. And it wouldn't quit. "Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch..." I hobbled to the bathroom - yes, it felt like hobbling, even though my legs were fine. My ability to move at all suddenly felt incredibly limited.

"You tweaked your neck," Sean said in his matter-of-fact manner as I stiffened my whole body to lie gingerly back in the bed. "I've done that before. You'll be fine."

"I will?"

"Yep."

"But when?"

"A few days."

"A few DAYS?"

"You'll be fine."

(Marry a calm person, y'all. It's a gift.)

As he drifted back to sleep, I lay awake, experimenting to see which angles of movement hurt (lots) and how far I could turn or nod my head (not much). How had this happened so quickly, by doing something so normal? This pain was going to change my whole day, I just knew it. Good thing we were off work anyway. I'd need to call in to see the chiropractor, and I wouldn't be able to drive myself over because checking my right blind spot was suddenly not a thing I could do. My self-exasperation rose. If I had waited a few minutes to get up, or gotten up earlier in the night, would I have gotten up in a different way, preventing the tweak? Couldn't I rewind just thirty minutes and be a bit more intentional about my movement? But of course, how would I have known to be?

As I made breakfast and very carefully puttered around the kitchen, I grew increasingly aware of how restricted my mobility had become. I had to turn my whole body to the right, rather than simply twisting in that direction. Any sudden movement - even one that didn't seem like it would involve my neck - spurred a deep twinge. "Ouch!" I could feel myself start to tighten up in other places, sending messages to other body parts: Don't swing your arms too much! Don't reach up too high! Don't bend down too low! 

I was shocked by the pain from my body, thankfully something I haven't had to deal with much. But I realize that my brain actually has a history of doing this. It's called anxiety. 

I've never been officially diagnosed with anxiety, and I know that many others experience it even more deeply than I do. But I know it's there. Out of nowhere, something shifts (tweak!) - a breaking news headline, the phone goes straight to voicemail, a door creaks, the siren speeds down the road behind our house... And I go tense. Maybe my body moves normally, but my brain is suddenly stiff and my gut fills with rocks, because all I can concentrate on is what's wrong something's wrong what if that something wrong is about to come slamming into my life... Nothing else will do. Nothing else to do. I have to concentrate on the potentially terrible, because if I don't... well, I don't know what, but it can't be good...

At least that's what I thought for a long time. Or maybe I didn't really think - I just did, I just felt, I just rolled with the unending cycle of what ifs that would suddenly pummel my mind. I stiffened at even the thought of pain or change. And sometimes I still do. But I've learned that there are ways to slowly climb out of the cycle. Which brings us back to that head-twistingly painful last Friday...

Ask for help. At 6:35 a.m. I left a sleepy, desperate voicemail at my chiropractor Pat's office. "I know I haven't been to see you in over a year, but..." In terms of my body vs. my mind, help with physical pain can sometimes be easier to ask for than help with mental struggles, but even if that help is a call to my mom, or a text to a friend, or talking to Sean, then that's a start.

"Don't move so rigidly," Pat told me as I sat in her office a few hours later. "Stiff movement to prevent pain is only tightening everything else. Move normally." If that isn't a message to my busy brain, I don't know what is.

Find externals to support the internal. Pulled neck muscle? Ice and Advil, stat. Anxiety mode? Meditation. Movie. Journaling. Texting to ask for a prayer. Going for a walk. I haven't needed medication at this point, but everyone's different, and I know it helps a lot of people.

Stretch into the discomfort. This one is tough for me sometimes. I took the list of neck exercises that Pat gave me on the way out of her office - the same sheet of paper she's been giving me for nearly twenty years of tight neck muscles. I've never gotten into a rhythm of doing them. Why? They're not hard and they probably take fifteen minutes, tops. Maybe I'm stubborn - and/or maybe I've been in a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. My neck is always going to be tense. I'm always going to be anxious. Not necessarily true - if I use the tools I've been given. So far, I've done the neck exercises twice this week.

Locate the source of the tension - that seems important in body and soul matters, too. I found the muscle causing the majority of the tension and tried to loosen it best I could - and it started to help. There was some sense of comfort in just knowing which muscle it was. I just started a new Headspace "pack" (what they call 30-day meditation sessions on different subjects) on anxiety, where they talk about "noting" - paying attention to whether anxiety is caused by thinking or feeling. Simply noting which one, not dwelling on it. 

Patience. My favorite! (Or not.) Patience with my body, patience with my mind. "It'll go away," Sean keeps saying, and he's right. It's already mostly gone. But there's still a remnant of pain - just like there's often a remnant of anxiety hovering near me. I'm pretty much used to it. And with these lessons and tools, and people to support me, I'm learning that what comes on so suddenly, be it a muscle tweak or a moment of unfounded fear, should be noted but not dwelt upon. Not a day ruin-er. I'm slowly learning to loosen up and to pull gratitude even closer, so that it blocks anxiety's view, and reminds me that I'm lucky to have the ability to move and stretch at all.

Forever and ever, hallelujah, hallelujah.

There are some timeless moments in the Christian year, and Easter is one of them. At our church, certain moments have become tradition - the bustling pre-service work of lacing homegrown flowers through the rough lattice of the wooden cross, the joyful sting that hits my eyes when we sing the first line of "Christ the Lord is risen today," standing up to declare "He is risen indeed!" after the children prompt us. But my absolute favorite may be the singing of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus."

I don't remember the first time I went up to the front to sing with what felt like the entire congregation (how can so many be left out in the pews, I always think, when so many of us are up here?!). I was probably a giddy preteen who didn't know alto from soprano. Once I sang it in college, I figured out the alto harmony, so now I always head to the very back, near the flowers and the timpani, and Amy almost always finds me, and there's Ellie and Dawn and Cheryl and Katie when she's in town and we keep backing up as more people stream towards us, all crushed together.

Photo from the Glenn UMC Facebook page.

Everyone is crushed together, actually, and I love how everyone clearly loves it. It's not this staid and perfect performance - how could it be? This is God's kingdom pure and simple, reveling in community. The rustling of sheet music, the bursts of laughter, the waves of recognition between old friends... it never changes, even though in the 52 weeks since we last sang together, so much has changed. For us individually, collectively, for the world. And yet, when Timothy launches into the familiar intro on the organ, it's as if no time has passed.

I learned several years ago now - maybe when I went away for college and would return for Easter Sunday - to not simply stare at Steve, our director, every second of the nearly five minute piece. (Don't tell Steve!) Instead my eyes start to wander, even as my voice keeps on (mostly on the correct notes). I even turn my head back and forth. I want to see everyone around me. What dear face will I glimpse next? Too many to count, new and old.

Yesterday I loved looking to my left and seeing my brother, along with several others our age, John and George and more - we grew up together, I've known them since birth, and now they are men. And in front of them, I loved seeing the current youth boys, Henry, Nate, Sam, Ian, carrying on the tradition, and then some even younger, the Washburn boys and more. It's the same on the women's side, the blending of generations, Kate and Mom and Carol and Ginny Blair and the sense that somehow, we are all intertwined. Would my Glenn experience have been the same without Amy before me, would Ellie's have been the same without me before her?

It's not even that one person has a direct impact on the other - though of course that is often part of it - but that simply by being present, by showing up, by creating a community that we want to be part of, good things happen, and continue to happen.

Positive reinforcement. Lifted voices. Courage in returning to the same-yet-different timeless moments of faith year after year, no matter what is happening in our lives or the world outside this magnificent sanctuary. The moment captures all of this and more, the cross draped in petals, the congregation standing and soaking in the sound, the trumpets and timpani and organ blending with hundreds of human voices that, together, create something worth saving and renewing, forever and ever, forever and ever, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

Hallelujah!

The Good Friday Five

Yet another Friday Five post on Saturday. That's how it goes sometimes, apparently.

It feels like it's been a long week, which is appropriate for Holy Week, I suppose. Here are some of the moments, people, and random joys of life that have been saving me this week.

1. My grandmother's birthday party. The majority of my immediate extended family got together for BBQ on Tuesday to celebrate our matriarch. We hadn't been all together since Thanksgiving, so it was great to spend time together. As I've grown up, I've realized how different we all are, and yet we are dedicated to each other. That means something.

2. Rachel Held Evans' piece about Holy Week for doubters. I've always loved Rachel's writing, her whole demeanor online and in person, and how she isn't afraid to write and speak about things that aren't always easy to bring up. This post is one of those. "What if we made this up because we're afraid of death?" I so appreciate her acknowledgment that sometimes just showing up is the best and bravest thing we can do, in our faith and otherwise.

3. Flashback to the '80s and '90s. This week I've watched Top Gun and The Sandlot for the first time, and started The West Wing. It's been fun to finally get so many cultural references that I missed at the time (no, I have no excuse for not seeing them before this, yes, you have permission to shake your head and roll your eyes, maybe even screech "WHAT?!")

4. Pope Francis washed the feet of Muslim migrants. I can't really find much to say about this except to ask you to please read the article. I give heaps of thanks for this pope and his meaningful contributions to the transformation of the world. As I wrote on Facebook: So true, so moving, so needed. Especially this week. We all belong to the same God.

5. Our Good Friday service last night. I always find it interesting that we celebrate the joy of Christmas in the stark darkness of winter, and the sorrow of Lent and Good Friday just as spring and sun are beginning to stick around. It's a contrast that works; at Christmas, I feel like the warmth stems from the internal, the people gathered, the candles lit, life pulsing despite the frosty, sleeping earth. And now, I love the feel of the darkened sanctuary, while light streams in and birds sing outside the windows. Even as the interior dims and the Christ candle is carried out of the church, our congregation strewn throughout the pews is buoyed by the renewal of life beyond, indeed cannot escape it. 

And you, friends - what's been saving your life this week, holy or otherwise?