It’s been an awful week. For some reason, I have cried more tears than since baking the Molly-Bun in my maternal oven. Before you ask, I am not pregnant. You know how it goes, though. Hormones are no respecter of holidays. In fact, holidays with more meaning than others band together with my Judas emotions (no pun intended) and wreak havoc on my carefully constructed demeanor.
My friend, Sarah, is fostering a tiny, beautiful human born several weeks too early to a mother who cannot and will not care for herself let alone another life. At currently just over 4lbs, she requires constant care and an extra dose of mother’s affection, and God has chosen my friend to be her care-giver. Seeing the baby nearly did me in. No joke, my uterus is currently weeping, as were my eyes.
Facing the demons of dysfunction thrust upon myself and my familial acquaintances by the mental and emotional illness of our biological donors has brought to the surface pain and discomfort I had not known in quite some time. Watching some siblings succeed in health of the heart and mind and others succeed at potential destruction has forced me in the past months to evaluate my standing as a parent, a wife, a daughter, a sister, and a wife, as well as a member of the human race. Counseling is helpful as far as you let it dredge the depths of the damage. Healing only follows after the surgeon’s scalpel is allowed free reign, without anesthesia, no less. I am choosing healing in as much as I can withstand the pain. I pray to be strapped to the operating table that the necrosis may be cut away.
I am trying not to hide from the gifts that God has given me. Putting them to use opens the heart to possible rejection, judgment, criticism. Being the child of a pastor with creative proclivities put me in the spotlight this Resurrection Day. Being rescued by said pastor and the Redeeming Love of Almighty God, I was called upon to offer testimony of sorts as part of an interactive Easter Service this morning.
With the emotional upheaval earlier mentioned, Saturday night afforded little encouragement in the way of literary inspiration. Several hours and some serious soul-searching later, the following fell from my battle-weary fingers:
I stand before you a member of a metaphor.
The family to which I am privileged to belong is a canvas on which God is painting redemption and salvation. Individuals, pieces of families, broken and scarred by relationships dying, were picked up by the gracious hand of Redeeming Love. Though life and sin and circumstance inflicted wounds, God took 2 people, & began to build a family through which He may be glorified as Savior, as Healer.
Love has beaten religion. This changes everything.
Through death, that is the crumbling of multiple homes and families, a new family was born. In sharp contrast to the darkness of our current world, when I ponder the miracle of the home I’m from, I see in clear relief, that from the ashes of abuse, misuse, neglect, hate, and un-love, a new life has flourished.
Redemption has crippled dysfunction. This changes everything.
Many cycles of pain and suffering have been transformed by the healing power of Love into a safe haven where the same Spirit able to raise Christ from the dead is turning pain, fear, and disaster into truth, service, and worship to the Author of our great Salvation.
Life has triumphed over Death. This changes everything.
The children are not constrained to the curses of the parents. In the Myhre family, God has shown to me, and I am sure many others, that in Christ, new creation is not only possible, but necessary.
Parents who cannot love since they were not loved, friends who cannot stand beside each other out of self preservation, the scars inflicted by betrayal: they all have been made captive to the resurrection of ability to love. This changes everything.
Psalm 68:8a “God settles the solitary in a home.”
2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
I was nervous. Breathing was optional and difficult, and therefore disregarded. I occupied my hands with a coffee mug I had been nursing all morning. Butterflies took up residence in my abdominal cavity. My mouth dried up like SpongeBob at the surface. I have no idea if I made sense to anyone, but the way in which the Lord whispered to my mental state and nudged the corners of my healing-hampered heart made me thankful for the rocky road to the Sunday mic.
