This Time Last Year

This time last year I was round bellied with unborn baby Aiden. We still lived in that little icky house on Fairfax. I still had a job. Josiah was in church daycare 3 days a week, at a daycare that is no longer in business, in a church that I no longer call home.

This time last year my Wednesday morning discipleship group was still going. My Wednesday night recovery group hadn't ended yet either.

This time last year, as my belly grew, so did confusion, resentment, and discomfort in relationships I didn't realize were about to abruptly end.

I didn't know an earthquake was coming, though there were tremors. There were a lot of tremors.

So this time last year, my legs were being trained to stand in the tremors before a big one hit. The earth was going to shift, and people I loved were going to end up over there, while I was over here. From where I stood, I was about to watch my safe haven crumble. I also was about to turn and see that a safe haven had been growing around me during all these tremors.

This time last year, in the painful confusion of the moment, and the moments still to come, I was being cared for. It was as if the physical distance that a pregnant belly creates between two people became emotional distance, spiritual distance. And it kept me from bleeding out when the earth cracked and our minds were stunned and our hearts broke.

This time last year I couldn't have known that the place I would land would be just where I wanted to be. Or that I would be grateful for the betrayal and loss because I am learning how to love now. I am learning how to open this heart to the sweet, tender, and beautiful people who can also be unfaithful, disappointing, and crushing. Both. We are all, always both. We are wonderful. We are not good. We are never enough. And He always is.

He's always enough. More than enough. Where He could have let me fall, or offered a slab of concrete to land on, instead He grew soft grass and expanding fields and mountains and oceans and exquisite flowers and birds and reminders that He delights in my delight and He is not afraid of the quaking earth because He owns it, and he owns me, and He is Love.

New Frame (aka: head on fire)

There is a fire in my brain. Sometimes it starts burning too hot and I can't quite breathe and I lose all sense of what I need to do next. I get paralyzed over my to do list.  Not because any one thing on it is too hard. But because everything seems hard when I can't catch the next breath. I have to break it down to the basics. Find some facts to grab on to to keep from floating away.

It's summer. I am 32. I have been married for 11 years. I have a 4 year old and an 8 month old. I stay at home with my boys. I haven't gone to college. I live in Anderson, IN. My parents live in Washington state. As well as my sister and brother. My other brother lives in England. I don't see them very often.

Writing these things steadies my breathing for whatever reason. Strips me of my pretend selves and gives me something to actually work with. Maybe it's a way to cope with the obsessive compulsive disorder I've struggled with since childhood, but only recently begun to acknowledge and understand as a struggle.

I did not imagine my life this way. I thought I would go to school, or join a ministry and go overseas, or do something that felt a lot different than what my day to day life feels like. I was unrealistic in this - never actually making a plan, and then not recognizing that my day to day life is and always has been what goes on inside me. And I've been locked up inside for as long as I can remember.

I talked with my counselor this morning about food, about the cages around me, and it, again. About the shame I'm blanketed in, and suffocating in and that there is more healing to be had still, again. That there is a different frame to look through regarding desire and longing and hunger and pleasure. Her calm against my anxiety; gentle, inviting, steadfast, trustworthy, gracious. His eyes peering through hers, seeing and asking and holding. Love of all loves, Creator of all, handing me this new frame, again.

Out of the vortex that is my history - all my life and needs and relationships and strivings and shame and failing and hiding and excusing and hungering, craving, grasping - I land here. At my kitchen table. 4 year old in the back yard, bare arms needing sunscreen. 8 month old upstairs in his crib making his sweet, might - go - back - to - sleep noises. I land here, June 14, 2012, 32 years old, and I reach for this new frame. Pick it up, test it out, pray I can hold it. Pray I can keep it. Pray I can stop trying to writhe out of my life long enough to start living it.