Wife

I am trouble and strife.

I am Sarah. I am Hagar.
I am Rachel and Leah.
I am Bathsheba. I am Ruth.

I am stumbling.
Struggling.
Short-sighted and slow-witted.

I am wielded. I am poured.
Tapped and driven.
A formation tool.
My blemishes smooth away your corners.

My lateness is making you patient.
My forgetfulness is making you flexible.
My need is making you self controlled.
My hasty tongue thickens your sensitivity.

Tonight I long for distance.
My closeness makes for more bruises in you.
Tonight I long for proximity.
Your closeness comforts me.

I wrote this a few months ago, after seeing the pain I cause my husband. It burned me that he understood the pain and hard work of marriage. Through being married to me.

Again and again I realise that perfection, goodness, praiseworthiness is out of reach. That I long to be the one who excels, with ease and with pride. That if I succeeded at this I just might be insufferable. And that I make others suffer already.

And then I know (with a whole-body, whole-heart, deeply-relieved knowing) perfection is not mine to grasp. That we share need, my husband and I, because we let each other down. That we also share the intimacy of failing each other and it being OK. That I am his trouble and strife as well as his joy. That we clumsily love the other to show a tiny glimpse of God's perfect covenant love for each of us.

Tomorrow is our 14th anniversary. I'm not a sentimental blogger, but these years have been slowly teaching me the science and art of being known and what covenant love is. Truly I say, marriage is shaping me. Making me.

A curtain hides glory, truth and faithful love from us. My husband has lifted the bottom corner, beckoned me over and shared a peek with me.

 

I'm linking with Emily at Imperfect Prose on Thursdays.

Caring

She's living at the house he bought. After the divorce. After winning a hundred thousand on a carelessly bought scratchie. He's had the house since half the money was in the till at the pub.

She's glad to have a place to stay. And doing her the favour eases the jagged edged fact that she is his carer. Not his carer on a welfare form. His carer on the watch for when he starts to be distracted with his own thoughts. Looking for his words to lose their distinct flavour. They can become like mist in the headlights.

He says there's nothing wrong. He lives it, too. If ignoring it were therapeutic, he'd be well. But he's not. He sifts everything he hears to capture words that make him better. But they don't. He careens, rather than slips into madness.

She came home to find the windows nailed shut and the back door couldn't open. He'd left the hunting knife on the table. The police had pulled him roughly out the door, with his arms clasped behind him. He hunted for explanation but it slipped away. She was saddened that he didn't notice his own incoherence. He thought it made sense.

She slept. It felt like days. Repaying the debt of pacing, interrupted nights. She tells me of retreating to her room. That she saw his eyes peering out from the darkness. That he waited for her to sleep and then he walked back and forth, all night. Wry, she laughs. His mad thoughts are funny. They are funny and timid and sad and broken.

Somehow she can shiver at his paranoid preparations and giggle at his oddness. Her steadiness is epic.

Family without burden is enticing. But it spoils us for the true beauty of care for a broken brother. Perfection has been smashed so that love can be glued patiently together. Built piece after piece, sturdily, secured one by one. It's a heroic, humble construction.

Joining Emily,

Boasts and Thankfulness

This is where I start keeping up with the best mommy blogs and show you my mothering triumphs. This is my latest birthday cake extravaganza.

Are you impressed?

Yes, those ninja turtles have been lurking at the bottom of a toy box for at least six months. Yes, those star candles have been lit many times before and no longer have five points.

My newly five-year-old loved it. "You're awesome mum!" (Actually he said that when I let him have 2 slices)

I love a happy birthday.

And I love a sunlit Autumn morning. Thankful.

What are you thankful for?

Today

He roughly says get lost (or some such thing). I stand in the hallway, hesitant. I want to catch him back, soothe and listen. He stalks away.

Another sees my discomfort. She's watched me all day, asked again and again for leave to go. Then she asks if I'm OK. Embarrassed at her insight, I'm awkward. But I'm alright.

Later, I make a joke. Keeping score of foul-spoken rejections. I'm today's winner.

Rationally, I know his mind is too disordered to behave differently. He cannot trust me because he cannot trust his own senses and intuitions. He hates this confinement - the locked doors and illness labels that imprison him. I'm just getting caught up in the edge of that resentment.

He's here because his perceptions are so faulty that he pushed his mother in frustration. And his father holds it against him. His mother brings a tape measure to wind around his waist, so she can bring him new clothes that fit. She will come tomorrow and clipper cut his hair for him. This is mother's love - a woman ungrudgingly, almost cheerfully, will gently shave her tall, irritable, pacing, forty-something son. And she will speak to him with fondness, with grace. In the middle of a psych ward.

I think about mothers' love.
A woman grieving for her son - he has blindly, clumsily destroyed his marriage, his joy. She tries to hold him together.
Another woman agonised in prayer, and wish, and hope watching her daughter cradle a newborn through difficult cardiac surgery. Waiting.
And a woman who would do anything, give anything, drive anywhere to help her sons learn. Anything to help them be happy.
A woman whose desire to love burns a hole in her chest because no baby is born despite her prayers.

Whatever made me think that love is pure?
And I check, it's not pure, it's patient and persevering. Love buries us deep in ugly pain. Love is the reason we survive the pain.

linking with imperfect prose

Bother is good

She's sorry to be a bother.

How do I answer? That she's not a bother (my desire to calm and reassure). Or that she is a bother but that's what we are called to. To bear one another's bother-ness.

She is loving me enough to let me bother.

Another apologises for the tears she sheds over coffee. Sorry to talk about the depression or the failure or the overwhelming lostness. We tell her that it is joy to be real, to know her search and that she lets us talk about God and his comfort.

Why all this delicacy? This hiding from pain? This pretence?

People hidden but longing to be noticed and their wounds salved. Sad, that we go to such trouble to be OK and to not make trouble for people. Sad that inside we are trembling and teetering on tears, and comfort seems such a bother.

We are the disciples of the one who bears burdens and soothes the weary. The more we do that for each other - the more we allow the bother in, and let the bother be OK - the more people will be drawn to this family. Because we are real and we let each other in.

God's love

This post from Cathy at Women Bible Life had me excited today, as I read of her realisations about God's love. I firmly believe that it is as we understand and know God's love more, that his spirit works in us.

That as we experience being truly loved

( not with "edited, flat, hollow, superficial, fluffy bunny, impotent love", but with robust, sacrificial, nail-pierced, death-conquering, all-seeing, gracious, merciful, marrow-deep, present in all circumstances love.)

we are transformed. We participate in God loving the world because he can love through us - perhaps this is being filled with the fullness of God. And he can do the unimaginable - show us real love and then empower us to love that way, too.

So thanks to Cathy for this verse, what an encouragement.

May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Ephesians 3:19-20



Character

What does it mean to have character? Perhaps it's doing the right thing even when no-one is looking. Perhaps it's choosing the option that not many people would choose. Maybe it's picking yourself up from the ground, sweaty and dirt-smeared, and stumbling on to complete what you set out to do.

I've been prompted to think about this while listening to a series by Andy Stanley (Character Under Construction), which was recommended to me.

One of the pitfalls of preaching (as reported to me by those who practice the art) is reaching the culmination of your message and your listeners being left with the words "Just try harder." It's a message that's been employed by pharisees and all sorts of religious types over the centuries. It feeds guilt and creates enslavement to the law.

But isn't that what we need to pursue to have character? Be a better person. Try to be good. Do the right thing. Often that's how we pray - 'God help me to be a better me...'. I have prayed, 'God help me be more patient', through gritted teeth (which somehow ruins my 'patient' face).

I struggle with the idea that faith is about 'just try harder'. I don't think it works. Being a better me is puny and half-baked when compared with the inspiring call to be renewed in the image of Jesus.

A pastor I know, keeps reminding me that we will only really follow God and be Christ-like when we truly understand God's love for us. Guilt can't transform our hearts. But deep infiltration with sacrificial, inviting, cleansing love changes us forever.

Character grows when we are soaked in God's love.

How does it work? John talks about the branches abiding in the vine and fruit resulting (John 15). Romans talks about our minds being renewed and this leading to transformation (Romans 12).

When I know I am graciously and abundantly loved, I can see the world how God sees it. Sometimes its only momentary glances, but in those instants I have the eyes that really see. The basis of true wisdom. When I have God's vision of the world, of people around me, it becomes possible to act with grace. To see beyond myself and my needs. To see sacrifice as possible. To see purpose in serving and submitting. Then I can allow Jesus to love through me.

'Better-me' love is pale and wan compared with Jesus-shaped love.

Stanley teaches a simple prayer as part of his series of sermons. I admit I have made it a little more to my liking :).

God,

renew me with your love, 

so I can have the wisdom to know what's right,

and the courage to do what's right.

And I have started praying it.

Eye-opening

He spits at her. Gathers himself and projects his disgust at the woman who carried his child. Once within her, now on her hip. Screams foul accusations, words that his son, her son should never witness.

They become attacking, circling beasts. Even she forgets to nurture. to protect. We drag her inside, pulling the child, the woman, trying to stop the searing frenzy. Something human, empathic, compassionate is lost in the wounded desire to break each other.

"Your baby's crying," as the door locks behind us. The phrase is echoed three, four times before the hackles can rest and she can clasp her roaring child.

This will be seared in his memory, burnt in by the terror, the animal smell of attack. Perhaps it will join a litany of similar images, stomach-souring dreads. Protect him lord, heal him.

Men and women can love each other with such pure, sacrificial, protecting love. But before me I see the wreckage of passion, of joining together. The child from their love sees the curse on it.

I think of the man who loves me. What if we lived out this drama? Even without an audience it would strip my soul bare, stir despair within me.

How easy it is to take for granted, to not be thankful. But today my relief, my loved-ness is palpable. The light on the hill I can see is the nurture and care I receive in my own home. Not perfect, but moulded by grace. Forgiving, thoughtful, one who enjoys me and welcomes me.

Sacrificial love

My mother-in-law has a close friend who shops with her. They are both retired and love to spend their time hunting for bargains. It is easy to think about my mother-in-law and her friend in a narrow way and forget that they are women who have led rich lives and were once 38 year old women like me. That they have seen life through the glasses that I now wear.

My mother-in-law's friend was a foster mother because she married later in life and never had any children. She and her husband raised 2 children for 10 years each, among a number of children placed with them for shorter times. When those children turned 16 they returned to see their biological parents. They never returned to live with their foster parents. One, they do not know where he is and the other lives interstate with some contact by telephone.

I do not know all the circumstances and can only guess at the lives those children have lived. But when I think of having a child live in my family for 10 years, loving them and caring for their needs, then no longer having close contact with them and not seeing their children. When I think of that I am struck by the sacrifice of that parental love. To give so freely and not be able to reap the benefits that so many parents take for granted as they grow older.

It is so easy to see a person with the narrow perspective of being a bit-player in the drama of my life. People can seem insignificant or unremarkable, but only because I am self-absorbed and preoccupied with me and mine. May I never forget the precious blessings I have in my life, but I pray that I will not be so transfixed that I ignore or underestimate the people around me.