This week’s installment of SMC returns to a narrative thread that was partially unspooled last week. At the one year anniversary of my daughter’s wedding, her mom and I spent the evening watching Annalise and Matt’s wedding video. As predicted, for an hour and fifteen minutes, Lisa and I were as gooey as ice cream cones at the Illinois State Fair in August. But then there was the part that surprised me. Here’s what I said last week.
“During that viewing, two huge questions were authoritatively answered once and for all. The first one was asked of me, the second by me; the first one, thirty-one years ago, the second, seven years ago.”
Last week’s installment told the story of the second, younger question asked by me. This week’s article explores the life-changing question asked of me.
On To the Thirty-One Year-Old Question.
In his famous work, Letters to a Young Poet, Ranier Maria Rilke encouraged his protégé to understand that important questions must be lived into more than answered. Even before I had asked Lisa to marry me, she served up an earthquake of a question whose aftershocks have reverberated through the whole of my adult life.
We were camping together on a warm summer’s night. I remember aimlessly tracking the seams of our tent while breezily turning over the events of a leisurely summer’s day with this woman whom I was sure was the one! Without warning, a seismic event shook our evening. “Tom,” Lisa matter-of-factly inquired, “given the abuse you suffered as a kid, and the way your family fell apart, what makes you think you could be a good husband, or a good dad?” She must have noticed, like I did, that all the insects and bullfrogs immediately fell silent! Nocturnal mammals froze in their tracks! Just like Lisa, they awaited an answer to the most consequential test I hadever taken. I’m not sure how long before my diaphragm recovered enough to allow breath back into my lungs? A five hundred pound silence somehow simultaneously sat on my chest, and hung in the air of our tent as I searched the empty shelves and file folders of my inner library. Eventually, I dragged a dry tongue across parched lips. I prayed for something…anything to percolate up from somewhere…anywhere! Here’s what came.
“I’m not sure I will be any good? I’ve never done those things before. I can tell you that I’ve completed at least two rounds of in-depth psychotherapy, years of spiritual direction, more retreats than I can count, and lots and lots of self-reflection with about a dozen hand-written journals to prove it. All of this to try and heal the wounds inside me. But if you’re asking for an insurance policy, like I said, I’ve never done those things before.”
That reply must have suited her. She kept going out with me… “and the rest,” as they say… “is some pretty kick-ass history.”
Heeding Rilke’s advice, I spent the subsequent thirty years, one-intentional-day-at-a-time, living into that Mid-summer’s Night’sScrutiny. Which brings me to the wedding video. If a look from Matt answered one question, it was something in Annalise’s face and demeanor on the same video that addressed the other one.
The film authoritatively recorded an unmistakable poise and presence in my daughter, as well as her two siblings. Despite all the pressure that goes into a day like that, Annalise bore an unpretentious, yet elegant authenticity, even in the spotlight. She would dab her eyes, and meet a tearful, loving gaze with her own unselfconscious tears and love. With eyes closed, she would enter into prayerful meditation based upon an apparently self-evident presumption that the collective gaze of grade school, high school, college, and law school peers and parents enfolded her more than scrutinized her. With hand over heart, she would express gratitude to a singer, a reader, a loving pair of eyes. I observed in her, a power and a presence that doesn’t just show up out of nowhere. It was as if the videographer was providing, in tangible form, the fruit and flower of a lifetime living into Lisa’s question.
That younger version of me who stewed in a humid tent over thirty years ago, desperately wanted to believe that he wasn’t too broken to co-create, and co-nurture a healthy family. As satisfying as it was to take cuts of that video back in time to show him how cool his future would be, I know that while I’m still drawing breath, it’s essential that I keep some form of Lisa’s question before me.
A Reflection
Not every question is powerful enough to be “lived into.” A truly existential question is pregnant with many other questions—like a firework that goes up as a single sparkling orb, and then explodes out into many tendrils of colorful light. For example, Lisa’s bracing query naturally contained within it the subject, “What does it mean to be a good father and a good husband?” In other words, “Practically speaking, how does a guy going about doing that?” Over time, life events would transform that question into, “What does it mean to be a good father of an infant…not just any infant…but this infant with unique patterns of interacting, sleeping, eating, pooping, and maybe suffering GERD or asthma?” and “What does it mean to be a good husband of an infant’s mother?” (BTW: Not as easy as you might think!). Each iteration of that question across the family life cycle has yielded unique answers. Each answer has yielded other questions.
Rilke’s quote presaged marriage and family therapy (MFT) research findings that would show up about a hundred years later. Anyone willing to do the hard work of courageously living into questions, wherever they my lead, must regularly exercise strong flexibility muscles. According to Rilke, a powerful question is at the heart of any meaningful life. To live such a life requires a firm commitment to the practice of flexibility—most especially when the questions become difficult. MFT studies, place flexibility at the heart of all highly functioning marriages and families.
Dialogue
• In your life, what is a question that you have been living into?
• Who asks you really good questions on a regular basis?
• What do you do to keep your flexibility muscles limber?
• Can you think of a time when a disruption surfaced an existential question for you (EG. A job or career change, the deterioration of a treasured relationship, a challenge in your child’s life, a failure, etc…)? Tell or re-tell a trusted friend that story, and see if there is more to learn in the telling or listening.
• What do you do to stay open when a bracing question causes anxiety like the one Lisa asked of me? Think of a time when you were able to soothe your heart down and productively do something with a stout question. Think of a time when you weren’t able to do that—what did you learn from that difficult experience that has helped you?