six months ago

November 13, 2013
There are so very few witnesses. 

So very few who see, understand.  Who know without me saying.

I am trying, but my thoughts are spinning and I know if I don’t flesh them out, they will just lose momentum.  And come crashing down.

We have to choose, the movie told us, to live each day like we were getting a second chance.  Like we were given the opportunity to do it all over again. 

We thought it was going to be a sappy, Christmas-time chick flick.  And it ended up being a movie about family.  About second chances and the consequences of our choices.  The things we value too much to ever change.  The time we so often take for granted.

So I woke up this morning and deliberately chose.  I asked for help telling a better story.  To do better.  And I just don’t know if it was the asking or the choosing, but today has been better.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately ignoring some anger.  Or, rather, pretending I’m angry instead of sad.  Because there’s this big, gaping hole.  Hollowed out, not so smoothly.  And I really only notice it at night and when the wind blows and it hurts… not at all unlike the gap from a lost tooth.  Or the place where your coat folds away from your neck. 

Light would catch this abyss and be lost in it, drawing my attention.  But you can’t think on something too long, too hard, without beckoning it; and so I would just shake it off.  Blink.  Keep going.  To beckon it, would be to beckon the sadness.

And not just the sadness.  The embarrassment.

Do you know what I mean?  Heartbreak doesn’t just make you sad.  It doesn’t just make you angry.  It embarrasses you.  Me.  Because heartbreak means someone cared less than you did.  Once again, maybe for the hundredth time, you invested yourself poorly.  You loved and they found you unlovable. 

This should be a testament to them—those who don’t reciprocate.  But it never is.  It’s a reflection of you.  Me.  And all that is not worthy and all that was wasted and all that still hurts.

But just like everything else, it’s not the only thing that hurts.  It’s just what people ask about. 

And I’m choosing to forgive and slowly, daily, the hollow place is shrinking.  We are learning to do it this way.

But what I want, despite hollow places and heart break and embarrassment and achy loneliness, is to live a good story.  To create magic and moments and build a family regardless of our demographic.  Despite our missing pieces. 

I miss being part of solutions.  I miss big hugs and teaching boys how to shake hands and I miss fractions and sight words.  I miss feeling bold and brave and being the one who loves those embarrassed and unloved.

I didn’t stop loving. 

But I am still searching. 

Trying to find coveted balance.  Trying to grow myself.

I am a builder and I feel like I ran out of bricks.

And all I want is to build a life where Judah knows how to love others and never questions that he too is loved.  I want to be patient and creative and considerate and to use the pain from these hollow spaces to propel us forward into bigger, better things.

But some days, I just sit.  I don’t know what else to do.

I don't want to depend on anyone else.  On charity or child support or hand outs or favors.  I've worked too hard and too long and built our way out of rented rooms and food service jobs to this, where we are now.  

But today... on the days I sit, thinking about how unless someone thought to ask, all of this goes unwitnessed...

I just pray for a witness. 

Wherever he is.  Whatever he's doing. 

May 12, 2014

Sometimes words are meant for later.  They're built and constructed for a later time and are meant to sit and wait.  Age and ripen.  Until we (I am) are ready.

Until I am ready to say them, own them.  Until I am ready to make them real, in the open space breathing on their own.

So some night, when I sit down in desperate need, the words are already there.

I have not been able to expel them, because they're sitting, waiting patiently to be retrieved.

They've been whispered, only to be owned.

And I sit at my kitchen table, in the dark with the baby in bed and the fan whirring and the hollow sound of a slightly deflated basketball hitting the pavement outside my door, and find what I needed to say has already been said.

And I take a deep breath, ready to share.  You're ready to hear it now, the words from six months ago.

I feel some sadness.  The words from six months ago, ringing painfully true tonight.

There's little, if anything to add.  Except that the sadness is tinged with delight at knowing the life, which exists in the words I've been given.

Only something truly alive could wait so patiently.

I wrote this morning: I feel as though I am staring at a pile of bricks.  Not broken or destructed, just a pile.  And how I build from this point forward will make all the difference.

So.  It's time to build again.

I am a builder.

And all I want is to build a life where Judah knows how to love others and never questions that he too is loved.  I want to be patient and creative and considerate and to use the pain from these hollow spaces to propel us forward into bigger, better things.