I know, I know. Two blogs in one month. One week, even. I wasn’t really planning to write this.
But I was trying to take a nap yesterday while Jadon slept (because it was my birthday and I decided to give myself a break). God decided I didn’t really need a break. His voice started as this breath-of-a-whisper, but, as I laid there arguing about how I really just needed a little sleep because the week’s been so busy and I had already written three stories for the newspaper and I would be hosting and cooking dinner for my home group tomorrow and it was my birthday, God’s voice became the shriek of Hill Country winds that rattle our windows on days like today.
So I decided I should probably do what he said, share what’s on my heart. I hope what follows is worth a missed nap.
Sometimes, it’s really hard to imagine a great big God sitting on a great big throne, watching every tiny person in the universe melt into little puddles of people as the chaos of our lives and the lies we’ve been told—are still being told—nibbles away at who we were created to be.
Sometimes, it’s really hard to believe he’s a mighty, merciful, got-everything-under-control God.
I feel doubt sometimes, too, when I think of my friends Ben and Katrina.
Their story is difficult to tell. They’ve been married for more than five years and have been trying to have children since the day they said their vows. It hasn’t happened yet.
So, for the last year, they’ve been traveling to San Antonio for fertility treatments and some really painful procedures that they had hoped might make a difference.
They were here just last week for some tests that would determine whether they could proceed with a costly fertility treatment they had already tried once before. My Ben and I joined them for lunch before they followed me back to our home to wait for the 2 p.m. doctor’s call.
He was late calling. I laid Jadon down for his afternoon nap, and Ben and Katrina and I sat at our dining room table chatting and joking and laughing, trying not to think about the reason they were there. Katrina glanced at her watch every now and then as the minutes slid into an hour.
When her phone finally buzzed, Katrina answered it with this vulnerability that knotted my heart. Ben (her Ben) couldn’t even look at her. Fear sucked all the air from the room, so my spirit began to pray words that settled my stomach, words that I can’t even remember now.
I do remember Katrina’s feet, crossed at the ankles, and the way her heels tapped the floor in a rhythm that seemed to hold her together and the way the tips of her fingernails turned white from her grip on the phone and the way her face crumpled like a flimsy piece of notebook paper when her composure fractured.
Every one of her tears burned my face.
She ended the call and just stared at her husband for what seemed like forever, her tears pooling on the neck of her T-shirt. The pain made it so hard to breathe.
I had to leave the room.
I didn’t say a word before I walked up our stairs. I didn’t know what to say. I only knew that I could feel it inside, way down deep, a sickening pain that blazed its way through my mind and heart and soul. I watched it drink my hope like hope had never reached solidity.
Then Jadon began to cry.
I slid into his room and cradled him in my arms, trying to rock him back to sleep before his wail bruised Ben’s and Katrina’s hearts even more. I thought about a lot in those moments before he closed his eyes. I thought about how he was a gift we didn’t deserve, about how (my) Ben and I take so much of God’s favor for granted, about how he could turn it all around in a second.
I thought about what I could possibly say to keep Ben and Katrina believing. God is on his throne. He is all-powerful, even though he hasn’t opened Katrina’s womb, and loving, even though he hasn’t answered her most repeated prayer, and fair, even though millions of abortions happen every day while couples like Ben and Katrina ache for a child. He has plans to prosper us, works all things out for our good, gives us the desires of our hearts when rest in him. They were just words, and I couldn’t make them anything more.
I prayed over them before they left, told them (my) Ben and I would believe for them when they couldn’t believe anymore. They left with vacant eyes. The enemy’s lies were sneaking back in, convincing them they are broken and defective.
I’ve prayed for them all week, right around my 14th lap on the treadmill we keep in our garage. I’ve prayed that God would show them he’s a mighty, merciful, got-everything-under-control God.
The thing is—what God wedged into my heart as I dozed yesterday—sometimes, he’s not a great big God sitting on a great big throne.
I don’t mean that to say that he’s not always I AM. I mean it to say that sometimes, when death or disappointment or those splintered dreams creep into our lives, he is a small God, close enough to touch and hear and see. Sometimes, he’s right here, stroking our hair as we try to figure out what to do with so much pain, his heart throbbing right along with ours. And sometimes, that’s exactly what we need.
Oh, God, be small enough for Ben and Katrina. Be small enough for all of us.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Perfection is so overrated
I’ve wanted to be perfect for so long.
It started 11 years ago when my mom sat us all down in the bedroom I shared with my sister and, as the shame and fear and haunting disappointment in her eyes chafed us raw, told us that my father had a 3-year-old child and another baby on the way and wouldn’t be coming back like he’d promised us.
I wanted to be perfect then, to bring him back.
I began the sixth grade rejected and wounded—a lanky kid taller than all the boys and dorkier than all the girls. I remember keeping my distance from friends, excusing myself from sleepovers and birthday parties, always afraid that people would snub me when they saw the tiny, shabby house I lived in or opened the cheap gifts my mom couldn’t afford. I needed to convince them that I was perfect—because if they believed the mirage that hid who I was deep down inside, then maybe Daddy would believe it, too.
In high school, I turned in every homework assignment and studied for every test to hold my place at the top of my class because Daddy would have to be impressed if I graduated valedictorian. I did, too. Daddy didn’t even come to the ceremony that launched me into adulthood, where I delivered my first public speech and sang a song dedicated to hundreds of happily married parents…and my mom.
So in college, I starved myself, thinking maybe if I were skinnier or prettier, Daddy might take an interest in my life. I ran six miles and limited myself to 600 calories a day the same year Daddy stopped calling.
I never, ever dreamed it would slither into my marriage and my parenting and all the years between, when I thought I’d left it behind. But here it is, gaping at me like I should have known.
Maybe I should have known.
A few weeks ago, I asked Ben to clean out the air filter in our house. The cooling/heating system had a slight rattle in its throat, and I was concerned that pipes may be getting clogged that shouldn’t be getting clogged and that we might pay for that later when the whole system quit. Knowing we couldn’t afford something like that if it happened, I used my nagging voice.
Still, he sat on that thorn for weeks, like it didn’t even bother him.
Maybe it slipped his mind. Maybe he didn’t have time. Maybe it just wasn’t as important to him as it was to me.
So I listed in my journal one night all the reasons why I shouldn’t have to clean our air filter myself. I already do the dishes and wash the laundry and dust the furniture and vacuum the floors and make up the bed—even though I’m the first one up—and straighten the clutter and take out the trash when Ben forgets or oversleeps and pay the bills and take care of the baby and organize the songs for our concert and keep track of our tax records and balance our checkbook and schedule Jadon’s 15-month appointment and collect business contacts for Progeny and still manage to throw 110-percent into a more than 40-hour-a-week job.
I remember feeling a little annoyed that he could pin so much on me, that he could believe I was anything close to Super Wife or Super Mom or Super Helper.
It was a dangerous path that crept right past reality.
I thought about this for a long time. Ben and I are reading a book called Breaking the Cycle of Divorce because we both come from generations of broken marriages and affairs that caused them. So much is heaped on the shoulders of the kids who watch a parent walk out the door and never come back.
The chapter we read yesterday explained four of the 12 manifestations of divorce’s curse. One of the most destructive of those manifestations is isolation. I mentioned in my last blog that I hadn’t heard from God in a while, so it startled me a little when he spoke. His words were clear and beautiful and heart-stopping.
Here’s what he said.
“Ben never expected or will expect you to be the perfect wife. Jadon never expected or will expect you to be the perfect mom. I never expected you to be a perfect helper. Open your eyes and let go of that bar that your hands control and continue to raise every day that slips by because it is pushing you into yourself and away from all the people I have brought into your life who love you so much.”
Every word is true, and I know it now, deep down inside. I’m ready to be real and transparent and...the broken mess-of-a-woman I’ve tried to hide for so long.
I’m not perfect. I never have been. I argue with my husband. I take low shots. I sometimes forget that he carries the laundry up the stairs so I don’t slip and crack my tailbone again and that he scrubs the bathrooms until they shine because toilets make me queasy and that he carries me through the painful memories when I can’t walk through them myself.
There’ll be days when I’ll spend hours with God and days when I won’t be able to sacrifice a minute. I will be detached and mean and frighteningly selfish sometimes. I will always see 10 more pounds that I could lose.
I think sometimes I need to be reminded that I fall short of God’s glory because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t really need a Savior. I wouldn’t believe I needed one, anyway. And his strength could never sweep through my life if I didn’t have a weakness.
Thank you, Jesus, that I have never reached perfection.
Our little musician
Happy on Christmas morning
He actually did this himself
He'll never use this in his lifetime, but he sure loved playing with it
Yep. Already knows how to brush his teeth.
Somebody needs a bath
It started 11 years ago when my mom sat us all down in the bedroom I shared with my sister and, as the shame and fear and haunting disappointment in her eyes chafed us raw, told us that my father had a 3-year-old child and another baby on the way and wouldn’t be coming back like he’d promised us.
I wanted to be perfect then, to bring him back.
I began the sixth grade rejected and wounded—a lanky kid taller than all the boys and dorkier than all the girls. I remember keeping my distance from friends, excusing myself from sleepovers and birthday parties, always afraid that people would snub me when they saw the tiny, shabby house I lived in or opened the cheap gifts my mom couldn’t afford. I needed to convince them that I was perfect—because if they believed the mirage that hid who I was deep down inside, then maybe Daddy would believe it, too.
In high school, I turned in every homework assignment and studied for every test to hold my place at the top of my class because Daddy would have to be impressed if I graduated valedictorian. I did, too. Daddy didn’t even come to the ceremony that launched me into adulthood, where I delivered my first public speech and sang a song dedicated to hundreds of happily married parents…and my mom.
So in college, I starved myself, thinking maybe if I were skinnier or prettier, Daddy might take an interest in my life. I ran six miles and limited myself to 600 calories a day the same year Daddy stopped calling.
I never, ever dreamed it would slither into my marriage and my parenting and all the years between, when I thought I’d left it behind. But here it is, gaping at me like I should have known.
Maybe I should have known.
A few weeks ago, I asked Ben to clean out the air filter in our house. The cooling/heating system had a slight rattle in its throat, and I was concerned that pipes may be getting clogged that shouldn’t be getting clogged and that we might pay for that later when the whole system quit. Knowing we couldn’t afford something like that if it happened, I used my nagging voice.
Still, he sat on that thorn for weeks, like it didn’t even bother him.
Maybe it slipped his mind. Maybe he didn’t have time. Maybe it just wasn’t as important to him as it was to me.
So I listed in my journal one night all the reasons why I shouldn’t have to clean our air filter myself. I already do the dishes and wash the laundry and dust the furniture and vacuum the floors and make up the bed—even though I’m the first one up—and straighten the clutter and take out the trash when Ben forgets or oversleeps and pay the bills and take care of the baby and organize the songs for our concert and keep track of our tax records and balance our checkbook and schedule Jadon’s 15-month appointment and collect business contacts for Progeny and still manage to throw 110-percent into a more than 40-hour-a-week job.
I remember feeling a little annoyed that he could pin so much on me, that he could believe I was anything close to Super Wife or Super Mom or Super Helper.
It was a dangerous path that crept right past reality.
I thought about this for a long time. Ben and I are reading a book called Breaking the Cycle of Divorce because we both come from generations of broken marriages and affairs that caused them. So much is heaped on the shoulders of the kids who watch a parent walk out the door and never come back.
The chapter we read yesterday explained four of the 12 manifestations of divorce’s curse. One of the most destructive of those manifestations is isolation. I mentioned in my last blog that I hadn’t heard from God in a while, so it startled me a little when he spoke. His words were clear and beautiful and heart-stopping.
Here’s what he said.
“Ben never expected or will expect you to be the perfect wife. Jadon never expected or will expect you to be the perfect mom. I never expected you to be a perfect helper. Open your eyes and let go of that bar that your hands control and continue to raise every day that slips by because it is pushing you into yourself and away from all the people I have brought into your life who love you so much.”
Every word is true, and I know it now, deep down inside. I’m ready to be real and transparent and...the broken mess-of-a-woman I’ve tried to hide for so long.
I’m not perfect. I never have been. I argue with my husband. I take low shots. I sometimes forget that he carries the laundry up the stairs so I don’t slip and crack my tailbone again and that he scrubs the bathrooms until they shine because toilets make me queasy and that he carries me through the painful memories when I can’t walk through them myself.
There’ll be days when I’ll spend hours with God and days when I won’t be able to sacrifice a minute. I will be detached and mean and frighteningly selfish sometimes. I will always see 10 more pounds that I could lose.
I think sometimes I need to be reminded that I fall short of God’s glory because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t really need a Savior. I wouldn’t believe I needed one, anyway. And his strength could never sweep through my life if I didn’t have a weakness.
Thank you, Jesus, that I have never reached perfection.
Our little musician
Happy on Christmas morning
He actually did this himself
He'll never use this in his lifetime, but he sure loved playing with it
Yep. Already knows how to brush his teeth.
Somebody needs a bath
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