On the Floor with a Lazy Susan

I have a confession to make. I am NOT a cook…not really even a good one. The problem is that I don't LIKE to cook. I attempted cooking when I was married. I felt the fluttering of domesticity rise to the surface of my being, and I made meals for my famished husband. Women constantly told me that I "would learn to love it" and that is just not so. I get worried and anxious if I have to "throw something together" at the last minute or if I have to decide on a menu plan for the week that doesn't involve something frozen. When the movie "Julie and Julia" arrived in theaters, many of my girlfriends felt guilty for not being able to master Julia Child's French cookbook…all I felt was hungry for someone to GIVE me some of that delicious French cooking! I figure that I don't HAVE to like cooking, so, therefore, I don't have to cook. I am still woman, hear my tummy roar.

This being said, with all of my grumblings and complaints, I do know a little something about certain cooking utensils, especially the "lazy susan". It is that round, rotating circle that is piled high with various treats. With just a touch of my hand, I can access the food on any part of this circle, at the dinner table, instantaneously. It is food with immediate and satisfying gratification. This is my kind of cookware!

However, I recently read a quote about this instrument, within the context of grief, and it made me re-think my view of this smorgasbord of delicious delight. Anne Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies, stated that, "grief is like a lazy susan." How is grief like a lazy susan? Well, a lazy susan has motion, it rotates, it spins, it stops, and, no matter where you start, you always land back to where you started. There is no real beginning and no real ending to the lazy susan. I realize that I have been grieving like a lazy susan, especially over these past ten months. Within this time period, I have lost my marriage, however dysfunctional it may have been, my ministry vocation, my home, and most of my belongings. Choosing health meant losing stability in my safe and comfortable world.

I have noticed that I try to "get over it" and "move on" from this hurt as quickly as I can. However, I find myself, at times, right back to where I was in the beginning: naked and wracked with debilitating grief, struggling to get myself out of bed and dressed for the day. I have been running from grief and sadness like a person frantically running out of a burning building. The fire threatens to consume me, turning my entire being into smoke and ash. But, once outside the building, I find that I have already been singed and that the fire is on me. I have carried it with me into the wide open space. I have to deal with it; I am just afraid to sit in the ashes of despair.

Shelia Walsh, a Christian writer, speaker, and musician, went through an extreme period of depression and anxiety that threatened both her physical and emotional health. In one of her writings, chronicling this harrowing experience, all she could do was lie on the floor. On the floor, though, was where she found Jesus. She said of Him, 'I never knew you lived so close to the floor.' She wasn't alone as I am not alone.

No matter where the" lazy susan" of my grief ends up as I spin around in circles, Jesus is always there, with my grief. Jesus lives on that lazy susan and is waiting for me to stop running from grief, to invite it in, dine with it, and let it go, gradually, little by little, piece by piece. I resonate with Anne Lamott's observation that, "I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark." {Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith}. So, this is where I sit, on the floor, with a lazy susan, in the dark, hoping and praying that the burden of grief will lessen the more that I encounter it and that Jesus will meet me there, close to the floor, with my lazy susan. I may not master the art of French cooking, but I am mastering the art of grief..take that, Julia Child!