Today we laugh...

Today we are celebrating Isaak's 11th birthday. And celebrating we are! Over the past year God has brought our family from a place of pain and mourning and chaos to a place of peace and joy and, to be honest, still chaos.  Yesterday we wept.  But today we laugh.

The changes that our family have undergone are due in large part to the transformation that has happened in Isaak's life. He has worked so hard the last 10 months through 3 day a week therapy sessions and radical diet changes and counseling. We could not be more proud of him and more thankful for the way that God has redeemed the pain that we felt for so long.

I was looking through some pictures this morning and reading some things that I had written in the darkest of days. It brings me so much joy to know that I am on the other side of that and yet, at the same time, I feel so much for that girl that I was. At the time I don't think I even realized how bad it was. How broken I was. I remember so many tears and so many prayers begging God to make sense of all of it. There were days when I felt like He had turned away. When I felt like I was alone and abandoned and destined to live in that darkness forever. I found this that I wrote around the time of Isaak's birthday one year ago.

Time. 

Time disappears.
Days. Weeks. Months. Years.
All gone.
They evaporate.
Vanish. 

Because time is a luxury for the hearts that are still beating.
It's a measure of breaths and smiles and dawns.
Hours clump together to form days and days are marked by the creation of something new.   

But when your heart surrenders to the old, new ceases to exist.
When you've given up.
Given in.
Even time succumbs to the dark. 

It's not that light can't be seen from the dark.
Oh, it's there.
It's glaring and blinding and a constant reminder of what could have been.
Of a joy reserved for others.
For better.
For more deserving.
For what feels like everyone else.
But you.
And what is left.   

Time.

Reading that today makes me sad for all the time that is gone.  It breaks my heart that I refused to see that even in pain there can be joy. It makes me realize that when I felt the most alone, I really wasn't. It also makes me wonder how I got anything done except painting my nails black and listening to Emo music.  Seriously.

Just last Sunday I sat (and wept) through a worship service as these words rang in my head and heart in a way that makes them so much more than words.  More than letters and spaces and consonants and vowels.  More than a hope or a wish.  But a promise that I have tested and I know with all that I am to be true.  From Luke 6:21:

 

Blessed are you who hunger now,

    for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now,

    for you will laugh.

  

Yesterday we wept.  Today we are laughing. And still weeping, but tears of joy.

Possible. Not Perfect.

A few weeks ago I had dinner with some old friends from high school.
We knew each other so well back then. Almost 20 years ago.
We grew up together. We grew apart together.

One of them said it first. Then the others agreed.
It was suppose to be nice. She meant it at a compliment.
It was her perception. Their perception.
Their conclusion of the story based on the what they had seen.
What I had told them. What I had shown them.
But mostly what I had not.

It came so easily out of her mouth. "You life is perfect" she said.
They agreed.
"Perfect family." "Perfect marriage." "Perfect house." "Perfect."
It was that word that I had spent a life time trying to convince people of.
That word that should have felt good. That should have felt right.
But instead it stung.

I heard it and it hurt. 
Like a slap. Like a cut.
Like a punch that knocks the wind out of you.
Like a lie. I should have stopped her right there.
I should have not let them leave that table until they understood.
I should have told them the truth.
I should have showed them.

I said "thank you" and I tried to down play it and I tried to change the subject.
But this is what I should have done.
What I should have said.

I am the product of divorce.
Of two lives that crashed together and left three little girls in the wreckage.
I've heard it all.
The yelling. The screaming. The fighting.
The tension. The angst. The constant crisis.
Broken. Never perfect.

I am the daughter of an addict.
Alcohol. Drugs. Sex. Gambling.
The hustle.
A criminal. A lair. A cheater.
I pretended as a little girl that I understood.
That I could rationalize knowing that we were better off without him.
That I could understand that even when we were with him, we were without him.
But all the rationale. All the reason. All the justification.
None of it hid the truth. The reality that he loved all of those things more than me.
The things that tormented him. His afflictions. His own personal demons.
He loved them all more than he loved me.
Shattered.
Never perfect.

I am loved by a man that, on most days, I can't completely love back.
Not because I don't want to. And not because I don't.
But because I can't understand why he does. And how he could.
How he could know me and still love me.
There is always a little piece of me that is waiting for the day.
The day when it all gets to be too much.
The day when hard become too hard.
The day when he takes the same path as my father.
Fearful.
Never perfect.

The list goes on.
All the things that I am.
Scared. Prideful. Stubborn.
All of these things.
The distrust. The shame. The anger. The broken. The shattered. The fear.
None of them perfect.
Not even close.

On my own, I'm nothing but a mess.
At best, nothing more than a list of my worst.
None of that perfect.
Not even close.

I wish I could go back to that night. I would make them hear this.
I would look each one of them in the eye.
And then I would tell them this.

It's all grace. 

It's all because of grace.
It's grace that takes all of these broken pieces and puts them back together again.
And even still, it's not perfect.

It's pieces of the broken that are taped and glued and pushed back into place.
It's not seamless.
The cracks and the shatters and the tears are still there.

Grace doesn't make the old perfect. It makes the new possible.
And even still, it's not perfect.

Never perfect. But possible.