The Ecclesiastes Woman

Proverbs lays it out well for us gals, the gold standard description for what a good woman should be. That woman is worth more than diamonds. She knits. She’s organized. She has gumption. She’s creative. She’s insanely intelligent, yet kind. She elevates her husband. She nurtures her children. She creates wealth. She is beautiful, not because of how she looks, but because of how she has aligned her heart to God. I love everything about this woman. I do find the pedestal she stands on to be surrounded by very steep steps. While the things we aspire to are meant to be difficult in terms of acquisition, my frustration, nonetheless, still mounts. Did this Proverbs woman ever lose a child, I wonder? Did she fight Stage 3 cancer? Ever lose a breast? Ever have a car repossessed? Suffer a home foreclosure? Feel like the days were dark and the nights too long? Of course, she did, I reason with myself. She did all of this in biblical days, bereft of things like electricity, modern medicine, and Walmart. Still, I believe that the best way to get from the basement to the roof is to journey in increments. First, I gotta climb up to the kitchen level. Then, once I’ve acclimated, I can shoot for the second-floor bedroom. Finally, I can find the roof. So, on the way to the Proverbs woman, might I introduce you to a really sweet lady I met in Ecclesiastes?

You’ll be reading this column as we prepare to bid 2023 a fond farewell. I don’t do resolutions. I pretty much stopped making my yearly vision board. The goal section of my planner is blank. But, those are crucial, especially when you have your sights set on the rooftop. There is a “things to say to people about the new year” list rattling around in my head. It is empty. I am struggling, or was struggling, until last night. I had a dream about my late daughter. That never happens. It sort of didn’t happen last night, either. The dream was about her, but she never made an appearance. I have all but forgotten her voice. They say that is the first thing you lose about someone when they die. I can conjure up a few words here and there, given enough time and enough tears. My daughter was in some sort of hospital setting. In the dream, she never died. She’d been there all along, but I hadn’t been allowed to visit her, to see her, to hold her – for over 15 years. We’d been called in to speak with those you speak to in times of bad news. What were they about to tell us? I woke up shortly after this melancholy scene, not knowing the way the movie ends. Did I see my daughter? Was I seconds away from hearing her voice? Why did I let them stop me from seeing her? Why was my brain being so cruel? I soon found myself snuggled on the couch with 4 cats and a cup of Peppermint Mocha coffee. This word kept rotating through my head: STOP. Stop waiting for permission to do the things you know you were meant to do. Stop waiting for encouragement. Stop waiting for validation. Stop waiting for things to be easy. Stop waiting for things to make sense. FULL. STOP.

I have a massive DIY chalkboard that hangs in my kitchen. A self-taught chalk artist, one of my greatest joys is changing out the designs to fit the season. For most of this year, however, I left the board alone. I felt the design I chose for the spring, a freehand rendering of Jesus holding a lamb, was something I needed daily. Next to Jesus, I lettered the passage from Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8. You know the one. The Byrds had a huge hit in 1965 with their song, Turn Turn Turn, based on these verses. And, if you’re an 80s kid like me, it was famously recited by Kevin Bacon in Footloose as he attempts to sway the town council to let them have a prom in a city that outlawed dancing. I don’t have enough word allowance to give you the entire passage, so I will paraphrase. There is a time for everything. There is a time for life and for death and for laughing and crying and keeping and tossing and love and war…and dancing. Things are beautiful and things are ugly. What I take from the passage is this: don’t fear the bad times. They provide the contrast for the good times to be even better. We could not appreciate that fluorescent salmon pink color in the sunset every day if we didn’t also appreciate the jet black of the midnight hour. So, how does this tie into 2024? I’m so glad you asked! In 2024, let’s come out of our shell. The world is an awful place right now, both here and abroad. Things are unjust. Things are expensive. Things don’t make a lot of sense. Now is the time to be that difference you want to see in the world. God is waiting in the balance, perhaps. I’m no religious scholar, but they did put me on the religion page of the paper. I imagine God thinking, “What will they do? Will they follow the rules of the world? Will they do what everyone else does, or will they STOP and come to me? Will they make an attempt to leave the basement for the roof?” So, here are a few things I plan on doing next year, even if I feel inadequate and squeamish in the process. I want to paint my bedroom black. I want to produce more art. I want to make more cookies. I want to tell more people the story of my daughter, even if it makes me sob until I cannot be understood. I want to tell the world about fighting Alzheimer’s Disease with my mom, even if they get uncomfortable. I want more folks to know about my father’s stories, even if they’re old fashioned in today’s fast world. I want to eat carbs sometimes. I want to write. I want to dance. That Proverbs woman is irrefutably divine, up there on the roof. But, next year, I’m crawling out of my basement to meet the Ecclesiastes woman. I hear she has time for everything. Happy New Year.