Creamed strawberry VO5 fills my scent memory.  Her nails were always so pretty, dainty translucent white painted oval tipped juxtaposed against deformed and swollen fingers. Fingers disabled by arthritis and years of so much hard work with skin thin as paper, ivory, singing blue bulging veins.  Her smile was bright and wide, revealing big and beautiful teeth, slightly worn down by medication and disease.  I remember the feel of her gray curls, ombré with dark gray at her ends and a softer gray and white at the roots. They were wiry yet soft.  I touch her face in my  mind.  I kiss her gently on her powdery soft cheek.  I can feel her warmth. I imagine myself leaning into her and nestling my face into her arm, nestling deeper until my head is resting on the side of her breast.  I wrap my arms around her waist and tighten as a floodgate of tears cascades into her sweater.  She wraps me in her blanket. The green one. She prays. Her voice fills the room as she cries out to God for me.  I selfishly unleash all of my internal woe unto her. Even though she carries so much, she only cares about me.  I remember her this way, as close to true altruism as possible. I imagine her cooking me some rice and milk porridge.  She only makes it for me because I was the only one who likes it and she serves it with a side of hot Lipton tea loaded with sugar and milk.  She will do anything to make me happy because all she cares about is the time we have together. 

Oh how I lament moving away. Oh, how I suffer over not coming to see her more. I regret not calling more.  She flew down to Georgia to see my freshly born babies. The only family that cared enough. She stayed and she helped me with Trey and Blade.  She always loved me as if I was her own daughter and in my heart I really was hers! I loved her more than life itself.  And yet, I left her and I started my life far away and I was too far away to be there when she needed me as her brain and body were eaten away by Early Onset Alzheimer’s.  I didn’t comprehend what that disease meant.  I thought it was just that her memory was fading. I didn’t realize it meant that she was going to disintegrate and die faster than I could even imagine. The woman I loved more than life itself.  I should have stopped everything and brought my kids to her and stayed with her for months until she passed. The last Christmas we had, I couldn’t imagine she would be gone soon after.  It is why these holidays are so painful, they remind me of is HER.  She made Thanksgiving magical. She made Christmas joyful.  Being at her house on Christmas was literally what I waited for all year long.  Being at her house every day of my life is what I longed for because I loved HER more than life itself.  She made me feel safe. She made me feel loved. She made me feel like I was special.  She would look me in my face and tell me I was beautiful. She discovered my singing gift. She was always there. Until she was gone. 

And I can never forget the pain, the anguish of letting you go.  Holding my hand to your chest as you breathed your last. The woman I had adored since my birth. I loved YOU more than life itself and just as you were there with my mom to welcome me into this world, I got to see you out of this world.  And there is nothing beautiful about death, but when you died, that moment I felt your spirit leave your body, I felt the incredible beauty of your spirit being escorted by God himself. That’s what it felt like. A warmth filled the room as we all prayed and wailed.  There is nothing in this world like that feeling.  And I have spent so many years denying myself the room to grieve you. You were more than just my grandmother, you were a mother.  Every good memory I have is of you.  I remember waking up in your bed, whistling.  I remember your breakfasts. I remember you waking up and staying with me all night when I was sick. I remember being under your blanket on the sofa watching Golden Girls. I remember you scrubbing my hair. I remember you cleaning my bottom. I remember everything you taught me. I remember your prayers. Your endless list of prayer requests written on that note pad in your huge purse filled with everything. I keep my purse the same way.  I still wear your pajama pants.  I still have that Walmart gift card.  I have the little honey bee pots.  I can never get over you.  I wish you were here now.  So I could spoil you. I long to make you creamy oatmeal and tea.  I long to cover you in a blanket and lay beside you and watch old shows.  I long to touch your hair. I long to hold you, pray for you.  My life has an aching hole without you.  I know that all that ever truly loved me left with you.  I can hear you singing:

“Consado y calgado lejos del senor, sin la esperanza de la salvacion. Buscaba   Consuelo a mi alma perdida, consuelo buscaba a mi Corazon. Y llorando, y llorando las horas pasaban, gritaba y clamaba con desesperacion, sin saber que el senor, alli a mi lado estaba y me vijilaba, el buen Salvador.”

The last place I thought I would end up was prison.  The drive into Edna Mahan is surprisingly peaceful and almost majestic. Deer grazed on the well manicured grass along the entire road towards the entrance. The sun was setting and a warm amber glow hugged the distant sky.  It felt more like driving up to a well secured college campus instead of a minimum, medium, and maximum security prison.  I had a knot in the pit of my stomach.  Would these women just eat me alive? I was tough but not Edna Mahan tough.  I rehearsed over and over in my head how I would introduce myself, how I would handle someone handing me a letter to send out for them like the guards warned might happen.  I thought about how I would protect myself from being shanked.  I prayed for God to take over. I prayed for him to use me in whatever way he could to minister to the women who would be coming to our class.  We parked, calmly and nervously gathered our materials, and walked into the check in office which was right at the front gate and entrance to Edna Mahan. There we turned in purses and keys and jewelry and were interrogated and checked for credentials.  The guards were nice and professional but still intimidating.  They escorted us through a door that led right into the grounds of the prison.  Grounds was minimum security. Women freely walked around like groups of college girlfriends on their way to their next class.  Some women were walking dogs, others were sporting full faces of make up. It was nothing like I had expected. There was an ease as friendly faces said hello as they passed.  We made our way to the building where we would be hosting our class for the evening. The prison Chaplain met us there and more ease and comfort came over my anxious heart.  Chaplain knew what she was talking about and what she was doing and I had such a confidence in a woman I knew so little about.  She had a knowledge I wanted to soak up into my brain and a love for hurting and damaged women that I wanted to absorb into my soul. I will never forget the first faces that came in that beautiful evening. There was one older woman serving a long 30 year sentence (years later I would come to find out it was for murder). She was clearly a mature believer with unwavering faith is Christ and was a strong leader and source of wisdom and spiritual strength and guidance for the other women.  At that time she was nearing the end of her time in prison.  Another woman full of energy and life and kindness came in smiling, a deep and loud scar across her entire neck, the hardness of her miserable life knotted in the over healed flesh.  She talked about her son Nicholas, showed me his picture, so much hope radiated from her eyes as she spoke of him.  So many faces, some were smiling, some were solemn, some were dead serious and intimidating.  But they were all searching, they were all alone and desperate for real connection, and they were all carrying the weight of their lives lost to their horrible decisions, the grief of the people they had hurt, the children they had lost to their drug habits, the deaths they had caused, the incredible trauma of their childhoods.  It was a heaviness with which I could relate, and for once in a very long time, I felt at home. These women carried the same things I carried except that I was lucky. I was lucky to have found Christ before doing something awful, I was lucky that I had the support of someone who loved me.  Some of them never had a chance.  All the odds were stacked against them.  I felt such an instant and deep connection and love for the women of Edna Mahan and the path that led me to that room that day is a story that is full of the prompting and leading and pure miracle of God. There is no other way of explaining the way things happened.

In 2006, after a year long deployment to Iraq that started shortly after our son’s death, my husband was honorably discharged from the Army.  We left Georgia with no desire to look back.   As a matter of fact, as we left the entrance of the base to Fort Benning we joked about racing off and never returning as long as we lived.  We arrived in New Jersey twenty three long hours later ready to begin our new life.  We lived with Brett’s parents for a while. While there we attended his childhood church South Ridge, which is by no coincidence directly across the street from the well hidden maximum security prison.  Along with Brett’s mom I started going to a program called Community Bible Study in Flemington. It was led by a dynamic and mesmerizing woman.  She was an incredible speaker, intelligent, honest, fearless, powerful, anointed, and beautiful.  I was completely moved and convicted by her words every week. During this time I was working on my Bachelor of Criminal Justice Administration and specifically studying the unique issues regarding women in prison.  I was juggling school, work, and a two year old.  My hands were so full and I was nearing the end of my degree and was longing to know where God was leading my life.  One day after reading about the differences in motivation for crime between men and women, I felt the urge to pray.  I got down on my knees and cried out to God asking him to guide my life and begging him to show me what I should do.  I felt this deep ache in my heart and a voice deep inside my soul said, “I want you in prison and I want you to tell Beth”.  I sat up and quickly brushed it off as my own mind and desires guiding me.  Beth was the vivacious leader of Community Bible Study that I so admired.  The very next Community Bible Study meeting as I sat in the audience, I heard that deep inner voice say it again, “I want you in prison and I want you to tell Beth”.  I thought I was completely nuts.  The urge was so strong that I feared I was schizophrenic. No feeling or conviction had ever overwhelmed me like that. I almost got up in the middle of the service to leave I was so filled with emotion.  After she was done preaching and the room began to clear, I sheepishly walked up to Beth.  I could not believe what I was doing and I was sure she would think I had a demon and ask me to never come back. So instead of telling her what was in my heart I wrote my number down on a piece of paper, my body drenched in adrenal sweat, and asked her to please call me.    A few days later she called but I had been out. I was so relieved I had not been there.  I did not call her back and woke up the next morning horribly sick.  I felt this weight on my body and felt the sickness was connected to my disobedience.  So out of fear I picked up the phone and called Beth, and much to my dismay, she answered.  So out it came. I explained to her my prayer and what I felt I heard.  She listened very quietly and I was mortified.  Then she began to explain her own dilemma. She had been praying for God to show her where to bring Community Bible Study next and had felt a pull to prison, and she comforted me by adding that she believed what I heard was from God and she was going to pray about it. I was floored. I was not crazy, something special was happening.  A few weeks later, Beth called me again, there was this joyful dance in her words as she told me that at a Christmas party she began to have a conversation with a man she never met before who ended up being the prison warden to a juvenile correction facility in Hunterdon County.  We both knew it wasn’t a coincidence.  Just like that, people began to come out of the woodwork with similar callings and not so chance meetings occurred and all the right people came together to start a beautiful ministry.  Even the money for it all came from God as one church had an untouched reserve of money for prison ministry.  Beth and I went into Edna Mahan to meet the Chaplain and present the Community Bible Study in prison ministry that God himself had laid out in front of us.  She considered and she accepted.

One terrifying and small act of obedience opened up the floodgates of heaven’s blessings and for nearly three years I ministered to the women of Edna Mahan. I did the worship at first on grounds and then had the wonderful opportunity to teach the women of C Cottage, a well secured section of the prison that housed women with cognitive and mental challenges.  After I left the ministry to devote my life full time to my children, maximum security opened up to CBS and the people within the ministry opened up other avenues of ministering and helping the women post incarceration.  I often think about my time there and the way things unfolded and I am left in awe at how evident God was in it all.  I remember the faces of the women. Both the women I served with and the prisoners.  I long to return one day. I don’t know when it will happen but I know it will. The desire still burns in my heart. It was an experience that changed my faith forever. I learned to trust the voice of God. He doesn’t lead us astray and when he puts something in our hearts it is always so that we can respond by prayer and action.  And you know what I found? That I was being ministered to as much as those women.  And on rainy days when I feel down and sorry for myself I remember the stories of those women. I remember the sad eyes, I remember the voices, I remember the gates slamming behind me, and I remember that I got to walk out of there freely every Tuesday.

I would love for everyone to believe through my posts and Instagram stories that I am the cool mom that has it altogether all the time. It is true, I can be super cool, I can handle a lot because I am a ridiculously hard worker.  But I am also a demanding tyrant and too honest, like hyper critical honest. That coupled with my need for things to get done quick and perfectly, also makes me rather impatient.  I am unsure of what forged these character qualities in me that in another world would make me a seriously successful boss lady but I can tell you that it started rather young.  I was always neat. I had my Barbie dolls lined up across my desk, each one dressed and with their hair done. My bed was always made with my blankets neatly folded in my closet. My shoes and clothes were lined up in my closet the same way.  I was so compulsive about my room being clean that I would even copiously organize under my bed until there was no hint of lint or dust bunnies.  I was a very unusual kid.  I had a difficult time sitting down to do my homework because my room had to be perfect before I could. I was the same in college too. I spent more time dusting my desk than I did writing papers.

I truly believe a Psychiatrist would have definitely diagnosed me with an obsessive compulsive disorder. These behaviors were influenced deeply by my own mother, who unlike me was not cool or loving in any capacity, but much like me was a neat freak and impatient.  I would say I have far more patience than she ever did but I am so much like her in that regard.  To make matters worse, she put all the responsibility of satisfying her compulsive cleanliness on me.  The house had to be spotless before she got home.  If it was not, she would go on a rage calling me every name in the book. She especially liked to call me a “fu&*ing b*&ch”.  That was her favorite term for me.  I was all kinds of evil words if I didn’t have everything including her bedroom and her bathroom spotless and smelling fresh.  My siblings and I joke about how we would take Pinesol and soak a sponge and wipe down all the walls so it smelled like a Bavarian forest in our trailer.   That seemed to make her feel better.  The pressure of having to clean her home made me resentful, especially to my siblings who were both messy and not particularly helpful.  The only space I could keep perfect, was my own bedroom. They couldn’t bring their germs and messes and candy wrappers and dirty clothes there.  And I knew it was the one place my mom could walk into and approve of always.  I believe the other reason for my compulsive behaviors were from sexual abuse and that’s a whole other post in itself.

Fast forward to falling in love and five kids later.  I still resent messes.  Like, I hate having a messy house.  But something interesting has happened over the years, I have actually lowered my standards considerably. Not because I have wanted to but because in order to survive my extremely messy kids and equally as messy husband (God sure picks the personalities that help grow us) I have had to let things go, to a certain extent.  I still run a good ship. But its fluidly tight.  Some days I am on my game and my kids are having the time of their life and I am telling my OCD to shove it, and other days I am totally raging over the disgust that littles bring.  And by raging I mean I am stamping around ordering my husband and kids to get their crap off my floors and spaces and put them away where they belong.  I am sometimes crying in a corner somewhere wishing I could run away and change my name. Wishing I could live in some super chic and modern apartment in Norway with white furniture and no animals or children and a rumba running around all day while I make soaps and write and sing happy songs.  Sometimes, I even curse under my breath and sometimes out loud, of course at inanimate things like the dog food strewn along the ground or the piss underwear stuffed back inside a drawer full of clean clothes that I then have to wash.  I literally have to pray my way through it all and have to ask God and my family for forgiveness a whole lot.  Half the time I feel insane. A lot of times I have to just pack up and leave the house and go take the kids elsewhere where we can have fun and forget the heaviness and stress of the filth and mess. I know right now someone is reading this and saying, “What is she talking about? Her house is always clean when I visit!” True that I always maintain a certain neatness, but my house is never as clean as it should be.  Usually the floors are sticky with substances I can’t even determine and my Achilles heel, dog hairs. I can see them, I can feel them, and they make me angry.  There are always drips of pee around the toilet.  I can see them and I can smell them even if you cant. I can see that small white smudge on the arm chair. I am like the terminator, I see it all and am constantly scanning.  I know it drives my kids mad and gets on my husband’s last nerve. If it were up to them they would live in a hoarders nest overflowing with empty chip bags,  bathroom garbages spilling over with doo doo papers and laundry piled to the ceilings.  But God gave them the psycho neat freak mom with way too high of expectations of all of them.  I try my hardest to be reasonable because I don’t want to be my mother, but she does show up in me. I can hear her voice in my head calling me names and saying my cleaning isn’t good enough.  And when I do I have to stop myself and weigh what is important. My time with them is so short and I have to make it as meaningful as possible.  And I give it my all but I have faults and failures that make me a bad mom sometimes.  That make me a grumpy sourpuss that is griping and complaining about insignificant things like tufts of dog hair and too many cups in the bathroom and gum wrappers behind dressers, and unmade beds.  I know these faults are there and I have genuinely worked hard to overcome them, but the truth is, this is just who I am. I am a mother with a lot of trauma who has somehow turned out pretty good but I know I will never be ideal or anywhere near perfect.  I hope my confession makes you feel not so bad about your own failings. Remember, parenting is cleansing for the soul and it brings growth to us as well as it does our kids.  And it is important to identify our weaknesses and pinpoint where those behaviors started and give it all to God in prayer because only he can produce in us lasting change.

A buxom black woman slipped her way past the two unpainted French doors that led to the sanctuary. She slipped into the red upholstered church chair immediately to the right of the doors next to the round table that held the Daily Breads, empty offering plate, attendance board, and other churchly paraphernalia.  She wasn’t unnoticed. Some of us, those of us with sensitive ears that instantly pick up the slightest buff or the sound of fresh air flowing or the sharpening of the sounds from outside when the doors opened, caught her right away.  I looked back surprised to see what I assumed was an American black woman in a Spanish Pentecostal church. She swallowed up the red chair with her jolly, stout body.  Her hair was natural and thick, a frizzy sea of brown that puffed outward.  Brown freckles marched around her cheeks which were toned from the perpetual smile that just wouldn’t leave her face.  I never saw anyone that seemed so happy to be someplace.  She wore a jean skirt, white socks and sneakers, a plastic bag grasped tightly by dark sausage-y fingers.  But what stood out most to me was her stark white t-shirt with the words JESUS printed across her large bosom in a borrowed Pepsi logo.  I kept stealing glances at her and was relieved when the service was over to go inspect the new visitor.

She was as kind and lovely as she appeared asking people their names, introducing herself, chit chatting with the kids. She visited our church for almost every service that summer.  She definitely told us her name, many times, but we affectionately referred to her as Pepsi Jesus, and we all looked forward to her presence. She really got to know the children and she wrote our birthdays and some of our addresses down in her little notepad.  Then winter came and she was gone.  But then the cards starting coming.  The stranger who made herself a temporary home in our church, the one who didn’t speak any Spanish but sang along and praised along with us, began to send birthday cards and birthday notes to whomever was on that notepad.  She never forgot.  She seemed to possess a joy inside her soul that she couldn’t just keep to herself.  I never saw her again after my late teens but I have never been able to forget her.  Many of us can barely remember the birthdays and such of people we love and she intentionally and lovingly remembered those who couldn’t even remember her real name.  She was a poor woman rich with love and thoughtfulness. Her small acts of love left a large impact on my heart. It was like the woman in the Bible who gave her very last coin. It was more valuable spiritually than someone buying a Chanel bag for a friend because she was giving her heart.

So smile brightly wherever you tread.  Be the one in the room to reach out and welcome those around you even if you are the guest. Write down people’s birthdays. Praise God without inhibitions.  Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Be intentional about loving others and do it with no expectations. Remember the names of people you meet.  Love is so impactful. So love right.

I wrote her a letter detailing the wounds she caused

I wrote her a letter pleading with her

I wrote her a letter, the decades of pain bleeding through my fingers as I typed

I wrote her a letter hoping she would see, hear, feel me

I wrote her a letter wishing she would change, asking her to do the right thing

I wrote her a letter fantasizing she would listen

But I was only bleeding, I was only screaming, I was only wailing in despair

Asking for a healer, asking for a miracle

Asking the wrong person

I wrote that letter to wound her

I wrote that letter to free myself

I wrote that letter to cut open my own veins and to cut open hers

But I was only seeking the mother I always wanted

I was only searching for answers she wouldn’t give

She wasn’t going to break and she wasn’t going the bend

She was only going to bleed and hide and leave me more wounded than before

I saved the letter for myself

I read the letter again

I weighed my intentions and I weighed the cost

The tears could not be weighed

I gave the letter to God and I gave my pain to him

Only he could really hear me, and feel me, and heal me

Only he could stop the bleeding

Only he could give me the answers I need

Only he knows the depth, the width, the scope of it all

Only he could love us both the same

Only he could heal her wounds

Only he could make her see

Only he could make her the women I need

And maybe not

I keep that letter, and I keep it for me

One day everything in there will be redeemed

And it will serve as remembrance of what can be healed

The early darkening, the dying leaves, the bitterness of cold, the sickness dancing from person to person, usher in a time of year filled to the brim with stress.  It is no wonder human beings clustered so many holidays into such a short time frame. We needed something in which to rejoice, an excuse to celebrate.  The colors, the rich smells, the cozy memories, the pretty decorations, the seasonal alcoholic beverages, the spending would seem for many to be just the right tonic for all the gloomy rushing stress but for many it is all just a trigger for depression and anxiety.  It is the subconscious preparing itself for what you aren’t even thinking about yet; that which you do not have anymore or do not yet have that you want badly.  This time of year is for so many, including me,  a time to feel the void of what is missing in our lives. We cannot help it.  We are grieving something.  Those who have passed away, the brokenness of our families, not having children, not having a companion, rejection from people we love, addicted loved ones, financial problems, chronic illness or even terminal illness. Whatever it might be, for some reason, this time of year, makes you feel it more than ever.  There will be questions about when you are going to have kids from those who do not know about your infertility. There will be questions about your dating status or lack thereof. There will be missing humans, who may have been gone a long time, but time has not healed their absence.  There will be food you cannot eat. You may not be able to eat at all because of chemo or because of an eating disorder.  So many things to dread within oneself.  Most of all is the dreadful ache of that something unfulfilled, that crushed life.  It is so easy to get caught up in all we do not have, or all we desire to have. Like a riptide, it pulls us under its foamy darkness, drags us through the rough undercurrent of mental illness.

This year has been the same. The claws of depression were clasping around my neck as I mentally planned for Thanksgiving and Christmas for many personal reasons.  Loss runs deep in my veins, and sometimes the thought of letting that loss free to run into the soil around me is frighteningly comforting.  Pondering how terrifyingly close I have come to desperate decisions from physically crippling depression, I have deeply considered another alternative to wallowing in misery.  It has been the theme of the Sunday school I help lead. It has been what God has been knocking at my hearts door for so long. Contentment.  Being content is a most powerful weapon against such angst.  Rather than being swept away by feelings of loss, why not ground myself with thoughts and declarations of gratefulness and thankfulness and praise for what I do have?  There is so much to be thankful for, even when life is at its very end.  There are so many realities I could be living so much worse than I could ever imagine.  There are orphans roaming the streets somewhere, desperately searching for food, victims of abuse of various kinds. There are people whose entire families are being killed in front of their eyes. There are people losing their homes and their loved ones in fires or other natural disasters.  I have none of that to worry about.  I am comfortable. I am blessed. My children are healthy and beautiful. My husband is a wonderful provider and a loving man.  I am alive and well and strong, vivacious and thriving.  Everywhere I turn, there are things of which to be thankful and in which to rejoice.  What I must do is open my mouth and worship my living God for pouring out his favor all over my life. What is lost is lost. What is gone is gone. What is dying is dying. What I don’t have, I don’t have. And oh well.  I can’t do a thing about that can I? What I do have could be snatched away in an instant.  So I must rejoice. I must be content.  We must all be content.  So my challenge to myself and to others is to write down all the blessings you have and think about those things every day this holiday season. Think about those things and then decide as an act of gratefulness and act of love to bless others who have far less than you and to rejoice with them. Make your life what you want it to be. Decide to be joyful. Decide to be happy and light and to revel in the moment.

For you,

I feel like I have always been conscious of you.  I have never even considered that perhaps you don’t even exist. I just cannot fathom it. You have been more real to me than even the tangible world around me.  I think that the immediate suffering launched upon me at my very conception was an absolute gift.  It is as if the pain of the act that brought me life and the world awaiting me forced me to connect with you.  You must have gifted me with that knowing for it would give me purpose to live.  Knowing you were there, with me, in the darkness, was everything. It was enough.  I am not sure why you chose to reveal yourself to me so young, why you spoke to me in dreams, but I do know, that I know, that I know, you have always been there, you are with me now, and you will never leave me. When I die, I will be with you.  Who I am, cannot exist apart from you.  My very identity is weaved from your person.  And here is where I lament the life I have lived. Despite all the conviction, I still chose to live a life in rebellion. I chose to give my body to please men. I chose to become angry and bitter. I chose to hurt so many people I said I loved. I chose to pursue pleasure and sex over allowing your love to be enough for me.  I can make excuses and say that part of this is because of my incredible brokenness, which is true, but most of it, were clear choices I made.  It was one choice after another that led me further and further away from you.  It started with the pornography, and the sex, the cursing, the anger, the unforgiveness. The hole became deeper and deeper and deeper, until I couldn’t find you anymore.  I hid from your eyes, as Eve hid from you in the garden.  The deep comfort and intimacy of walking with you in obedience and faithfulness was replaced with the temporary satisfaction of fulfilling my wicked desires.  When I closed my eyes, instead of relishing your presence as I prayed, all I could do was beg for forgiveness over and over and not because I was sorry, but because I was terrified of hell.  That once confident child and teenager was a cowering and filthy mess.  Yet, you did not stop talking to me.  It is something that has taken me so long to understand. That relentless pursuit of what belongs to you! You still spoke to me in dreams. Through songs. I still felt you pull my heart to you.  I wanted to come to you so badly but I felt so unworthy.  But you kept calling to me.  You allowed me to break more. You allowed me to suffer more. But you did not leave me.  I didn’t always see the signs then, but when I look back now, they were everywhere.  How you love is not like how we love.  I have lived that reality.  I see you. In all of it.  Your whispering in my ear.  I ran away from the only love in my life that was ever pure.  You loved my soul, the very essence of me. Not my body, or my face, or my personality.  You loved me.  I failed to love you and yet you continued to love me.  And here we are after much healing and mush repentance, and much growth.  I think about you more and more the way I used to.  There is this aching desire to have deep intimacy with you. To walk with you.  To live my life bowed down to you. To feel your presence and hear your voice speaking to me.  I am just ready. I have already tasted this world’s offerings, and it is garbage.  Even the wonderful things do not satisfy fully. They leave a nagging emptiness.  What has satisfied my soul, is the only one who loves it, and that is you.  I long for things I know seem ridiculous to outsiders, like seeing you when I die.  I long to touch your hands. I long to worship at your feet and to sing to you. I long to talk to you and ask you questions about everything. I just want to look at you and contemplate every facet of your being.  I know when I look into your eye that I will be complete. That your work will be done. That you will be glorified.  Everything will make sense.  Until then, let us meet together. Everyday.  I will tell everyone of what you show me, what you say, and I will go where you lead me and do what you ask me to do.  This is surrender.  Only to you, lover of my soul.

-Sophia

I remember sitting in my driveway alone watching the cars go by on a warm and clear night.  It was as warm and balmy a night as could be in Georgia.  101 Arrowhead Drive, where the main road out of Fort Benning met my street. I know I must have looked so hollow and pathetic with a tear streaked face and swollen eyes.  I had just returned home from my son’s funeral.  Everyone was gone. I was alone with my grief.  I looked up at the starry sky and felt a refreshing breeze blow through my sweat matted hair, when I heard the crunch of the hearty Georgian grass behind me, the sound of something heavy walking through. I turned around and through the lights of the cars going by I spotted three young deer. Right there behind me, standing cautiously, their eyes wide with fear as they realized my presence.  I don’t know why I cried, but I instantly began to sob.  I wondered if it was a sign. Were these sweet and benevolent creatures drawn to the weighty sorrow the wind blew their way? Could they smell the salt of my tears and sweat.  They were young and alone. Maybe their mamas were gone and they could relate to the longing and pain in my soul?  I felt instantly connected to them. In a haste, I clumsily moved towards them and they scattered faster than I could stand.  The encounter was my inspiration for using the images of deer on Blade’s tombstone.  Years later when I visited his grave, three deer would visit me again, walking past me in a line at the cemetery.

The day Blade was declared brain dead, my husband and I were approached by an organization called Life Link, an organ harvesting non profit organization.  We made the painful and hopeful decision to donate Blade’s heart, liver, and small intestines to two baby girls that desperately needed them.  We were so fresh in our journey through grief that we chose an anonymous donation, meaning that the names of the families and patients would not be exchanged. There was an option to communicate to the receiving families, but it would be quite a process and they had the choice to refuse any communication.  We spent 13 anniversaries of his death always wondering how the little girls were doing.  Comforted by thought of his heart beating on in that little girl’s chest. His liver cleansing the blood of that other girl and his intestines absorbing and passing along her nutrients. It was a morbid sort of hope. Only understood by those who have walked this path. Then a few weeks ago, on the 13th anniversary of Blade’s passing, I gathered my courage and found the number to the Life Link of Atlanta. I dialed the phone with adrenaline running through my veins, my heart racing, my hands unsteady, my soul throbbing with excitement. I left all my information with the woman on the phone and she told me that someone would call me back right away. Sure enough, not even an hour later my phone rang and that familiar Atlanta area code lit across the phone. I picked it up shaking and breathing heavily, my heart in my throat.  She started by reconfirming all sorts of information and then came the update.  Both girls had passed away and neither of them lived very long with his organs. I was so very quiet, using every ounce of my might to maintain a calmness in my voice when I did speak.  I thanked the woman, hung up the phone, then let out a wail that seemed to carry the weight of 13 years of false hope and its grief.  I felt his death all over again. His death felt meaningless.  I mourned the girls. I mourned his organs gone forever, back to him. There was none of him here on this earth.  I would never get to hear his heart beat in her chest like I had fantasized.  I have been grieving the revelation since. Pondering the sadness and unfairness of life.  Trying desperately to connect to God. But I feel a great chasm. And I wonder, that day in my driveway, if rather than comfort, it was sign of the reality of what would happen.  The three deer in the cemetery? Blade and the two girls, his companions in heaven. What do they want to tell me? What would they want me to do? Reach out to their families? We would have so much in common with so much binding us together. We tried. We did everything we could to give them a chance.  And somehow I feel another morbid comfort, that Blade has friends in heaven. Two sweet girls whose mamas and daddies are feeling everything I feel every day of my life.

I have been a creative dreamer since I can remember.  My dream world has been a life line for me in my struggles.  Vivid and replete with symbolism, I have believed in my heart that through them, God speaks to me giving me direction and hope.  While I have treasures of dreams I could share, I want to talk about one of my most recent.

I dreamt I was on an island. There were all sorts of things going on that I cannot remember but I do remember a feeling of impending peril as large waves of dark and cold water churned up onto the shore.  I kept looking up at the sky, expecting something. Perhaps something bad to happen as I have been accustomed to in my life?  As I journeyed around this island, I made it to a brick building, much like a school. There were neat, manicured hedges all around me. Perfectly trimmed. No weeds, no invasive vines or intruding saplings.  That is when I noticed it. This beautiful and strange flower sticking right out of the hedges.  It had long, multi colored, feather-like fronds with equally as colorful flowers at the very end of the feathery display. It was a marvelous creation, like nothing I had ever seen. It was almost alien-like in its color tones. As I awed at its beauty and stroked it’s soft leaves, a woman addressed me. She said, “That is the stormy flower, and it is for you.”  That was the end of the dream.

In my struggle with my self worth and with comparing myself and my life with other women, I have become locked in a cycle of crippling depression.  Wondering why I was so different. Why I was robbed of a healthy and loving relationship with my parents. Why I experienced so much sexual abuse. Why I had to endure the death of a child. Why I was such a screw up. Why I was such a whirl wind of anger, frustration, bad habits, and negative thoughts. Why I was so lonely. Why it was so hard for me to make friends with people. Why I struggled grasping God’s love for me. I’ve spent the better of my life loathing myself. Wasting my youth in self pity and mental despair.  I know there are women out there just like me and I hope that somehow my words will strike a chord in your souls and ignite some hope in your agony.

That flower is me. That flower is you. It a perception of self and reality. The manicured hedges is the perception we have of others. That their lives are clean and perfectly primed and primped. They also symbolize conformity and the pressure to be a certain way in society. We are the flower. Growing away from the hedges, conspicuous, loud, bright.  We have been forged and formed through the storms and trials of life to be noticed. But danger lies there. In those neat and trim bushes, we can be mistaken for weeds, for something unwanted, changing the landscape, and therefore judged, plucked out and rejected.  The stormy flower, chosen by God to shine in a way that only the hurt and wounded can shine. Touching and reaching those the rest cannot. Take comfort in knowing that you are loved too. That you are different for a purpose and though you may not see it now, it surely will unfold as you open up your eyes and see that your identity has been forged by the flames of a God that loves you and longs to use your unique spirit and experiences.  Comparison robs us all of joy. Let us not compare anymore. Let us not wallow in self pity. Let us have hope that we are predestined to a plan greater than us. That a glorious God is glorifying himself beautifully in your story. Jesus was a storm flower and he is the reason for my hope.

If you would have asked five year old me what I thought of men I probably would have delivered the following description: “They are scary. They do bad things all the time. They don’t care about their family. They have drug problems. They like to touch me.” I hadn’t the faintest healthy experience with a male figure in my life at that point and not for many years after that.  My mother and father had been divorced since I was two, and by then I had already been sexually abused by my father’s favorite cousin who my mother would allow to babysit me. She never felt comfortable doing so as she would confess to me many years later but as a teen mom under the control of a man 12 years her senior, she complied.  Apparently, after one particular day he was on babysitting duty, I kept touching myself and saying his name, “Choo, toto”.  Toto was what I innocently named my vagina.  Choo, was his nick-name. My very first sexual experience and probably earlier than I can ever remember.  But I do recall the very first session with him when I was old enough to retain that memory.

I had spent random days with my father, a Saturday here or there. It was sparing and it was always short.  This particular day, it was sunny and the sky was clear. I spent most of the day in the kitchen and dining area of a facility for mentally disabled individuals. My father was a cook there and we were allowed to hang around and mingle with the residents. After his work day, we went up to his dorm which was located right on campus. It was an old hotel, so there were many rooms, and my brother and I would run up and down the halls catching quick glimpses of each one. I remember one particular room where the men played cards and drank. It’s smokey dirty walls were covered in pornography. My dad corralled us like little sheep into his room where we would be safe from the cursing men, smoke, and nude women.  His room was attached to another room which was joined by a short hallway with a bathroom.  The other room was occupied by his cousin Choo. There he was. He waited for my dad to leave. He entertained my brother with a snapping turtle he had placed in the bathtub. He closed my brother in the bathroom and began to just talk to me and hug me, pay attention to me. All the things I was always so hungry for without having a dad around.  Then we played an adult game.  He stood me on the bed facing him. He said he was going to kiss me like grown-ups kiss. And he did. He kissed me passionately on my mouth.  I remember thinking it was strange but enjoying the feeling it gave me.  My brother would interrupt here or there but Choo was quick to pretend normalcy, ushering my brother off to the filthy turtle scratching at the porcelain tub.  At this point he was aching for much more and began fondling and touching me. He was breathing heavy and began to dry hump my little body asking me if I liked what he was doing. I said, “yes”. There was a raucous in the other room as the men finished their game and he quickly composed himself. I remember just feeling so confused and feeling that I had done something horrible.  It was time for us to leave and the last thing I can remember is the awful brown rug I was staring at as we left the building. It was as if my very innocence and worth were being absorbed into its dirty fibers.  I was utterly destroyed. It wouldn’t be the last time and he wouldn’t be the only person.