Under Control

 It seems as though so much of emotional health is related to control. Trying to control unwise impulses; deciding whether to let other people's words and actions live rent-free in my head; controlling my breathing, my heart rate, my blood pressure. "Let It Go" was a huge pop-music hit not only because the Disney movie Frozen was so popular but also because people of all ages could relate to the tempting advice.

The pandemic has ramped up the issue of control for many of us. We cannot control, for example, other people's mask-wearing and distancing practices. We cannot control business owners' decisions about policies in their stores. 

And for many of us, it seems, the pandemic made it challenging to control our weight. A British Weight Watchers study reported that nearly half the nation put on some pounds in the early months of the virus, when many people were stuck at home. A U.S. study from July showed the same results. [1] And for front-line workers who were not able to stay home, workplace stress, combined with gestures of appreciation that tended to take the form of doughnuts, pizza, and cookies - meant an increase of close to 15 pounds. There's no study to cite for that one, just first-hand experience.

I've battled my weight all my life. Even pictures of me from age 4 or 5 show a sturdy child. Once puberty hit, I had a grown woman's build by age 14. I admire my great-grandfather, a blacksmith from rural Maryland, but I could do without his barrel rib cage and stocky build. I've lost weight and gained it back more times than I care to remember.

The last couple of years, I've found myself in a healthy place with weight control. That is, I had until COVID came calling. The gym closed - and that's not all. Because I work in a senior-living facility, staff stress levels were through the roof. We struggled to provide best care and abundant living for the residents even when their loved ones couldn't visit and the residents had to wear masks and eat their meals in their rooms. 

The numbers on the scale climbed. And I wasn't alone. Co-workers reported similar gains. 

Thankfully, I pulled the brake on what I knew to be unhealthy habits. I began working out at home and returned to making choices that made my body happier with what I was eating. And I'm back to where I want to be. Curiously, this shift hasn't felt like being controlled; it's felt like taking control.

At a time when it feels that so much in life is beyond my control, it feels good to be in control of something. And, really, it's been a reminder that so much of emotional health has to do with similar choices. I don't have to be in charge of the world. I don't need to vent about choices that other people make. And that's healthier too.

[1] https://www.weightwatchers.com/uk/covid-19-lockdown-weight-gain; https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/coronavirus-weight-gain-76-americans-nutrisystem

Presupposition, Muscle Memory, and Chicken Salad

 The other day, as we ate lunch, a co-worker (S.) and I talked about carrying emotional burdens, and about venting. She had attended Catholic school for eight grades and had been educated by priests and nuns (she wasn't sure, but they were most likely from the Religious of the Sacred Heart, a teaching order). 

Because we work on a senior-living campus, walking with the residents and their families as we do, the residents march right in and set up their tents in our hearts. And we know that death comes for each of them in turn. Accepting and processing that is part of the job. But that morning one of the residents had died, and for a range of reasons it hit everyone hard. We were hurting.

In that context, I allowed as how a couple of times, hearing me venting a little to another staff member, S. typically said something gently reproachful about seeing the best in people. Together, we explored the emotional weight that we gladly assume - that we consider a privilege - as part of our jobs. 

One of the ways that I vent, like a pressure cooker, is to be able to put into words the occasional frustration I feel because we all are trying to provide our residents with their most abundant life possible under the circumstances.Words allow me to articulate, to corral, the free-form feelings when they bubble up and need to be released. Once I've vented, I'm over it. 

S., having been educated at a Catholic school, had been shown the ideal of the Ignatian presupposition. Ironically, I had brought this ideal up in a sermon I had preached just a couple of weeks ago. What happens, I had asked (rhetorically), when you, when I, ascribe the best possible intentions to another person's words, actions, motives?

I was mulling over this conversation this morning when M., the hubs, said that it was time to make chicken salad. We use the shortcut of canned, rinsed chicken. While he parceled out the chicken water from the cans to the small animals of the house, I assembled the other ingredients.

Ten years ago, I had been approved for ordination yet had not yet received a call. It was 2010, and the stock-market dive from a couple of years ago plus the reverberations of a social statement in my denomination meant that pastors who had considered retiring - were deciding to wait a bit, while any pastor who was in a pulpit - was likely hanging on to it. In short, there were hardly any openings. 

So for a year, I did other work. The first job I landed was in a supermarket deli, in large measure because when the application asked what hours I was willing to work, I chose 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., and apparently not everyone was willing to take the day shift. I worked there for three months before leaving for a seasonal temp job doing layout and editing of invitations for a company whose main business was wedding-related. That job paid more and could be done at a desk. 

As I say, it's been ten years since I worked in the deli, and I was there only a few months. But my hands, my muscle memory, still knows how to make the deli's locally popular chicken salad. In my own kitchen, I still prep fruits, vegetables, and meat the way I learned to behind that counter. And so this morning, when it was chicken salad time, I shooed the hubs out of the way and quickly mixed up the deli chicken salad. And it was good. (At least he said it was when I had him taste a forkful.)

So what does it mean that, while my hands and a scrap of memory retain the knowledge of that deli chicken salad, it took a conversation with a co-worker to remind me of a precept on which I had just preached? Maybe, I hope, it means that in the future, when I vent, I will be sure to consider the best possible motivations for other people's actions. Maybe it will even mean that I might consider the complicated motivations for my own actions and words, and grant myself a little grace.

The Screamers

 Years ago, in a memoir by a political aide, I read of the candidate at a town-hall event. One of the people in attendance was shouting and crying, trying to tell her story. "Most candidates avoid screamers," the aide said succinctly, before adding that his candidate instead made straight for the woman, squatted by her chair, and listened to her to find out what she was upset about.

It is rare, in the senior residential facility where I work, for someone to be "a screamer." Sometimes people whose minds have them in a different, imagined situation will call out. Sometimes people will say, "Help me," over and over, fearing that they will be forgotten or ignored.

But yesterday, as I headed down the hall to lead the second worship service in the building, I heard the screaming. It was hard to miss. One of the residents was in real distress. I was supposed to begin leading worship. Instead, I waved to the assembled residents, said, "If you don't mind waiting a few minutes, I'll be right back," and headed toward the room, where I joined a couple of certified nursing assistants.

I knelt by the bed and began quietly singing hymns, a technique that usually works. It didn't help much.

After she sat up, and we sat with her, she calmed down and began telling us what was wrong. In her mind, she was not in her room but back many years earlier, and she was learning of a ghastly betrayal of trust. 

After fifteen minutes, I slipped out to begin the worship service, while the CNAs stayed with the resident. Those waiting to worship had all stayed, in spite of the delay, and all had the decency not to ask what had kept me or what was wrong.

Later, when we had a quiet moment, I talked with one of the CNAs about the servant's heart that she had, how clearly she loved her work. "Most people run the other direction," I said. "But your instinct was to go to her room because you wanted to help."

There were, for a brief time, four of us in the room with this resident, and I believe our only concern was that we did not want her in distress. We wanted to listen to her reality, assure her of our support, and comfort her as best we could. 

When I saw the resident later that afternoon, she was sitting on a chair in the common area, sipping juice and chatting with a neighbor, cheerful as ever.

All that evening, especially on the drive home, I kept thinking about what a privilege it is that I have been called to do what I do. I get to move in the direction of the people in distress. "Most people avoid screamers," the memoirist wrote. But my heart leads me toward them - not out of ghoulish curiosity but because if someone is in distress, I want to help.

It seems to me that God puts in each of us strong magnetic poles, sort of, so that we are pulled toward various situations and people. This is God tugging us along by our gifts, inviting us to live in God's world in a way that we reflect God as we live.

What are you drawn to? Could your predilection be a hint that you have a gift to share with the world?