Andrew Wyeth, "Christina" and Me

From the New York Times:

"Christina's World," 1948.

The work became an American icon like Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” or Emmanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” Mr. Wyeth had seen Christina Olson, crippled from the waist down, dragging herself across a Maine field, “like a crab on a New England shore,” he recalled. To him she was a model of dignity who refused to use a wheelchair and preferred to live in squalor rather than be beholden to anyone.

Wyeth died yesterday, 1/16, in his sleep at the age of 91.

I've always liked this painting. I never knew the background of the subject in the picture. Supposedly, according to the Times, the subject, Christina, was 55 years old when Wyeth painted the picture in 1948. At different times in my life, what feels like today, as often, I have felt like this woman. Crippled by an unknown source, I am crawling ahead to shelter no matter how it looks. I hold on to the dignity to survive the obstacles that belabor me with the tenacity of my entire might. Albeit, I later realize that the downside surfaces in my ability to confuse suffering in silence with earnest and compelling humility.

I feel like this woman in the painting at this moment. I made the decision to go to seminary. That's all fine and good. I answered a profound call to God, gave many things up (career, security and "things") to make room for God to move in my life, and thus take me to a new place. I'm plodding along, yet learning very quickly and relishing the anointing feeling of grace; and yet again, somehow desperately tiring to constantly adjust by working tremendously hard, only then left to decipher what God was in the midst of teaching me. I don't ask for any accolades but pray that God will not leave me and put love in my path when I need it and even when I don't (apparently to me) need it. I'm taking Hebrew this January. It's among one of the hardest and frustrating things I've done in years. I'm used to being way ahead of the curve but in Hebrew, I feel I gain an understanding and a success only to fall way below the curve at the next moment. I'm my own worst critic. I've always been accused of such. But, yesterday I failed a test (*after note: after my original posting, I found out I actually made a 73 on this test) not because I was unprepared or even cut corners in my preparation but because I became confused and unhinged (the unhinging started with trying to figure out a word I thought was a simple noun but was instead was a proper noun, Samuel) while taking it and simply gave up. How many times in our lives do we become confused and just give up? It's like the ice skater who has spent hours upon hours perfecting a routine and then falls during the performance and cannot regain the composure to execute what's already been learned. I additionally lost my focus when taking the test because I bounced around the test from word to word, page to page. Never focusing on one sentence at a time or breathing while I trying to work out the translation. How many times have I done the very same thing in other aspects of my life.

This course in Hebrew is testing me and teaching me how I and other people near me react to intense stress. Intense stress, you might think...yes, when you spend least 10-12 hours a day devoted to it and it consumes you...it constitutes extreme stress. I tend to want to blame others for my blight or own doing. I am not very patient with others or myself. I second guess myself and my capability all the time. Or, sometimes I swap confidence in my capabilities with just plain arrogance. Hard lessons. Or even when I witness in others and myself, the franticness that comes from striving to get a foot hold up in the attempt to gain understanding out from the desperateness of confusion. In this wake, notice is not taken when people are trying to help or need help. This all goes hand in hand with the ability to learn to forgive myself and others. Hard lessons.

Like Christina, crippled by an unknown force that grips me, I am struggling to get to, or back to, the house. I have to remember her dignity and perseverance and ultimately, God's grace. And, the reminder that unlike the description of Wyeth's Christina at the start of this post, I do not choose to live in squalor and am always beholden to my neighbor and my neighbor to me. I am reminded that dignity does not come from standing on one's own but comes from the strength of remembering who one (I) belongs to, that being God.