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
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
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