Away with your noisy hymns of praise
I will not listen to the music of your harps (strings)
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice
An endless river of righteous living.
Amos 5:23-24 (parenthesis added)
The first time I saw her, I didn’t have any children of my own.
Ben and I were at the Rock Opera with his youth group from Alamo Heights Baptist church. Some people had just handed out these folders that had African kids’ pictures on them, and Rebecca St. James was on stage talking about an organization called World Vision. I wasn’t really listening.
Instead, I was staring at Kedija Juhar, the little girl a woman had passed to Ben and me. She had brown eyes and wild hair, and I knew we would sponsor her before I even read that she lived in Tanzania and was the “water bearer” for her family and that her father had died of AIDs and that she took care of her brother and sister while her mother tried to find work.
I knew even before I saw that her birthday was the day before Ben’s and my anniversary.
Those eyes…they just wouldn’t let me go.
Six years ago we signed up to send $35 each month to this precious little girl across the ocean. She was 6. Didn’t go to school. Had no drinking water within a five-mile radius. Wore no shoes.
Today, Kedija is 12. Her favorite subject is science, and she’s not so good at math but she’s excelling at her native language. Her community has a well from which they draw water now. She saves her shoes for school.
Moses Mwesige came along in 2005, after we’d signed up to become World Vision Artist Associates. He’s from Zimbabwe, a part of Africa so ravaged by AIDs that World Vision leaders compare it to an “Asian tsunami every six days.” So many places in Africa are the same.
Moses has seen the destruction of the disease. His family has buried sons, daughters, parents and grandparents in the 12 years he’s been alive, and even in a community where death is almost commonplace, it is no less damaging. In his first letter to us, Moses wrote, “Thank you for loving me so much that you would choose to sponsor me.” His words made me cry the day I opened up that dirt-streaked envelope and unfolded the paper stamped with World Vision’s Zimbabwe seal. If I’m really being honest, they still make me cry today because, though simple and sweet, they are at the same time intense and difficult. He saw our love in that paltry $35 we sent every month.
How little I knew of the love that would blister my heart like the scorching dirt in Africa blisters their feet, the same love that would make my heart dance and laugh and sting and cry every time I saw “Zimbabwe” scribbled on an envelope.
How little I knew of its addiction.
We sponsored our third child three months after Jadon was born, when I found a little boy from Peru, Juaquin, who was born the same day Jadon was born in 2006. I saw his face, and I saw my son.
Juaquin is almost 3 now. His colored pictures hang alongside Jadon’s artwork on our refrigerator (which is getting a little crowded by now), and when Jadon’s old enough to write, they’ll be pen pals. When he has his own money, Jadon will help make sure Juaquin has enough to eat.
Philani Lugogo came along a few months later. He’s from a rural community in South Africa. His first picture showed a skinny 3-year-old with melancholy eyes and dirty feet. The picture we got a few weeks ago shows a healthy 5-year-old with smiling eyes and shoes to cover his probably-still-dirty feet. He just started school.
Maureen is the last of our sponsored kids. We just began our relationship with her two months ago, so the only thing I know about Maureen is that her birthday is on the day my grandmother died. Memaw would be glad to know that a little girl’s life was changed so drastically the day she died.
You may be wondering why I’m telling you all of this. Because they are my children. And, just as Jadon and Asa have done, Kedija, Moses, Juaquin, Philani and Maureen have taught me so much over the years.
Namely this: I. Am. Still. Selfish.
It took me a while to realize this, and even longer to admit it, but it’s true.
I eat half my oversized plate at Chili’s and I buy that overpriced organic chicken at H-E-B and I drink that oversweet Starbucks hot chocolate, and I complain about how my budget doesn’t seem to be working out this month. While the millions who live on less than $2 a day eat their beans and rice and, maybe once a week, that piece of almost-rotten fruit and walk those five miles to get that clean water, and they sing “I’ve got this joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart” and they mean it.
I sit in my three-bedroom, 1,988-square-foot house, with its centralized heating and cooling system, and I turn on my wide-screen television with more channels than I’d watch in a lifetime and I grumble about how the honey-colored book shelf that sits in our gameroom will have to be replaced eventually because my sons (and probably husband) have nicked some of the wood with their rough-housing. They sit in their houses made of cardboard or fabric or see-through sheets and thank God that they have shade from the burning sun.
I try to hold on, with cramping fingers, to the bit of comfort I have here…while my children—MY children—across the ocean are starving. Hurting. Dying.
I am so selfish.
So I’ve found myself begging God to break my heart for what breaks his, to show me what else I might do in my little corner of easy living, to make the lives of those millions just a tiny bit easier.
Back in July, Ben and I attended a worship leader’s conference in Leawood, Kansas. The idea that worship cannot be separated from justice had been on our hearts for a while, and it was reaffirmed at the conference.
While there, God urged Ben and me to start working on a project, which we’ve since titled “Heart Like Your Heart Project,” that will effect change in the lives of children and orphans all over the world. Progeny plans to go into the studio in March to record a brand new worship album, with brand new original worship songs, that will release sometime in April or May.
Here’s the important thing, though: all sales of the album will go directly to World Vision. Ten percent of the profits will be distributed to Progeny’s sponsored children, to purchase goats and cows and chickens in order to raise the communities’ economic status for their own good and the good of surrounding communities. The other 90 percent of the profits will go directly to the work of World Vision—building wells, providing food and clothing and shelter and administering health care to the ones who need it most.
Our goal is to sell 10,000 CDs, which will raise $135,000 for the work of World Vision (Visit www.progenyworship for more info on the project and e-mail ben@progenyband.com if you’re interested in hosting a house party or worship concert).
I’ve never been to Zimbabwe or Tanzania or Peru or South Africa. But I have children there. Children who go to bed hungry, children who raise their brothers and sisters because disease stole their parents. Children who want to know that they are worth the sacrifice of my monthly Chili’s tab.
Listen to what Leonard Sweet says in "The Three Hardest Words in the World to Get Right:"
“Everything we do—our learning, our strivings, our dreaming and daydreaming—needs to be shaped by the one in three people who live on less than two dollars per day. We need to be shaped by the ten thousand Africans who die of AIDs, TB and malaria every day, and the fifty million people who die of hunger every year. That’s why the condition of our souls has a direct relation to the condition of our neighborhoods and our nations. Something is wrong when the wealth of some depends on the poverty of others. Something is wrong when the ascent up the ladder for some depends on the descent down the ladder for others.”
Amen, Leonard.
So I say, let us run, dance, walk, limp, whatever it looks like to us, toward God’s heart in caring for the orphan and the widow and the foreigner. Because if we want to see Jesus—and I mean really, really see him—we’ll have to crumple our perfectly-pressed pants and roll up the sleeves of our Tide-white shirts and get a little messy. Because where the dirt-smudged children, the poverty-stricken foreigners and the not-exactly-aromatic homeless are is right where Jesus loves to be.
Break our hearts for what breaks yours, oh God.
(For sneak peeks of three of Progeny’s new worship songs, visit www.progenyworship.com.)
Monday, November 2, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Celebrate Recovery testimony, shared 10/13/09
I’m a believer in Jesus Christ who struggles with perfectionism, a skewed body image and low self worth.
All of this…messiness…began a long, long time ago. I grew up with a small town, in a two-bedroom house with my mom, my dad, my older brother and my younger sister. We knew everybody’s secrets in that town. They knew all of ours.
The first time I remember my dad leaving home was the day after I’d sung my first solo in church. I was 4. He drove off that day on a Harley motorcycle, to “go find work” in his home state of Ohio, while we stayed behind in Texas. I watched him with dripping eyes until that motorcycle was too far away to even imagine, and I remember thinking my solo is what made him leave.
He worked out of state for a month or so. Maybe he sent home some money, maybe he didn’t. I don’t really know. I do know that he came home with a box of Jones Potato chips (a brand of chips made only in Ohio) and the clothes on his back. Seemed like he’d never left.
Short absences—a month or two—were normal after that. When friends would ask about my dad, I recited what he’d told us: that the jobs were better in Ohio. They looked at me with skeptical eyes. Maybe deep down inside I knew it was a lie, too.
The next time Daddy left for an extended trip (I knew because he took a backpack of clothes with him this time) was the same day I found out I needed glasses. I cried and cried and cried—partly because he was leaving but mostly because I needed glasses, and if I needed glasses, that meant I could no longer be perfect for him. And that meant he would stay away even longer.
He did.
He was gone for two years. At the end of those two years, my mom packed us up and drove the night through to Ohio. We rented a house in Mansfield. I could count on one hand the number of times Daddy slept in his own house while we were living in the same town. So my mom moved us back to Texas. A year later, she got a letter from her sister-in-law saying that Daddy had a 3-year-old daughter and a baby on the way with a woman he’d been fooling around with for years.
I was 11 years old when my parents split up, when I figured out I wasn’t good enough to keep my dad at home. I spent the next 10 years trying to prove I was good enough.
My mom moved us back to where we’d spent our first few years in school. I got contacts. She got debt, bought a shabby house surrounded by corn fields. Everybody in that town knew why we’d come back.
I threw myself into school, focused on my studies, played sports, joined the junior high band, did everything I possibly could to make my dad, to make others, notice what a wonderful person I was.
We visited my dad the summer between my sixth and seventh grade years. It was the first time I met my half-brother, my half-sister and the woman who’d caused my parents’ divorce. After a rough month, my dad took us shopping for school clothes—his contribution since he never sent child support. I remember moving out of the dressing room to those big mirrors outside, just to make sure the shorts I’d chosen fit right. Daddy and my stepmom were there. He said, “I thought she would have lost all her baby fat by now” in a kind of off-hand, nonchalant way.
I stopped eating lunch my seventh grade year. Told all my friends it was because our athletics class was right after lunch and my food didn’t have time to settle. I cut out breakfast my freshman year in high school because I wasn’t “hungry that early in the morning.” I’d forget my lunch, too. Only ate dinner, and that’s just because my mom was there, watching me with eyes that said she knew what I was doing.
It got easier in college because those eyes weren’t there. I would limit myself to a small smoothie every day—about 600 calories—and obsessively worked off that 600 calories—and more—by running six or seven miles and lifting some weights. I made excuses when my mom came to visit once a month or so. The Texas State marching band was really hard work, and I couldn’t keep the weight on because of it. She knew better. I know that now.
It wasn’t just the body image, either. The desire to be the best, to be perfect, pushed me to seriously focus on my studies. I graduated valedictorian of my high school class, got a full ride to college and graduated with highest honors from Texas State University in San Marcos. I still remember crying when I brought home my first B on a philosophy essay. I never let it happen again.
My sophomore year of college I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment with roommates who saw my pantry shelf and the very few groceries that sat there. At the time, I was news editor of the university newspaper, and the excuse I offered to them was that my job didn’t pay much (it didn’t) and I didn’t have money for more than the can of green beans I ate every day.
I got more involved in the Baptist Student Ministry during my junior year. The director there asked me to be the worship leader, and I remember thinking, “He has no idea how messed up I am.” But I did it, even while I struggled through my relationship with God. Working out, counting calories, was way more important to me than spending time with a living, able-to-heal God.
Recovery began my senior year of college, when I finally found it in me to admit I had a problem.
The summer prior to that, I’d gotten a call from my dad. He lived in Florida now. He was sober, which was unusual at that time. He told me he’d made a mistake, that he didn’t mean to do what he’d done. He apologized for leaving us high and dry, said it wasn’t my fault or my brother’s fault or my sister’s fault, that the fault was his alone. I told him I forgave everything, that I didn’t hold any of it against him because I loved him. He cried. I sobbed. Healing stretched its arms around us.
A month later, Ben and I decided to pursue a relationship together. When he and I first started dating, I’d moved up to editor in chief of the university newspaper. I spent hours and hours every day in my office—writing, editing, editing some more—and because I still had trouble eating three meals a day, Ben stuck a note on my computer that said “skinny = beautiful” with a line through the equal sign. I looked at it every single day, and maybe deep down inside I started to believe it.
Things have changed since those college days. My relationships are different—because I no longer (or at least try hard not to) compare myself to my friends or try to measure up to some impossible-to-reach bar just to prove I’m good enough to like.
My relationship with Ben is deeper than it used to be because I know he loves me even if there are 10 extra pounds on my body that weren’t there when we married. Maybe six years of telling me it doesn’t matter what I look like have finally lodged those words into my stubborn brain.
My relationship with my dad has been restored, to a certain extent. He knows where we stand. I know he’s suffered more than enough for what he’s done. Contact is still spotty, like it was when I was a kid, but I call him every other month just to let him know I’m thinking about him. I still love him as much as I did before he made his mistakes. Maybe I love him more because of his mistakes.
I still run five or six miles a day. But the eating disorder is gone. The tendency toward perfectionism is still there, but maybe I’m okay with that because it reminds me how I need God’s grace every single day to dodge the shackles that chase standards like that.
Some days I look in the mirror and don’t think that what I see is beautiful or thin enough. Those are the days I ask—maybe beg—Jesus to give me eyes to see myself the way he sees me—because the temptation is still there, curling its icy fingers around my arm. But Jesus never disappoints. Never. And some days, I do see what He sees: imperfect-but-still-beautiful me. Psalm 139:14 says, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You works are wonderful. I know that full well.”
It’s taken me 16 years to believe that I am one of his works.
People have asked me over the years if I would change anything about my past. My answer is no. Because my past has made me who I am, has helped me see things in a different way, has offered me an opportunity to minister to God’s people. I’ve written about my past in a book I shopped to agents last week. I’ve shared my past in the songs my band records.
No, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because God is glorified in what might look like my mess. He’s glorified in all of our messes, and that is the beauty in mistakes.
All of this…messiness…began a long, long time ago. I grew up with a small town, in a two-bedroom house with my mom, my dad, my older brother and my younger sister. We knew everybody’s secrets in that town. They knew all of ours.
The first time I remember my dad leaving home was the day after I’d sung my first solo in church. I was 4. He drove off that day on a Harley motorcycle, to “go find work” in his home state of Ohio, while we stayed behind in Texas. I watched him with dripping eyes until that motorcycle was too far away to even imagine, and I remember thinking my solo is what made him leave.
He worked out of state for a month or so. Maybe he sent home some money, maybe he didn’t. I don’t really know. I do know that he came home with a box of Jones Potato chips (a brand of chips made only in Ohio) and the clothes on his back. Seemed like he’d never left.
Short absences—a month or two—were normal after that. When friends would ask about my dad, I recited what he’d told us: that the jobs were better in Ohio. They looked at me with skeptical eyes. Maybe deep down inside I knew it was a lie, too.
The next time Daddy left for an extended trip (I knew because he took a backpack of clothes with him this time) was the same day I found out I needed glasses. I cried and cried and cried—partly because he was leaving but mostly because I needed glasses, and if I needed glasses, that meant I could no longer be perfect for him. And that meant he would stay away even longer.
He did.
He was gone for two years. At the end of those two years, my mom packed us up and drove the night through to Ohio. We rented a house in Mansfield. I could count on one hand the number of times Daddy slept in his own house while we were living in the same town. So my mom moved us back to Texas. A year later, she got a letter from her sister-in-law saying that Daddy had a 3-year-old daughter and a baby on the way with a woman he’d been fooling around with for years.
I was 11 years old when my parents split up, when I figured out I wasn’t good enough to keep my dad at home. I spent the next 10 years trying to prove I was good enough.
My mom moved us back to where we’d spent our first few years in school. I got contacts. She got debt, bought a shabby house surrounded by corn fields. Everybody in that town knew why we’d come back.
I threw myself into school, focused on my studies, played sports, joined the junior high band, did everything I possibly could to make my dad, to make others, notice what a wonderful person I was.
We visited my dad the summer between my sixth and seventh grade years. It was the first time I met my half-brother, my half-sister and the woman who’d caused my parents’ divorce. After a rough month, my dad took us shopping for school clothes—his contribution since he never sent child support. I remember moving out of the dressing room to those big mirrors outside, just to make sure the shorts I’d chosen fit right. Daddy and my stepmom were there. He said, “I thought she would have lost all her baby fat by now” in a kind of off-hand, nonchalant way.
I stopped eating lunch my seventh grade year. Told all my friends it was because our athletics class was right after lunch and my food didn’t have time to settle. I cut out breakfast my freshman year in high school because I wasn’t “hungry that early in the morning.” I’d forget my lunch, too. Only ate dinner, and that’s just because my mom was there, watching me with eyes that said she knew what I was doing.
It got easier in college because those eyes weren’t there. I would limit myself to a small smoothie every day—about 600 calories—and obsessively worked off that 600 calories—and more—by running six or seven miles and lifting some weights. I made excuses when my mom came to visit once a month or so. The Texas State marching band was really hard work, and I couldn’t keep the weight on because of it. She knew better. I know that now.
It wasn’t just the body image, either. The desire to be the best, to be perfect, pushed me to seriously focus on my studies. I graduated valedictorian of my high school class, got a full ride to college and graduated with highest honors from Texas State University in San Marcos. I still remember crying when I brought home my first B on a philosophy essay. I never let it happen again.
My sophomore year of college I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment with roommates who saw my pantry shelf and the very few groceries that sat there. At the time, I was news editor of the university newspaper, and the excuse I offered to them was that my job didn’t pay much (it didn’t) and I didn’t have money for more than the can of green beans I ate every day.
I got more involved in the Baptist Student Ministry during my junior year. The director there asked me to be the worship leader, and I remember thinking, “He has no idea how messed up I am.” But I did it, even while I struggled through my relationship with God. Working out, counting calories, was way more important to me than spending time with a living, able-to-heal God.
Recovery began my senior year of college, when I finally found it in me to admit I had a problem.
The summer prior to that, I’d gotten a call from my dad. He lived in Florida now. He was sober, which was unusual at that time. He told me he’d made a mistake, that he didn’t mean to do what he’d done. He apologized for leaving us high and dry, said it wasn’t my fault or my brother’s fault or my sister’s fault, that the fault was his alone. I told him I forgave everything, that I didn’t hold any of it against him because I loved him. He cried. I sobbed. Healing stretched its arms around us.
A month later, Ben and I decided to pursue a relationship together. When he and I first started dating, I’d moved up to editor in chief of the university newspaper. I spent hours and hours every day in my office—writing, editing, editing some more—and because I still had trouble eating three meals a day, Ben stuck a note on my computer that said “skinny = beautiful” with a line through the equal sign. I looked at it every single day, and maybe deep down inside I started to believe it.
Things have changed since those college days. My relationships are different—because I no longer (or at least try hard not to) compare myself to my friends or try to measure up to some impossible-to-reach bar just to prove I’m good enough to like.
My relationship with Ben is deeper than it used to be because I know he loves me even if there are 10 extra pounds on my body that weren’t there when we married. Maybe six years of telling me it doesn’t matter what I look like have finally lodged those words into my stubborn brain.
My relationship with my dad has been restored, to a certain extent. He knows where we stand. I know he’s suffered more than enough for what he’s done. Contact is still spotty, like it was when I was a kid, but I call him every other month just to let him know I’m thinking about him. I still love him as much as I did before he made his mistakes. Maybe I love him more because of his mistakes.
I still run five or six miles a day. But the eating disorder is gone. The tendency toward perfectionism is still there, but maybe I’m okay with that because it reminds me how I need God’s grace every single day to dodge the shackles that chase standards like that.
Some days I look in the mirror and don’t think that what I see is beautiful or thin enough. Those are the days I ask—maybe beg—Jesus to give me eyes to see myself the way he sees me—because the temptation is still there, curling its icy fingers around my arm. But Jesus never disappoints. Never. And some days, I do see what He sees: imperfect-but-still-beautiful me. Psalm 139:14 says, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You works are wonderful. I know that full well.”
It’s taken me 16 years to believe that I am one of his works.
People have asked me over the years if I would change anything about my past. My answer is no. Because my past has made me who I am, has helped me see things in a different way, has offered me an opportunity to minister to God’s people. I’ve written about my past in a book I shopped to agents last week. I’ve shared my past in the songs my band records.
No, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because God is glorified in what might look like my mess. He’s glorified in all of our messes, and that is the beauty in mistakes.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The beauty of messy love...
Overwhelming.
The love that bubbles in my heart, rises to my throat and lodges there when I look at my two sons, at their gem-of-a-man father, at their hands reaching for my face, my arm, my hair.
Overwhelming.
The panic that gurgles in my veins, claws at my throat and lodges there when I look at the mountains of laundry to be done, the piles of toys to be picked up, the layer of dust lounging on the tables and the bookshelves and the books that line them…not to mention the pages I need to design for work, the queries I need to write to agents so they’ll shop my book to publishers, the chapters I still need to write for my next book.
These emotions, so completely different from each other, live under the same roof. Sometimes it’s just…overwhelming.
Maybe you should know something about me. Maybe you already know it. I’m a perfectionist. Always have been…trying hard not to be.
But it sneaks in on days like today. Days when I look at that layer of dirt and wonder how we can even breathe in this house with two weeks of dust caking the ceiling fans that spin all night and the shelves my boys touch (and sometimes gnaw on, if we’re talking about Asa) and the beds where we sleep.
On days like today, I want to drop everything and clean until my hands fall off, until my feet scream for relief, until the whole house shouts, “Thank you, God, that she finally saw fit to pick up a duster.”
But on days like today, it is nearly impossible.
Because those boys (okay, and man)—a 2-year-old who would rather walk on toys than clean them up and a five-month-old who doesn’t even comprehend the word clean and a 27-year-old who seems like he should have been trained by now—are there, staring at me with eyes that say, “Stay here with me.”
So I do. I sit and watch Jadon pull out more toys and add to the pile that’s already out of hand. And I feel it growing inside me—the frustration, the horror, the panic of seeing my carefully-put-together game room becoming a tornado-went-through-here play room. I watch Asa stare at him, learning how to make a mess, and my eye starts to twitch a little. I watch Ben leave his shoes where he took them off instead of walking them to the closet where they belong, and my throat starts to burn a little.
And then I have to make myself remember something a very wise woman—my mama—told me just a few days ago: “There is no room for perfectionism in marriage or in parenting.”
No room for perfectionism. Oh, man.
But after the initial panic—“But if I can’t be perfect, what can I be?”—stops clawing at my face and my neck, I feel my shoulders relax a little, and I start to really watch the boys. Really watch them. And listen. I listen to Asa laughing hysterically at something Jadon has done. I listen to Jadon say, “I’m not a boy. I’m a man,” and I find myself thinking that he’ll make a fine man someday. I listen to Ben do everything he can to make Asa and Jadon laugh again, and I find myself thinking what a fine man, what a beautiful example, he really is (with the exception of the cleanliness, of course).
That’s when my heart starts to swell. That’s when I find myself remembering what started it all—this beautiful, messy life we four share together.
It was mid-September, 2002. I had just gotten home from singing the national anthem at a college basketball game. One of the assistant coaches had asked me out. I said no. Didn’t offer a reason, even though I knew it was because I’d written off dating, asked God to hold my heart until the right person came along. I drove back to my apartment, wondering if I’d made the right decision, and my roommate and her fiancé were standing outside, talking to this boy-man I had met before, had even been friends with for a while. The guys invited my roommate and me to watch a move at a mutual friend’s house. Something pushed me to say yes.
Ben and I talked during the whole movie. Six days later, God told me He’d given my heart to Ben. On Sept. 30, Ben told me he’d had a vision from God, a vision of his future wife. My mouth got dry until he told me the girl in his vision was me.
The next few months were sweet, sweet times. I was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper and would stay up at my office (Old Main on the campus of Texas State University) until 2 or 3 a.m. Sometimes Ben would meet me after work and walk me to my car because it was dark and dangerous, or so he said. Sometimes we would walk all the way to my apartment, enjoying the quiet of the morning hours and the way our hands fit together. Sometimes, when I was too tired to see, he would sit in my office keeping me awake while I did the final edit on the paper and sent it to press.
Two months after we’d decided to pursue a relationship, Ben asked me to marry him on stage at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio. We’d just gotten done watching The Nutcracker. His hands shook. My eyes leaked. We celebrated at The Olive Garden.
Oct. 11 will mark six years of marriage for us. I can’t believe it’s been that long since I wrote my vows and read them aloud for the 150 people crammed in that little historical church. He wrote a poem for me. I remember thinking, “I’m so glad I married a poet.”
I’m still glad, even if his dirty clothes do end up on the floor in the same pile as his clean ones (at least I’m not the one who has to do the “smell test”).
So this is the love that started it all. It’s that love, my love for him, my love for his children, that keeps me thinking—even when I look at the mess my sons can make in a matter of seconds—that I’m so glad I have a mess of toys to pick up. I’m so thankful I have five loads of laundry to do every week. I’m so blessed to have a sink full of dishes every morning.
Because it means they are here, alive and well. And I’m needed. Favored. Loved. That is what the mess and the disasters and the cries in my house tell me.
And that is what drowns the perfectionism.
Thank you, God, that they are here.
Asa talking to whoever will listen
Jadon sporting a mohawk
Asa
The brothers
The love that bubbles in my heart, rises to my throat and lodges there when I look at my two sons, at their gem-of-a-man father, at their hands reaching for my face, my arm, my hair.
Overwhelming.
The panic that gurgles in my veins, claws at my throat and lodges there when I look at the mountains of laundry to be done, the piles of toys to be picked up, the layer of dust lounging on the tables and the bookshelves and the books that line them…not to mention the pages I need to design for work, the queries I need to write to agents so they’ll shop my book to publishers, the chapters I still need to write for my next book.
These emotions, so completely different from each other, live under the same roof. Sometimes it’s just…overwhelming.
Maybe you should know something about me. Maybe you already know it. I’m a perfectionist. Always have been…trying hard not to be.
But it sneaks in on days like today. Days when I look at that layer of dirt and wonder how we can even breathe in this house with two weeks of dust caking the ceiling fans that spin all night and the shelves my boys touch (and sometimes gnaw on, if we’re talking about Asa) and the beds where we sleep.
On days like today, I want to drop everything and clean until my hands fall off, until my feet scream for relief, until the whole house shouts, “Thank you, God, that she finally saw fit to pick up a duster.”
But on days like today, it is nearly impossible.
Because those boys (okay, and man)—a 2-year-old who would rather walk on toys than clean them up and a five-month-old who doesn’t even comprehend the word clean and a 27-year-old who seems like he should have been trained by now—are there, staring at me with eyes that say, “Stay here with me.”
So I do. I sit and watch Jadon pull out more toys and add to the pile that’s already out of hand. And I feel it growing inside me—the frustration, the horror, the panic of seeing my carefully-put-together game room becoming a tornado-went-through-here play room. I watch Asa stare at him, learning how to make a mess, and my eye starts to twitch a little. I watch Ben leave his shoes where he took them off instead of walking them to the closet where they belong, and my throat starts to burn a little.
And then I have to make myself remember something a very wise woman—my mama—told me just a few days ago: “There is no room for perfectionism in marriage or in parenting.”
No room for perfectionism. Oh, man.
But after the initial panic—“But if I can’t be perfect, what can I be?”—stops clawing at my face and my neck, I feel my shoulders relax a little, and I start to really watch the boys. Really watch them. And listen. I listen to Asa laughing hysterically at something Jadon has done. I listen to Jadon say, “I’m not a boy. I’m a man,” and I find myself thinking that he’ll make a fine man someday. I listen to Ben do everything he can to make Asa and Jadon laugh again, and I find myself thinking what a fine man, what a beautiful example, he really is (with the exception of the cleanliness, of course).
That’s when my heart starts to swell. That’s when I find myself remembering what started it all—this beautiful, messy life we four share together.
It was mid-September, 2002. I had just gotten home from singing the national anthem at a college basketball game. One of the assistant coaches had asked me out. I said no. Didn’t offer a reason, even though I knew it was because I’d written off dating, asked God to hold my heart until the right person came along. I drove back to my apartment, wondering if I’d made the right decision, and my roommate and her fiancé were standing outside, talking to this boy-man I had met before, had even been friends with for a while. The guys invited my roommate and me to watch a move at a mutual friend’s house. Something pushed me to say yes.
Ben and I talked during the whole movie. Six days later, God told me He’d given my heart to Ben. On Sept. 30, Ben told me he’d had a vision from God, a vision of his future wife. My mouth got dry until he told me the girl in his vision was me.
The next few months were sweet, sweet times. I was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper and would stay up at my office (Old Main on the campus of Texas State University) until 2 or 3 a.m. Sometimes Ben would meet me after work and walk me to my car because it was dark and dangerous, or so he said. Sometimes we would walk all the way to my apartment, enjoying the quiet of the morning hours and the way our hands fit together. Sometimes, when I was too tired to see, he would sit in my office keeping me awake while I did the final edit on the paper and sent it to press.
Two months after we’d decided to pursue a relationship, Ben asked me to marry him on stage at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio. We’d just gotten done watching The Nutcracker. His hands shook. My eyes leaked. We celebrated at The Olive Garden.
Oct. 11 will mark six years of marriage for us. I can’t believe it’s been that long since I wrote my vows and read them aloud for the 150 people crammed in that little historical church. He wrote a poem for me. I remember thinking, “I’m so glad I married a poet.”
I’m still glad, even if his dirty clothes do end up on the floor in the same pile as his clean ones (at least I’m not the one who has to do the “smell test”).
So this is the love that started it all. It’s that love, my love for him, my love for his children, that keeps me thinking—even when I look at the mess my sons can make in a matter of seconds—that I’m so glad I have a mess of toys to pick up. I’m so thankful I have five loads of laundry to do every week. I’m so blessed to have a sink full of dishes every morning.
Because it means they are here, alive and well. And I’m needed. Favored. Loved. That is what the mess and the disasters and the cries in my house tell me.
And that is what drowns the perfectionism.
Thank you, God, that they are here.
Asa talking to whoever will listen
Jadon sporting a mohawk
Asa
The brothers
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