Broken Things

I own a lot of broken things...

This awareness came to me one day last week when I remembered a broken necklace that I have had for a while and have resisted repairing it...

I took it to my Dad-in-Love's house this summer to fix it, but after I left I had this distinct feeling that I was supposed to leave it broken....

At least for now.

Holding the two broken pieces in my hand I was reminded in a tangible way of the promise that Jesus is close to the brokenhearted. (Ps. 34:18)

I stood there looking at the delicate design, admiring the workmanship, knowing all the while that I have what it takes to fix the broken part of this beautiful thing...

But for right now it serves a better purpose for me in it's brokenness.

I have always readily identified with broken things. Not that I'm fond of junk per se, but I love to take something that was once lovely or functional and repair it or remake it into something new.

I'm certain that this trait is a reflection of my Heavenly Father and His desire to restore and redeem.

But for some time now I have had this nudge to leave things broken.

So I do...

Jesus understands broken...

I love the nativity set that I saved from the trash.

With some patience, (and super glue gel), I was able to repair a broken camel tail, restore a Shepherd who had a broken neck, and make a few other small repairs...

But what about baby Jesus with His missing hand?

I couldn't just leave Him that way, could I?

He who is Holy, whole, complete, lacking in nothing?

The One who brought His flawlessness to trade for all my shattered pieces?

All my shattered pieces...

All those parts of me that don't work so well.

The ones that I don't usually let anyone see....

Because, really, who wants to be broken?

This delicate tea cup sits in my china cupboard unrepairable.

I broke it one day while rearranging things and several pieces were so small they couldn't be saved.

From the front, outside the glass of the door, it looks perfect. Functional. Delicately stunning, (For those of us that appreciate tea cups.) But I know that it's broken. 

I own it.

It's mine.

I understand fully that it will never be able to do the task that it was originally intended to do...

and I keep it anyway.

I'm not usually one to write in the wee hours of the morning before anyone is awake at our house...

sleep has been an illusive friend these last many nights.

Usually I'm an evening writer, choosing to wind my day and mind down with the soothing keystrokes that I have loved since adolescence. 

I started this post many days ago. However, every time I started to move toward writing I felt the word "wait".

Waiting is not my strong suit, I'm getting better as I age, it's never come easy to me...

but this time, I did.

I tend to write from experience, I think that's pretty common, and the last several days have brought a level of brokenness that is new and uncharted for me.

There's nothing like a serious health issue with someone you love to rip everything about your reality into sharp focus.

And if you're going to navigate without losing your sanity, your hope, your ability to function.... then Jesus had better be right in the middle of that focus.

In fact He needs to be THE focus.

I remember when someone else in my family had a health trial that had me on my knees and pushed me past my ability to handle things myself.

It was my son then.

He was 12 years old when I got a call from the school that he was having an issue with his heart.

I'll never forget his chalky pallor and violet hands.

My son who had always been the healthy kid. 

The one who didn't pick up whatever bug was going around at our church nursery.

My athletic toddler who could ride a scooter, with the handle as low as it could go, along the tops of curbs.

The deep thinker, the loud laugher, the star pitcher, great hugger, ever active boy....

Broken.

He had been running the mile at his middle school and his heart decided not to fire it's electrical impulses correctly.

Those were long months while we figured out what was going on.

Doctor appointments, testing, episodes with his heart that sent me racing down the Interstate to Seattle Children's Hospital praying that I could make it before... 

I can feel the urgency even now. 

And then the five and a half hour cardiac surgery that brought a new diagnosis smack in the middle of it, and was finally declared unsuccessful by the surgeon himself...

It was all so difficult. 

We had no idea what the future looked like for him, for us.

I remember bringing him home to our little temporary house on the campus at Warm Beach Camp and sleeping at the other end of our comfy couch from him the first few nights as we let the arterial incisions in his legs heal.

The instructions I was given were this:

"If you notice any blood at the incision sites, ANY BLOOD, apply firm direct pressure and call 911."

Did I mention that Warm Beach Camp isn't particularly close to any major freeways? 

The thoughts that race through the mind of a mother that hasn't really slept well for several months when she hears instructions like that are enough to steal your breath and not give it back.

Those were scary times.

I was keenly aware of my lack of coping skills, of being pushed to the limit, of the brevity and delicacy of life itself.

Brokenness does that.

And now I sit with a new brokenness that unlocks the floodgates of a fresh torrent of thoughts and realities that I have been somewhat seasickly navigating.

Looking down the barrel of uncertainty doesn't usually bring out the best in people, and when I say people I mean me.

I have learned to handle uncertainty on some levels very well.

We all live with it daily.

There are tons of things we can't truly be sure of... job security, national security, other people's choices, even simple things like our car starting when we need it to.

Unexpected things happen and for the most part I have learned to live with that and ride those waves fairly well.

But being faced with with a potential diagnosis for this one I love that carries a discouraging prognosis at best...

Well in my book it feels like a tsunami, and there's no riding that.

All I can do is head to Higher Ground.

In all my brokenness, my lack of great coping skills, my inability to fix, change, control anything....

I run to Jesus.

He knows I'm broken anyway.

He owns me.

I'm His.

My broken things remind me of my own brokenness. 

Broken doesn't mean unlovely, unlovable, unloved.

It just means I need to be repaired.

Someone to be strength where I'm weak, to be functional where I'm not...

Maybe someone to just Hold me in His hand and gaze upon His delicate workmanship knowing all the while that He has what it takes to fix me....

and maybe, just maybe, right NOW I serve a better purpose for Him

broken.

Messy (2014)

Life is messy.

No big shocker to any parent out there.

Any janitor, nurse, school teacher, pastor, emergency personnel, student, victim, prisoner, beauty queen....

Anyone really.

Life just IS messy.

I've been on a journey this last two weeks with a dear friend of mine that I have know for going on decades. She and I decided that we needed more levity and reality in our days and decided to send a first-thing-in-the-morning NO PREP selfie to each other every morning.

Every Morning.

Yep. We sit up and snap it.

I will spare my sweet, similarly-quirky friend, (you know who you are and what you look like already), but I won't be so guarded with myself.

This is some of what I send:

I don't usually spend much time looking back at these, once is enough... or so I thought.

After I took this morning's picture, (the last one shown above), I was stunned for a moment at how closely it resembled how I looked in high school.

High school was not pleasant for me. I don't usually talk about it much because it was so painful and, well, messy.

By my Junior year I was addicted to alcohol and drugs of various sorts, (nothing IV due to a horrific overdose I witnessed earlier on), and I was looking for acceptance and my idea of love at any cost.

I was lost in the most profound way.
 
In the Autumn of 1991 I looked nearly identical to that photo, except that I was 14 pounds lighter and my eyes wouldn't have been that open...

It was right before I shaved my head to avoid being recognized by private detectives who were hired by my family to find me.

I was a runaway.

As long as I can remember I ran away. If life got messy I would go somewhere and hide.... in the towel closet, in the basement, in the upstairs attic space, in a nearby gulley under a giant willow tree....

Finding places to hide, to create a new reality even if just for a moment, came easy.

Facing difficulty head on did not.

I remember the first time my world shifted in a never-going-back kind of way.

The day my Grammaw Freda died.

I was at her house, as I often was, and we were just about to start a sewing project to mend a vintage Barbie gown.

She was an amazing seamtress... She could create or mend ANYTHING.

It always appeared as if there was nothing she couldn't do.

So, when she told me that she had to take care of something on the roof before the rain got going I didn't even bat my little 8 year old eyes.

She left the room with her Keds on, and at 68 years old she climbed up on the roof to clear a blocked gutter that cloudy Portland day....

Her husband had been a construction man. He built brick homes in North Carolina, many of which are still there today. He also was someone who could do anything.

Well, except beat Leukemia.

He died at 52, leaving my Grammaw a widow at 53.

But in all my time with her at that little grey house on 39th Ave., I never once heard her complain about being alone. She just did what needed to be done.

And that day the gutter needed clearing.

So she went out to do it...

and didn't come back.

Oh, I saw her again for a little bit, when I ran out to see what the loud clanging of the ladder on the gutter had been....

When I ran to her side there on the grass just beginning to show signs of the rain....

When the men I alerted from across the street carried her ever so gently into her house and onto the couch out of the storm she had known was coming...

And the last words she spoke to me were,

"Bless your little heart...."

It was messy in the worst kind of way.

That singular event sent my life into a tailspin that nearly took me off the radar several times.

Who knew that it was all connected?

My parent's divorce when I was 4, losing my dear Grammaw at 8, self-image obliterating abuse at 11, suicide attempt at 13, abortion at 15, anorexia and full blown drug addiction by 16, and then the association with evil men with even worse intentions and the overdose that was carefully orchestrated by the Enemy of My Soul to forever render me silent...

JESUS KNEW.

He knew all along.

He saw every tear, heard every curse word, sat by my side as I took another drink, another drug, another chance with the life I had no idea was a gift.

He never left me.

Not once.

I truly believe that's why when I called out to Him in the foggy frigid air of the San Francisco bay that November night in '91 He answered me so quickly...

He was right there...

The messes of our lives are so good at clouding out His presence, His love, His voice.

I look back now with new eyes and a soft heart and I can see his finger prints everywhere.

Even on THAT day, kneeling next to the woman that I loved more than my own life, with her can-do heart and her eyes the shade of the West Virginia skies she was born and raised under.

I know what His presence feels like now, because I draw near to Him every. single. morning. Not because I have to, but because I GET TO. I WANT TO.

Like my sweet, honest, REAL friend.... He loves me at my messiest, He always has.

He always will.

Beauty from ashes is His specialty and binding up the brokenhearted is Who He Is.

Take heart if you are reading this and are grieving. The tears running down my face even now bear witness that the pain does fade, but it doesn't ever leave.

There IS however joy in the morning....

I thank God for real friends, for real hope, for REAL redemption, and the real promise of his ever present love.

Jesus is there. 

Jesus is here.

Even in the messy.....


Psalm 34:18 "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed."
 
~Me

Staying Home

It's been 25 years since I left my childhood home.

Large windows, green shutters with matching flower boxes, white stately columns out front. Rhododendrons, pink dogwood tree, doorknobs that looked like diamonds, and wallpaper that was patterned like a cowboy's red bandana.

A beautiful Craftsman style house built in 1908... long before my time.

Home.

The place I was brought as a newborn, where I learned to crawl, to walk, to roller skate.

I skinned my knees on the sidewalk out front for the very first time.

I learned to ride my bike on that street, ground the bricks that were crumbling along a neighbors driveway for blush with a mariposa blossom as my applicator, befriended elderly artists and made pottery in their hidden studio.

I remember the munchkin sized door under the stairs that led to storage in reality, but I had dreams of another land under those stairs.... if only I could have found the key.

I can see my sister standing at the top of the long staircase with her purple eyeshadow and Farrah Fawcett hair. Her smile was perfect to me and her eyes more beautiful than Bambi's.

I knew every board that made up our fence, every knot hole that was my height at any given year that I could peer through into the massive garden behind us.

The memories are more good than bad now that 25 years have gone by. I don't think there's been a single day that I haven't missed it in one way or another.

We called it 'The Big House'.

In the last quarter of a century I have lived more places than I care to remember, some I actually think I have completely forgotten. (Thank you Lord.) But I do know that I haven't had the same adress for more than a few years a time in all those years.

I adopted a gypsy mentality out of necessity after bouncing from place to place more than a handful of times. I made it a sort of adventure and purposed to not become attatched to any one place knowing the pain that would come if I allowed myself to grow roots only to have to rip them out again.

It was effective for years. A tried and true survival technique.

But ya know what?

It got lonely.

I made friends, got involved at churches, my kids made friends, we started to know our neighbors, grow a garden, learn where all the best places to walk or ride our bikes were.... and then we'd have to leave.

I didn't have much control, if any, over so many of those moves. It was painful watching my kids have to endure the jostling for no real good reason.

And then there was the move in 2011 when my new husband Rick and I lost our home in California after the market crash in 2009.

Rick and I had talked about all of this jostling and unstable circumstances before we married in '09. We both had a deep desire to have roots somewhere and allow the last 3 kids in our care to have a permanent place they could call home, so when we realized we were not going to be able to keep the home we were in it was a real step of faith moving from California to Washington State.

We clearly heard the call of God on us to move here. We both had peace for sure, but we had NO IDEA how all of it would work. We knew we were losing our home, and any potential equity in it, we knew that we would have to relocate Rick's buisness, and we knew we needed to have a home in Washington within ten months of our moving there.

Can I just say that THE LORD BLEW THE DOORS OFF? 

We have known that the house we have been living in is nothing short of a miracle. It's a long story, but just so I don't kill you with curiosity:

1. We prayed and asked God to show us where He wanted us.

2. My husband felt led to a particular home.

3. I repeatedly reminded him that this wasn't a rental, that it was for sale, and it was a REALLY nice home that was probably out of our price range even if it were for rent.

4. My husband contacted the realtor anyway. (I love this man.)

5. We wrote a letter explaining our entire situation to the owners.

6. Our 13 year old son went in for a five and a half hour heart surgery the day after we mailed the letter.

7. I promptly forgot the letter AND the house.

8. The owners contacted the realtor and wanted to work with us based on the letter.

9. I wept like a baby IN PUBLIC when we got that news.

10. Without references, financial records, or any other proof of who we are, a deal was struck for us to be in a lease/purchase agreement at a rate that is truly unbelievable.

11. We have lived here for the last two and a half years.

12. It has become Home.

Okay, now that that's out of the way...

The agreement was more than fair, and both parties have honored it.We based our timing on our anticipated income, which was based on an established pattern that stretched over more than a decade.

But things don't always go the way we anticipate do they?

Relocating a buisness is hard. Establishing a client base is hard. Making a name for yourself in a new area is hard.

The last year and a half have been some of the hardest my husband has ever seen professionally. It's been tough to say the least. But he keeps his hand to the 'plow' and isn't a quitter, he will succeed. I know it. He's one of the most talented people I have ever known, and he's great with people.

It just takes time.

But now we are up against a serious challenge: our agreement is up in 90 days. We have until the end of November to secure a loan for the balance of the purchase price of our home.

For a several reasons, that will take a miracle.

I believe in miracles...

Everytime I see my son running down the field, his frame loaded with gear, jumping to catch a football... the same son who had the cardiac surgery that wasn't successful... I see a miracle.

When I look at my grandson and see the smiles on his teenaged mom and dad's face even though they are facing hard times themselves, I see a miracle.

When I see my father-in-love pull up and park in our driveway for a family dinner after having had hemorrhages in his eyes that were supposed to leave him unable to see, I see a miracle.

Truth be told, everytime I look at any of my children, at my father, at my husband... when I look in the mirror, I see a miracle.

I know that the Lord led us here, there is no doubt about it. Only He could do what has been done here.

It's the first place in these many years that has truly felt like home to me. Our home.

My prayer is that we could stay.

He knows the details, and I trust His will for sure.

But He says to 'come boldly before the throne', so I'm coming...

...come with me?

2 Sam 7:11b
"The Lord Himself will establish a house for you..."

Sunday Afternoon

Yesterday was Sunday.

A glorious, sunny, Sunday.

Big poofy clouds, birds singing, everything saturated with color and freshness.

I got up extra early, ate breakfast in our van, and sang on the worship team at our church.

(Having the ability to do that is miraculous in and of itself.)

I saw friends, I heard a great message preached, and then...

I came home and blew it.

Yes, me.

I blew it.

I let our current circumstances, my memories of past pain, the fear that is ever waiting right outside the door, my hormones, fatigue.... I let it all become bigger than the words I sang that morning.

And I sang them with sincerity.

I meant it when I sang, "Oh Lord, fill me, fill me up."

And, "This is amazing grace. This is unfailing love. That you would take my place.... That you would bear my cross...."

I was sincere for sure, but I was also holding onto things that so desperately needed laying down.

Let me just introduce myself,

Ahem...

Hi. I'm Margaret. I don't know how to say 'no' very well.

No to myself, no to good opportunities that take away from the best things of life, no when it might disappoint someone....

I like being a YES person... maybe a little too much.

That reality being highlighted in a whole new hue during the message may have been the trigger for the emotional earthquake that followed that afternoon.

The reality is: I AM scared. I AM overwhelmed. I AM fatigued. Our circumstances ARE uncertain....

But I forget in the midst of the baying hounds of doubt that 'I AM' has always been faithful to me personally, and to us as a family.

My Heavenly Father says:

I AM that I AM.

I AM enough.

I AM in control.

I AM your strength.

I AM working out the details of your life.

I AM trustworthy.

The problem? I frequently allow my life to get so busy, my schedule to get so full, my mind and body to become so overtaxed by over committing that I can't hear Him.

This is not a recent development.

This is a well-worn path that I have traveled ad nauseum.

Admittedly, I don't do big changes well. I don't do major disappointments well. My fleshly tendencies are to turtle-in or run like mad. Neither of which are a productive, relationship enhancing, trust building option. (Just ask my husband.... but wait a few days. Poor guy)

Big Hurts Heal Slow.....

I came into our marriage with more than my fair share, and my major coping mechanism was busyness. It put a decent band aid on my pain for quite some time... but my body decided to stop allowing the busy to continue. Oh, it had help from some serious damage from a horrible medication, but it said STOP nonetheless.

In my introduction, did I mention I have a tendency to be stubborn. Well, yes, there's that too.

But yesterday, when I blew it, I heard things come out of my mouth that gave me some big clues that
there are still some deep hurts in need of healing in me. Also, the red flags that I have been ignoring for near a month stopped waving and were getting tighter and tighter around my throat.... Don't you just love red..... ugh.

I went to the Lord and asked His help.

I asked my poor husband to forgive my meltdown.

I reached out for prayer and the Word.

Then I did what I always do.

I go to trusted authors and read their insights about Jesus....

Well, the Lord in His sweet kindness laid this one on me today:

     "God loves you just the way you are. If you think His love for you would be stronger if your faith were, you are wrong. If you think His love would be deeper if your thoughts were, wrong again. Don't confuse God's love with the love of people. The love of people often increases with performance and decreases with mistakes. Not so with God's love. He loves you right where you are...

      God loves you just the way you are, but He refuses to leave you that way."
                                                                                                                             ~ Max Lucado 

I sat reading those words that I KNOW so well with big fresh tears in my eyes.

He knows my frame, He made it. He knows my limitations better than I do, and doesn't think any less of me for them. He loves me before, during, and after my emotional meltdowns. He is that I AM.

I won't even try to describe the freedom I feel when I experience the forgiveness and reassurance that only come when I run to the Cross, broken and guilty, knowing full well that the same Saviour that said "Come just as you are" over 20 years ago is saying those same words today.

What a blessing to have such a clear call to stop and wait at His feet.

Oh Lord, help me to listen sooner.

And thank you for a marriage where we are quick to apologize, and even quicker to forgive.

Flawed and Forgiven.

What a miracle...