faith – No Grit, No Pearl

A couple weeks ago something terrible happened to my daughter. Brace yourself. Take a moment if you need.

I don’t know how else to say it besides just coming right out with it: It was a Friday night and my teenage daughter had no plans.

It was tragic.

She had no other alternative but to hang out with her lame parents on the couch and watch the dumb movie they rented from Red Box.

She was in a dark place mentally so in anticipation of the evening she asked if she could take a quick drive around the neighborhood in the golf cart to clear her head. We agreed it was a good idea. We had to help get her through this however we could.

She was gone for all of 5 minutes when my husband’s phone rang. He sprung from the couch yelling into the phone, “Where are you? Are you okay? I’m on my way!” He ran out the front door shouting, “She wrecked, but she’s ok!”

Before I could get past our front porch she was already home, being delivered to me by her dad with a blanket around her shoulders. Crying hysterically.

After I tended to her bumps and bruises, checked her pupils, looked for broken bones…all the normal mom checklist stuff…I asked her what happened.

She told me she was driving down the street when she saw the headlights of an approaching car. She did what any clear minded person would do. She turned off the headlights from the golf cart. Duh. After they passed, she turned her headlights back on at the exact moment that she plowed into a truck parked on the side of the road.

“Why would you turn off your lights?” I asked in the calmest most chilled tone of voice I could muster.

“Because it was embarrassing for anyone to see me all alone on a Friday night, driving a golf cart around the neighborhood!” she said.

Of course! Totally logical.

Her dad comes back with the golf cart. The pieces of it, I should say. When she hit, she flew through the windshield and landed on the pavement. Hit so hard the axle snapped in half and the wheels fell off. It’s a miracle she wasn’t seriously injured.

This is not what’s bothering me really. It’s just what led me to tell you what is.

Today is her 16th birthday. I’m taking her tomorrow morning to the court house to test for her drivers permit. Instead of a golf cart she will now be driving a 2-ton car.

Hide your kids. Hide your wife.

Will she turn off her lights on a Friday night, when she’s all alone, driving 60mph on the highway, to spare herself the embarrassment of being seen?

Will she walk away unhurt if she ever gets flung through a windshield again?

As I’m driving about my day, I get a panicky feeling now when I see a moron driver because I immediately think of my baby sharing the road with him.

Will she know how to handle driving on black ice? I don’t, but I really hope she does.

Celebrating her sweet 16 today makes me thankful. It’s been an exciting 16 years watching her grow into her own independent person, but it feels like with that independence that I’m letting a piece of her go.

I’m losing some of that comforting pseudo control I think I have. It sets my anxiety into overdrive. I’m not ready. The 16 years went by too fast. AAAAHHHHHH!

“Ask and it will be given to you…” Matthew 7:7.

I’m not sure I buy it exactly. I’ve asked many times for things and was not given them. Nevertheless, I keep asking. I gather that when I ask for things that are heavenly and pure that it may be the sort of thing he’s speaking of giving to people when they ask. I bet if I prayed to hit the lottery he’d be less likely to say yes then when I pray for more faith. The whole “blessed are the poor” thing probably knocks me out of his favor with the ole lottery prayer, but I must think he wouldn’t be stingy on my request for peace and deeper faith.

It’s my only hope. Praying for faith.

Faith that he will look over my girl. His girl.

Faith that he will protect her. Faith that his control is good and sufficient.

Faith. I’m praying for more of it.

It’s the only way to keep from suffering a nervous breakdown over this.

I’ll also try to focus on the upside.

I’ll have a runner now. Someone to make trips to the grocery for me. Someone to drop off our dry cleaning. Someone who understands the importance of headlights.

So Happy Sweet 16th birthday baby girl. Momma loves you. Call me when you get there. And when you leave. But not while you’re driving.

In the meantime, I’ll be sitting here praying for faith to relax and enjoy it all. That and stiff cocktail should do the trick.

I woke up at 2am, heart pounding, sweating.

It sounds like it could be a chapter opener from a cheap romance novel, but I am neither cheap nor romantic feeling at the moment.

It could have been the pimento cheese sandwich and big piece of chocolate cake I ate before bedtime.

Or it could have been that my bedroom felt hot, despite the reading on the thermostat and the fan blowing over my bed that I use mostly for white noise.

Maybe it was the sweet lady who helps run an orphanage in Myanmar, who prayed for me after dinner at a friend’s house. Maybe that’s what had my heart triggered. I didn’t understand a single word she said aside from the couple times I overheard her softly say my name in an accent you don’t hear around Kentucky. For all I know she could have been passionately praying for rain, but it felt a little too personal for that.

After several failed attempts of trying to relax enough to go back to sleep, I finally succumbed to my thoughts and allowed myself to begin sorting them through. I decided I should at least be productive if I’m going to lay here awake.

In keeping with being as real and transparent as possible with this blog (because otherwise what’s the point really?) I will risk my people pleasing, appearance keeper-upper tendency and admit to you this:

It’s been a bad year.

I have only had one or two other years in my entire life that could measure against this one. When I think of my life this year the first image that pops into my mind is a pile of rocks. Not to sound too Charlie Brownish, but “I got a rock.”

At 2am, when I’d much rather be sleeping, I was lying in bed thinking it over. Thinking of all my disappointments and wondering when and if they will end.

I thought of friendships that were tested this year.

Some of the biggest joys in my life are the people I discover on the other side of a storm. You really don’t know how good anything is, truly, until it’s been tested. Until it’s been proven. Before the test, you just have to take people at their word. People who can walk with me in my wins, and walk with me through the losses. The ones who know my many flaws and still love me….those are my people. Test driven friends make everything feel better.

Some of my biggest disappointments are the friends who are only there for a season. The ones who celebrate victories, but run away during the defeats. They are also priceless. They make us wiser and tougher. I’m grateful for them as well. They grew me even though it hurt.

I thought of how fast my kids are growing up. I thought of how much I hate hearing that cliché, but how true it is anyway.

I thought of how much I wish my Dad could see all their milestones and enjoy them with me. I thought about how much I miss him.

I pondered of all the trials and anxieties that somehow managed to all fit inside this calendar year.

I wondered if it’s over yet. If at the end of being busted up into chunks if I’ll turn around only to be further chopped away at until I’m reduced to being a pile of gravel sized pieces.

I have to admit this to myself and, for some reason, feel led to admit it to you.

That’s not to say that I’m not also simultaneously dripping in abundant blessings.

I don’t think life is ever all good or all bad, but right now, this year in particular, the balance is off.

I’m still me.

I carry on. I take care of my kids. I snuggle up with my husband at night. I work and contribute, but it’s a broken version of myself. I’ve crumbled some, but still all-in-all together in one piece.

I am being reshaped.

“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, broken and weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.” Vance Havner

So if I have to be the broken version of myself for now, I may as well be useful.

Repurposed.

Upcycled.

Reinvented.

I’m being made new!

Despite how much the hits are bruising, I’m being molded and made better than before.

And as though it is an audible signal from God, my daughter’s alarm is going off.

Time to close the laptop and get kids to school.

Time to go to work.

Time to keep living, keep moving, even while the ground shifts beneath my feet and remind myself that this is all part of a grander plan.

Tonight, though, I’ll be giving Tylenol PM a try.

Tag Archive for: faith

Sweet 16

Broken and Crumbly