In My Children's Eyes (A Mom's View on the Cracked, Empty, Beloved Days)

What a healthy, holy thing it is for me to have people from different seasons, relationship statuses and generations in my life! I learn from all ages, groups and people. One of these people is my dear soul friend from college. We actually met in 2006 and haven’t spent longer than a week together since our college days, but when she speaks, texts or writes I listen. I listen because she finds the Holy in the ordinary, joy in the mess, and when she speaks it makes me ask the big questions and even evaluate if I am living  out of a real Jesus love or just a dead pew religion. She is my fiery, ginger -haired moxie-drinking, Mainer,  (*insert New England Accent* and say it in your head “Mainah” cause it’s fun) mother of 2 boys, wife to one wild man friend. She is beautiful and so grab your tea or bucket of ice cream as I often do when we have a visit over FaceTime and read her heart in the words below.  She is new to the blog scene, but as you read you will understand why I needed to share my writing space with her.  She speaks a picture of the glory in the ordinary..and what she wrote is too powerful not to share.   She gave me courageous permission to publish  here on my blog and I am grateful.  Here is the heart of a friend that gets it: 

“I hear my laughter in my children’s giggles. I see my joy dancing on their faces. They are constant movement and sound. I stand hollowed out and given.

I am a husk. Substance once filled to brim now gone. I am a shadow. Blurry caricature of the real me. Where once I breathed fire, smoke spirals. Embers about to go out I cling to the last shred of oxygen. I claw for breath.

I wear broken like a badge. The cracks are my name. They splinter my soul and etch my skin. Tears fall as grief honors what once was. All is different, I struggle to embrace it. How can one hug hurt? Why must we drink from the cup of pain?

I know another who was given. He chose to be poured out for me.
Anguish flowed and darkness shook the earth as sin ravaged my Savior. He drank deep unimaginable suffering. And yet, emptiness isn’t all bad. Tomb once filled, now lies abandoned.

Brokenness begets growth. Pain is opportunity. Difference is not death. Hope seeps in through the cracks. The mending is painful and slow. The needle darns while piercing. I may never be who I once was, but my signature will always say Beloved.

I see my joy in my children’s eyes, and realize, it was never from me.”