Author: Jason Zerbey

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A Restorative Day

We had a rocky start to the day, not making it to Sunday service, but we all found what we needed throughout the rest of the day.

My sons played with neighborhood friends as I dove back into Lego sorting and listening to Dr. Jordan Peterson lectures on Jung and Freud.After practicing their lines for an upcoming play and having an on-the-fly lunch, they made a new friend as I battled through one of the toughest soccer matches of my summer. We rushed home to let me get cleaned up and pack snacks for our evening adventure.

The Members Only event at Longwood Gardens proved to be busier than expected, but we met with friends, snuck up front, and enjoyed tight bluegrass interpretations of 80s pop hits from Love Canon.

All of this came on the heels of a difficult few weeks, a funk that was running longer than I felt comfortable with. Action always seems to be the answer for us, the edge of the familiar and the unknown.

I look forward to better sleep tonight and a renewed confidence that I am capable of providing all that I am called to for my sons.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Meetings

C.S. Lewis wrote about being “met” by his late wife. Not in a ghostly way, but those serendipitous moments when answers appear that only could have come from her.

I’ve become more open to these meetings, but I call it listening and I’ve stopped worrying about whether it’s God, a heavenly Mary, the Mary that’s left in my mind, or a mix of all or none.

This week, with low spirit and weak energy, I let my children roam the neighborhood at greater intervals. There were some mothers with names remarkably close to “Mary” who showed radical hospitality to my sons. My first reaction, and a lingering one, was shame in not doing the job I was called to do. But I think that the boys have found little meetings on their own. And I believe I got some answers to my loneliness and fear of not being able to provide a rich life for my sons.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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The Self Destruct Button

The exponential growth of awareness of my own ignorance in relationship to my meager learning, that’s what I’m up against. Not in a broad manner, I’ve come to love this fact of learning, but in the personal realm.

I’ve been exposed to this idea that we’re each a node in a network of humans with an interconnectivity that has reach beyond what we can conceptualize. The Self doesn’t exist outside of this ever transitioning network. Even the Self seems to exist within it’s own network within our minds. Ego, Super Ego, and Id are a simplification of the uncountable concepts of Self that we absorb, create, and receive.

How much Will do I have? What’s in my control? What do I KNOW?

Scary and empowering knowledge, to be sure.

I’ve learned one thing about my Self that is, at least for the moment, definitively true. I know exactly how to self destruct. Through exploring powerlessness in Alcoholics Anonymous, counseling, prayer, and reading, I’ve found my power over alcohol. It’s a black magic, one that would be easier to deny and hide from. I didn’t want to admit that I had this power to destroy myself and drag down a whole network of humans with me. So many messages tell me to claim powerlessness, but that’s not how power works. It will manifest, whether through intention or in spite of inaction.

How do I employ black magic for good? I don’t know. Maybe by sharing this knowledge that the self destruct button within us need not be denied I can help someone else.

Take a look at your self destruct button. Get to know it and recognize the awful power that each of us possess.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Lego Sorting Zen and Tips: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Look at all that little stuff!

Whenever I’m sorting I start out with what is visually most accessible. That just means I grab the largest, most plentiful pieces first.

That can leave an intimidating pile of tiny elements at the bottom of your sort bucket. The first thing I do is fill the bucket again with unsorted Lego and start over. If you do this a couple times, sorting the mass of littles at the bottom gets easier.

Then, when you’ve got a good pile of smaller pieces, you can use a similar technique to sort. For this assortment, I picked out “dots,” as we call them, or single-stud round plates. Depending on how you’ve decided to break them out, you can choose two colors and use both hands to pluck them from the pile. We haven’t yet broken out all the colors, so I use palettes like earth tones, translucent, reds, and other.

I hope this helps.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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A Marriage Complete

There is a criticism of marriage that essentially states that the only marriage deemed successful by our society is one that ends with the death of one or both partners. Longevity trumps health in our most valued relationships.

I have the questionable honor of having had a successful marriage.

Beyond having made it to the natural dissolution of our union, I believe that Mary and I achieved all we were meant to together on this Earth. We set out with few goals and accomplished all of them, and much more, in almost 11 years of marriage.

We wanted two children and to have a stay-at-home parent. That goal expanded into a home education lifestyle and a focus on family wellbeing that we had not imagined. It created a framework for us to survive and thrive through a difficult loss.

We had rules to keep decisions, disagreements, and conflicts between the two of us, to always turn to those rifts and work to heal them. Through those rules we built an indomitable team. We counted on each other’s checks to improve ourselves and our marriage. I hold this model close to my heart and apply the direct mastering of conflict as often as I am able.

There must be things left undone or unsaid, correct? A widow friend of mine commented that we seem drawn to those ideas that were sown but never harvested. Maybe our dreams weren’t grand enough, but I can’t think of a thing we wanted to do, yet did not “get around to.” A live recording of a Nine Inch Nails song came on yesterday and ambushed me with happy and sad tears. We saw them in a technologically and theatrically stunning show in Chicago. I thought about all the concerts, the theater, the modest traveling. I cannot think of any significant opportunity for ourselves as a couple or as a family that we passed on for another time. There was something in us that knew we only had so long together.

When we had no reason to believe it was our last few months together we got baptized as a family and shared special hikes and personal moments alone.

The end was the end. It was Mary’s story completed and the chapter of our marriage closed.

We had no aspirations beyond marriage. I’m still trying to find my purpose, my story.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Finding Order

This is my mess, my chaos. Well, it’s the mess and chaos immediately before me. We haven’t sorted our Lego collection since Mary passed and I’ve had the expedient habit of buying bricks when I didn’t know what else to do.

I’m going to spend some time every day getting this in order. My sons create amazing buildings, vehicles, cities, and, most importantly, stories when they can easily access the materials they need.

Also important is to bring order to our material life. I don’t regret focusing on our spiritual, emotional, and educational lives, but it’s difficult to focus on those things when there is physical chaos about.

Wish me luck.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Alone and Stuck

It’s the talking that I miss most. Mary and I could sit around a fire and talk all night. We were by a dying fire when I asked her to be my girlfriend. We spent hours around our fire pan figuring out homeschooling, then unschooling. We worked on our marriage. We could solve any problem together, as long as we were honest and open.

Therapists, group meetings, friends, family, strangers, a lover…I’ve talked and talked and talked. For all the connections I’ve made, it feels like just as many have dissolved. My world, my network, is continually, and rapidly, changing. I don’t know what to make of it. I counted on Mary’s easy wisdom at the end of the day. We worked to support each other, to create this family and life that was a realization of our dreams.

I don’t know if it’s half a dream now, or if any of those hopes exist.

I do know I have to do this for myself and, increasingly, I realize I have to do it by myself. I’ve read the books and done self work, I know these dark periods are necessary, that the caterpillar must turn to goo before becoming a butterfly. But I fear the cycle is becoming a feedback loop. I’m stuck on the same questions I have been for months.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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The Labyrinth at Union of Body, Mind & Soul

I’m not one for holidays and vacations. I believe in building a life that is enriching every day, one that doesn’t need an escape, but has moments of escape each day.

So as the park in Milton, Delaware, filled with Independence Day revelers and King’s Homemade Ice Cream served family after family, we snuck into the welcoming courtyard of Union of Body, Mind & Soul.

My sons are, well, boys, so any moment is ripe for wrestling, racing, and poop jokes. They’re also loving, compassionate creatures who recognize special spaces and look out for my wellbeing. A silly pose at the center of the labyrinth quickly became a twinkle of calm.

Once we got our selfies and completed the circuit, they went to the serious business of exploring and having a bit of fun with Buddha.

The peace of the visit carried us home to Wilmington and a raucous pool party with new and old friends.

Our life can become unbalanced with activities, explorations, and a constant pushing into the unknown. We are blessed to have found another place where much of that can be unwound and processed.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Rainbows at Winterthur, Moon Shine at Delaware Museum of Natural History

It was a slightly desperate move. The forecast of thunderstorms should have kept us away from outdoor adventures, but I was feeling called to opt outside. For nearly three hours we had the grounds of Winterthur Garden at our disposal. Most of that time was spent running in, out, and around the Ottoman Tent as thunder, rain, and sunshine poured from the sky.

I don’t know how many rainbows we spotted, but the highlights included a double rainbow, a complete rainbow, and a miraculous rainbow that appeared on the near side of the trees.

The storms never got close enough to make us very nervous and we laid ourselves in the grass between downpours.

We snacked on mango and spied snakes, chipmunks, catbirds, toads, frogs, fish, redwing blackbirds, a dragonfly, and a green heron.

More than a small part of me wanted to stay for sunset (we joked about camping out in the Tent), but we had pressed our luck with the weather and more adventure awaited across the street at Delaware Museum of Natural History.

The varying clouds kept stargazing off the calendar, but we learned about the moon and our night sky at discovery stations and during live presentations in the auditorium and STARLAB inflatable planetarium.

We wrapped up the evening with fascinating minerals and legitimately scary foliage in the special Wicked Plants exhibition.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Listen to the Impossible Story

Pull that crystal handle back on your time machine and go all the way back to 12 January, 2018. Go and tell me I’d lose my wife within a month and that before the end of spring I’d be in her parent’s RV guiding my sons on a journey I’d never imagined.

My reaction? Impossible. Mary’s healthier than I am and, God forbid, if I lose her I will be lost. I had considered my own death. I had considered the loss of a son, or two. I had imagined how treacherous the lives of those left behind would be, but I leaned on Mary so hard that I never had the courage to imagine life without her. She was my miracle, she brought me to Christ just by walking like him. She didn’t know a darn thing about soccer and made me a better player, turned me into a coach. She humbled me. She showed me what love could do.

Impossible. All of it. You could go back 13 years and tell me all of this. I would not have listened.

I’m glad you didn’t warn me. I’m blessed our tragedy came down the tracks over six days. I didn’t think about impossible: I prayed for a miracle while planning for the likely. Everything was possible in that moment Mary went to Heaven. I was a super hero. She gave me that magic space ring, that radioactive spider bite, that tragedy that turned Frank Castle into The Punisher. Okay, bad example…kinda. I am more keenly aware of my mortality than ever. This present is the only present I have to make the world better, or worse.

So, let’s make it better I say to myself. The first way to make the world better is by making yourself better (I often ignore this primary fact). The second way is to make your family and friends better (hard to do if #1 isn’t in order). The third way is to help those in your community, physically close to you, but strangers nonetheless.

I had internalized the hero’s journey. From comics to Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung to the Star Wars trilogy, I bought into it so much that I committed to taking my sons on a road trip adventure before Mary had taken her final breath. It was that thing that happens to us. Not internal, but received. The type of inspiration that told me there was something out there, that my work and my thinking and my mind were not enough on their own, that the work that must be done is opening oneself up to receive the message. That takes more effort and patience than you may think. Your desires and fears will cloud the message and pretend to be the message. Again and again I have found that praying to hear clearly is to ask for the greatest blessing. The more I listen to people; not their declarations, but their stories, the more I love people.

Impossible. We put this barrier before understanding at inconvenient junctures. But how many impossible stories have you heard? Or lived? Impossible isn’t a dream, it’s a mystery we haven’t explored.

God bless,

Jason