Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness;

for we do not know how to pray as we ought,

but that very Spirit intercedes

with sighs too deep for words.

— Romans 8:26

The following was a reflection given for a midweek lenten service at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. You can view a recording of the service here.

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In December of 2020, The New York Times introduced to their readers something they called The Primal Scream HotLine. The tagline reads “Are you a parent who's tired as hell? Then welcome to the primal scream line, where the floor is yours to yell, laugh, cry or vent for a solid minute. Please scream after the beep.” BEEP.

This wasn’t just a joke. They really did have an actual number and an actual recording device. You could pull up the number right now if you wanted to and utter your own scream. Maybe wait until after worship though. 

Parents across the country did just what they were invited to do: they called up the number and then they raged, they ranted, they released whatever burden they carried through spoken word to whoever might be listening on the other side. And there WERE people listening. You can read or listen to many of the responses and share in the collective grief of so many parents in a heavy world. 

I’m a writer so I love the expression of emotion through words. But honestly, reading through the responses, it was the screams that spoke the loudest to me. They just felt so, alive.

Paul understood this too. In Romans 8:26, he tells us “that very Spirit intercedes for us” when we don’t know what to pray. But it is with what the Spirit intercedes that is the interesting part for me. “With sighs too deep for words,” he writes.

I love using onomatopoeias in writing not just because onomatopoeia is fun to say , although it really is, but because of the way the words bring the story to life. Sigh is such a great example of this. You can hear the emotion in the spoken word. I joked with my pastor that maybe the reflection for tonight was too deep for words and I should have just given one long sighhhhhhhhhhh.

One definition of sigh is described as “a long, deep, audible breath, pushed like wind through trees” or maybe another way to think of it is like screams through a phone line. 

The Spirit reminds us we don’t always require words to pray. Breath can be a prayer. Sighs, groans, even screams. I wonder then how many people knew that when they called up the primal scream hotline, that their screams were also a prayer.

There’s another thought I ponder when I read this passage from Paul. Actually this one is a memory.  

It was late February of 2020, Ash Wednesday, one of the very last times our church community would come together for months, years for many. We gathered with other young families in the basement of our church that night as a way to invite children into the Lenten practice of contemplation. Below our feet tape lined the worn red carpet, leading us to participate in the prayer ritual of walking a labyrinth. Battery operated candles lit the room, an attempt I believe to teach little ones of the sacredness of this ritual. Darkness is a great way of signaling to children quiet and stillness. 

When it was our turn, my two oldest children led the way with my husband Mike behind me holding Leo, as toddlers surely would not respect the rules a Labyrinth requires. Around us were other young families, some behind, some ahead on the path. We were so tightly packed together I imagine it looked like a chaotic mess, which in Covid terms sounds like a luxury doesn’t it. As we moved along, there were many times it felt like we might run into each other. But we didn’t. Our paths turned, and we kept on moving. 

I remember feeling grateful that night to have an accessible way to bring my children into Lent, but also realizing this was not my idea of a peaceful prayer time. I was not speaking to God. It was all I could do to keep my kids from racing through like it was a life size Mario Kart track. And as you can imagine telling kids to be quiet and serious only makes them giggle more. Every time the path’s twist and turns put them eye to eye with a friend, suppressed laughter bubbled out of their little mouths like it was alive. And in that large open space their giggles echoed off the concrete walls. 

That sound has echoed in the walls of my own mind ever since. It’s what I missed when laptop living room worship felt lacking. It’s what has saved me on this chaotic maze-like path we’ve walked these last two years. It’s what I cling to when I no longer have words but I’ve exhausted all my screams. It’s what I crave when I want to feel alive.

The contagious sound of being together in community with others, of catching the eyes of a friend, of thinking you might be on the verge of a crash and then with great relief realizing that you are safe, you are alive, you are still moving forward.

If sighing is a prayer, if screaming is a prayer, maybe then so is laughter.

May the spirit intercede for you and for me this week

with sighs of screaming but also laughter,

laughter that cannot be contained,

laughter that echoes off of walls,

laughter that pulls us into community,

that brings our stories, and us, back to life,

laughter too deep for words.

“I walked through the door with you.

The air was cold.

But something about it felt like home somehow.”

– Taylor Swift, “All Too Well”

I walk through the door of Target, awkwardly balancing a carseat over my right arm. The November air outside is so cold the heat inside hits me with an intense suffocation.  Two months after delivering my first baby and my hormones still struggle with balance. I wonder if balance is something I will ever achieve. 

I fling down my jacket zipper and gently place the car seat into the nearest cart, praying it isn’t one with a squeaky wheel. Attempting simultaneous speed and careful movement, I race down the aisles. Caroline is asleep but I’m not sure for how much longer. My heart races at the possibility of getting trapped in a store with a screaming baby. Family and friends coo at her sweet disposition, but still I find myself in a constant wide-eyed gaze anticipating her next melt down, or my own. 

My frantic rush is only made worse by the fact that I can not find the damn baby aisle. This is not my regular Target store and the layout baffles me. Why is it that every store is designed differently? And why is it that I never noticed how annoying this is until I had a baby? Goodness, I’m so easily flustered these days. The smallest things irritate me–temperatures, sounds, getting lost. There was once a time in my life when I could more easily shrug off minor nuisances and unexpected changes. I’d like to be my old self again. Finding her, though, proves about as easy as finding diapers in this maze of a store. 

Just when I think I’m lost, the twang of a guitar and whiny sounds of a country music singer blaring over the speakers alert me I must be passing through the electronics section. I turn to see a bouncy Taylor Swift following me across every television screen like a creepy hallway in a haunted house. Apparently her new album Red is out. I roll my eyes. I couldn't care less. 

Taylor Swift hit her fandom just as I became a grownup. While she sang cute songs about boys and breakups for her teenage fans, the soundtrack of my twenties was more the edgy no-nonsense vibe of Lady GaGa. I was independently driven in my career, a happily married woman. I just could not relate to Swift’s whiny love songs, even more so now that I am a mother. The only thing that makes this new mom’s heart race is getting through the store without waking her ticking time bomb in a car seat. 

Glaring at the reverberating screens, I mumble under my breath, I swear, Taylor, if you wake up my baby I’ll give you some trouble to whine about. I peek under the car seat cover to check if the music has startled her awake. The pink knitted bunny cap has slipped down over her eyes but the rhythm of her chest moving up and down tells me she is asleep. My heart clenches, the reaction of a love that still surprises me. I never knew a mother’s love could feel so much like a first crush. Oxytocin lulls me to stay, but it never lasts long. The familiar panic of responsibility returns. Quickly, yet carefully, I push my cart past the aisle until the music fades into the background. 

***

“Everyone buckled?” I look in the rearview mirror at Caroline, now eight, her five year old brother Elliott, and their two year old brother Leo. 

“Yep,” they all answer back cheerily. By the excitement in their voice you’d think we were going somewhere exciting instead of fifteen minutes down the road to pick up our groceries. With the realities of a pandemic shrinking our world over the last 10 months, it’s the little things that bring us joy. I’m just excited someone is bringing my groceries to the car. What a time to be alive. 

“Mom, can you put on Taylor Swift?” Elliott asks. I smile, pleased to know I have appropriately brainwashed him into listening to music I love. I pull up my favorite Taylor Swift playlist, a mix of both of her latest albums Folklore and Evermore, and set it to shuffle. 

It took nearly a decade, but Taylor finally listened to my request for relevant music with the release of not one but two albums in 2020. In a year when creating felt impossible, Taylor proved to be one who thrives under pressure. Or maybe it was boredom. Either way, this Taylor matched my mood perfectly. 

Both Folklore and Evermore capture songs for storytellers like myself. Shifting away from the clawing love songs, this music is moody and whimsical, the lyrics reflective and nostalgic. You can tell she’s been through some shit. And she’s happy now. It’s easier to sing about grief when you’re on the other side. With proof of a decade of parenting singing in the car as we drive uptown, I can relate. We are still in the middle of a pandemic, life is weird, and still hard, and yet I feel at peace. The ebbs and flows of parenting don’t shock me like they once did. 

Gray November, I’ve been down since July. 

The haunting words of the song “Evermore” play through the speakers. I recall then a podcast to which I recently listened that analyzed this song. I always assumed the lyrics were about another relationship gone wrong. Apparently, though, the words tell of her battle with mental health during ongoing media controversies. It took me by surprise that the song wasn’t really about love at all. And yet, you could listen to it that way and still relate. This was a breakthrough moment for me. Maybe not every love song is about a lover. Maybe, like poetry, there is more than one way to listen to a song. 

After that day, I started listening to Taylor’s music with a new perspective. When she sang about a crush, I thought of the creative goals and dreams that allure me. Her words about moving on from a relationship became about me moving on from the person I once was into the person I am becoming. 

Or, like today, with “Evermore,” as I listen to her struggles with her career through the gray days of November, I think of my own past gray Novembers, different yet still relatable. I think about how many times I wondered if the pain of motherhood would be for evermore. I know now, with time and counseling and growth, that it won’t be. 

I’m thinking of this as I look out my car window. The city in winter always looks barren cold, but I can’t help but notice the first fall of snow glistening as it falls. I smile and steal a look at my children, almost missing the red light. The playlist shuffles to the next song.

I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit.

They are the first words of the first album of Taylor’s to which I ever listened, really listened, and started to appreciate. Taylor has grown over the years–in her music, her career, in love. I have, too. I love this new era of hers, but I wonder about the music of her past I once dismissed. 

Is there a love story for me in those songs, too?

***

Months later, on a Friday morning in November, I’m in the kitchen peanut buttering waffles and filling cereal bowls, carrying on with the usual morning routine, when I remember–it’s “Red Day.”

Nine years after it’s first release, Taylor Swift re-rerecorded her album Red, this time as Red, Taylor’s Version. It is one of many albums she is releasing under her new record label in order to take back ownership of her music. This is a power move but also a smart one. Not only is she reinvigorating her fans to her old music, she is bringing along a new era of fans like me who missed her pre-pandemic years as an artist. 

For months since she teased the album’s release, I watched as excitement of this day grew. While longtime fans reminisced over their favorite songs, I wondered how the music might hit me. This was a breakup album, a disordered mix of all of the emotions that accompany a love come and gone. Would I enjoy the music as much as I had her most recent two albums?

Curious, I play the music on our speakers while cleaning up the breakfast dishes. The music fills my kitchen with light before the sun does. I dance and sway with the sounds that feel more rich and emotional than I would expect a typical country album to sound. When we reach the chorus of “Red” I hear notes of familiarity. I’ve heard this before. I was there–a mom, wandering the aisles of Target, frantic, seemingly okay, but also not fine at all. I remember it, all too well.

Listening to Taylor sing her old words in a new stage of life, I wonder if she relates to the words the way I do today, less desperate and more nostalgic, wise, perhaps. I was quick to write her off in those early days. Somehow her music about loss and anger and joy and love got lost in translation while I fumbled through new motherhood. Now looking back, I wish I had paid better attention. I could have used another soul reminding me it was okay to feel chaotic and unbalanced and still so in love. There was no boy causing that flurry of emotions, but there was a baby. A sweet baby, in a pink bunny cap, a cap I still keep in a drawer because I can’t get rid of it just yet. 

That same baby, now nine, wanders into the kitchen with her empty cereal bowl to ask “Mom, can you put on ‘All Too Well’. Someone at school told me it was 10 minutes long. Can you believe that?”

So I do. The song is new to both of us, but also familiar, like home somehow, as if I’ve been singing the words all along. Together we dance around the kitchen in the refrigerator light, listening to a new kind of love song, not in a hurry to move on from the music at all.

Image created by @phoenixfeatherscalligraphy for C+C, 2022

This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series "Contrast.”
PS. For more words and wonderings from my corner, be sure to sign up for my Raise & Shine Letter! There’s always a good story or two, probably something about Taylor Swift, and lots of artfully curated GIFs.

A prayer written and shared in worship at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, February 27, 2022.

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Our Father, Our Mother, Our Creator.

Be near, we pray, as we move through winter, seeking the warmth of your presence and the light of grace in our darkness. Remind us of the gleeful sled down a hill, the magic in a snow angel, the comfort in a mug of hot chocolate, and the rhythm in finding joy in each season, even one as dark and cold as winter.

Oh God of the hibernating animals…

we pray for the church, its members and its mission. Let us huddle together this morning, our community of shelter, a place of warmth in our lives

as we share the flame of hope and connection. We extend our thoughts to all those who are cold this morning, lacking shelter or love to keep them warm. Let us wrap our prayers around them and each other like scarves, and hope for protection in the storm.

Oh God of the gently falling snow…

as each snowflake was created by you in its own unique shape, help us to remember our own gifts of diversity. May we celebrate the magnificent creation inside each of us. Help us to use our skills, our knowledge, our positions in society, and our strength in Christ, as a community of faith, to support our neighbors. Just as the individual snowflakes pile up in great quantities outside our door, remind us of the power in working together for justice.

Oh God of the frozen lakes…

we pray for our leaders. Like the miracle of science that allows water to hold weight in winter, give our leaders the strength to hold the weight of decision making for our communities big and small. May their guidance not cause us to falter and fall but move with freedom and gracefulness. We especially want to pray for the educators in our communities, who after years of challenging burdens in the school community feel the anxious burden of unsteady cracks in their surface. Heal them, restore them, be strong where they are weak, and show us how we can do the same.

Oh God of the bare trees…

we pray for the sick and suffering. It is easy to forget about the springs of life when we feel as lifeless and cold as the deciduous trees outside our window. Be the strong bark of protection around those who ache with pain of body, mind, and soul. Remind them they are firmly rooted in your love, and this will bring them the nourishment they need. Give them rest in their hibernation and restoration for the spring that will come soon. 

Oh God of the evergreen trees…

we pray for the departed. Be with those mourning the loss of a loved one that they may find peace in remembering their life and acceptance in letting go. Like the tree masterfully designed in your image to be forever green and alive, remind us of your ever steady presence in the darkest of days. As the branches of an evergreen bends with the weight of snow, teach us to be held by your strength. May the eternal life of the evergreen remind us of your great promise of everlasting life in you.