I look over to the right of me and I see my two children. Right now, Maddie is switching between ripping apart a tissue and feeding herself "something" from a bowl in her "kitchen". Eli is reading his dinosaur book for the 1, 245th time! What a simple...but beautiful sight. My children, the reason I am what, where, and who I am now. I often wonder if other women are as emotionally sentimental. I bought Madeline a tea set for Christmas. When I pulled the box off the shelf, I held it in my hands and had a bit of a flash forward...of my baby girl all dressed in frills waiting for her daddy to join her for tea...of she and I enjoying many gallons of invisible tea and cookies...of memories I have before they ever take place. I often imagine Eli as a grown man, getting married. It thrills me to think of him, coming from me but with no signs of the dysfunction in his "ancestry"...being a husband and father just like his father. What a peaceful thought. Again, I ask you, do all women think this way?
For years before I read books about God and love, I sat in Christian college classrooms, I attended seminars and lectures about being a woman of God and love, etc...and I never got it, never. Most of those people said the same things. I thought it was beginning to be a conspiracy. People just spit out the same old speech or wrote the same repetitive sentence in order to get a pay check. The same old cliches wrapped in a prettier package than the last fad. It never hit me...it never sank in. Don't get me wrong. I usually cried right along with the other women. Of course I was crying for a completely different reason. I cried because all those fancy words bounced off my heart of stone and usually landed on the lady next to me who could raise her hands in praise to God. She could close her eyes and pray. She had compassion and happiness...two things that escaped me. I wanted to be whole and solid in whatever love did to these women. I wanted it woven in and out of every millimeter of my body and mind. It never happened. Thus lead to my thinking I must be the anti-Christ. You laugh, but I really believed that I was solid evil and full of darkness. Why else couldn't I get it? Why couldn't I absorb the feelings of love or whatever it was that other people felt for God?
I can listen to the same people and read the same books and what they say makes sense to the logical side of me...like it adds up like a mathematical addition problem...cause and effect! Of course when something is clear and just makes logical sense it is easier (for me anyway) to accept into truth and truth is easy on the heart! What brought me to the other side of love and understanding the eternal truth of love? Don't you wish it was that simple? As if one thing, one event can bring you across the bridge into forever being happy and at peace in this life! I wonder still, what was it? Let's review...was it Diane? Was it her sitting next to me in "therapy" because she genuinely cared? To know love exists and accept it I firmly believe it has to be displayed to you. Why else would God let us enter this world as babies? He gives us parents to be the examples of physical and emotional love and trust so that later we can make an informed decision whether we will give Him our hearts although we can't see Him. Those who are in love know that that feeling keeps your heart beating and will sustain you till you breath you last and then enter into the presence of God's face (awesome!!!!!). We need to remember that it is not God who makes our parents bad examples of love...they make those decisions. Diane was my example of parental love...love that survives the storm. She isn't perfect and I am not perfect and the relationship suffers at times but that is life. Life does not steal the love back. Life does not make truth of God false. Life can rock the boat but God will make you float (haha, I just made that up!)! I also think understanding the truth is the direct result of my digging deep into the past and into myself or what my childhood "taught" me. My mother lied to me...A LOT! She once said to me that all the law required her to do for me was feed me and clothe me. I always felt like a burden wherever I went. When I needed "love" or some sort of emotional attachment I felt like I was whining or being annoying. I NEEDED to feel significant to someone...anyone. Is this why the teen pregnancy rate is so high? Sex and babies...proof to yourself and others that someone spent time on you. Is this why people use drugs and or drink? Chemicals dull the pain of loneliness and alter your mood. Is this why some people commit suicide? I can remember contemplating suicide and thinking, "They will miss me when I am gone!". There are so many reasons people do these things. Not all pregnancies cast shadows on your future. I don't fully understand addictions, thank the Lord! It just seems that so many of the world's problems could be cured with love...WOW, the biggest cliche ever. But think about it. What does real love for someone do to you? Take my love for my husband. If something happened to Evan, my world would feel like it had no direction. I would hope to see everything stop so that every thing on this earth would stop and mourn with me. It would make sense if the sun never came up again. Why would I want to wake up if he weren't there to walk beside me? It is my love for him that wants nothing bad to happen to him...nothing painful. It is love that let's me put myself aside and do things for him. I don't do or say things that will crush him. My actions are not always perfect but love does not allow me to do or say things that would cripple him. When I hear of someone being killed in an accident or otherwise, I liken how I feel about my family and realize that there are people in pain! People who are in mental hospitals...the ones who talk "crazy"...what if they feel it? What if they believe the things they say, deep in their hearts, they believe it? Don't we say what we feel? What if something in their lives was too much to bear and now they hold on to one good memory? What if they are just so afraid? What if the homeless man's pain is so so so deep he can't get out of it? What if he felt like death was the only release he will ever feel? My grandmother was in a nursing home for the last 4 years of her life. She always wanted to die. She prayed for it. I never understood that until recently. She had a stroke and could not use the left side of her body. All in one afternoon she lost the ability to take herself to the bathroom among many other things I do without ever thinking I could lose the ability. Of course heaven would seem 1000x more appealing than being paralyzed and in constant pain! There was a woman that stayed down the hall from my grandmother who would roll her wheel chair down the halls of the building screaming "Operator, operator!" over and over. I never hear her say a different word. I was scared of her. She would wheel close to people in the hallways and yell her word at them. I use to hide from her until I could sneak past her. I wonder now, what happened to her? Was she reliving something in her past? Was it a tragedy? Why at the end of her life was this incident all she could think about? Was she still in pain? I guess you can call it "putting yourself in another person's shoes". Would that kind of compassion change the world?
All this said...when I look out into my living room I realize some big things. I would never be this person if I had deviated from this path even once. If I had not experienced the pain I could not experience the healing. I would not have the perspective of both "ways of thinking". I wouldn't give that up. What an amazing tool I have...one that will help me teach things to my children. It was a dark, painful, and lonely beginning but it gave me this life...right now. I cherish my children more than I would have otherwise. The cycle of my mother and her mother repeating the dysfunctional habits they were taught has been shattered...it is over.
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