A Spring of Joy

It’s Metaphor Monday at One Thing, a blog I regularly read, so here’s my contribution.

On Friday night, B and I went out on a date. After putting the finishing touches on my outfit for the evening, I sat down next to Bella while she ate her supper. I watched as she relished each bite, smearing stuffing and veggies all over her face and hands. After a bit, my red-headed beauty turned her mush covered face toward me, stretched out her smeary hands and opened her arms in a hug.

“I yuv you, Mommy.” she belted with gusto.

And immediately I shrunk back from those messy hands. After all, I was wearing my dressy clothes. “Oh, honey, don’t touch Mommy, you’re all messy.”

Then it hit me what I had just done, and I looked at Bri.

“I wonder what it would be like if God said that to us.” I said.

Bam!

What if God told us we were too messy? What if he said, “Sorry. You go clean up your act and then you can come to me.”?

In case y’all haven’t figured it out yet, I am a perfectionist. I want to do everything right. I want to be the perfect wife. I want to be the perfect mom. I want to be the perfect daughter and friend and homemaker. I want to have perfect relationships with people and with God. I want to have the perfect walk with God and perfect spiritual discipline.

And in case y’all haven’t figured it out yet. I am NOT perfect; in fact, I am far from perfect. Frankly, I am a mess. I am self-consumed and proud. I place expectations on myself and others that can never be met. I fail. Often. In my walk with God. In my roles as wife and mother and friend and daughter. In my relationships. I am messy. Very, very messy.

As I long to abide more and more with God, to go deeper with Him, part of that process is seeing more of my sin. It’s a good thing. It’s a necessary thing. But it’s a hard thing. It’s hard because instead of being consumed by my Savior, it’s easy to be consumed by guilt. The accuser wants me to focus on the sin and the mess and become even more self-consumed. And in turn, he wants me to become messier. He wants the mushy, smeary face and hands to get mushier and smearier as I shovel in the lies of the world, the flesh and the devil. He wants me to lose sight of the unsearchable riches of Christ.

But God doesn’t look at me and say, “Don’t touch me. Don’t reach out to me unless you’re clean.” I am already cleansed because of Christ, and nothing can change that. His love for me isn’t based on anything I do or don’t do. He doesn’t look at me and focus on my smeary hands and my mush-covered face.

He looks at me and sees beauty.

He looks at me and see His child, His daughter.

He looks at me and He sees my mess.

And He reaches out to me.

And still He says “I love you.”

She called at 2:45 this morning, waking in the night, “Daddy! Daddy!” Bri initially went to her, then I came down and took over, because I could. She cuddled right in to my arms and we rocked and rocked and rocked, and I wondered at the beautiful snugness of her. How big she has grown in just three weeks. Her little arms wrapping around me and patting my back in rhythm with our rocking. After a while, I put her back in her bed. “May you pwease sit next to me?” She whispered. So I did. Then I went back to bed and heard her 4 hours later calling, “Mommy! Mommy!” She knew it was the day.

We have all hugged and cuddled and danced and played. So far today I have already been a horse, a dancing queen, a pretend mommy (not sure how that’s different from a real one, but I really don’t care), and it’s not even 9:00 a.m. I let Bri sleep in, and I made breakfasts and packed lunches and changed diapers and it has been wonderful.

We are calling it our Celebration Day (and no, it’s not because Tatiana didn’t get into the top 12 of American Idol, although that IS cause for celebration). Ash wants to go to Dave’s for supper (surprise, surprise), and Bear wants cupcakes and balloons and Bella just wants me to paint her nails.

And me? I just want to be with my babies all day long.

So I’m going to!

(Update: My appt. w/ the oncologist went well on Tuesday. She was pleased with my blood numbers. I have a diagnostic test on this coming Tuesday to check for breast cancer recurrence (the first 2 years are the highest risk of recurrence, and I’m at 18 months.) If all is clear, then I move into maintenance mode rather than treatment mode. I’m so ready.)

Driving home from the cancer center today I could hardly see through my tears. It took painful work, but they were able to get my port accessed and get good blood return. I wanted to feel happy about that. I wanted to be thankful. But all I could feel (other than the physical pain) was the overwhelming sense of fear and dread, the “what if?” of the results of bloodwork tomorrow. The scans and tests that loom in the future. The unknown lies heavy over me. The doubts that reign.

I know a large part of my emotion is an exhaustion that is all-encompassing. I am not sleeping well. I am wrestling the dark thoughts and fears that wash over me; chanting prayers all through the night. I am still hypo on my thyroid medication which causes a depression that refuses to lift. I am still in pain from treatment, even from chemo a year ago. I have no appetite and have to force myself to eat so I will have strength. I am emotionally weary from the overwhelming loneliness of days of separation. I long for companionship, for physical touch. I am spiritually weary from the battle… mentally, emotionally, physically.

Y’all these days are hard. I am a roller coaster of emotions. I am three days away from holding my babies again, and I feel guilty because I’m still struggling with depression. Satan wants to rob me of that joy. He doesn’t want me to see the beauty in each day, to be grateful, to grow. He wants the ugliness of cancer to impact me not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually and mentally. He doesn’t want me to live life. He wants me self-consumed and miserable.

Psalm 42 isn’t a happy psalm. He is in depression. He is struggling with questions. He is in agony. He is battling the enemy.

BUT

He is fighting for hope.

He still sings.

He preaches truth to himself.

And so I follow his example and I preach truth to myself. I may be isolated, but He will never abandon me. I may be exhausted, but He is my strength. I may feel like a failure, but He will never fail me. I may buckle under the weight of the blows of the enemy, but He is my shield. I may let go to steady myself, but He will never release His hold on me. I may not be able to sing the harmony, but He is singing over me. I may feel death in my body, but He has conquered death. I may feel as if life is against me, but He is FOR me.

And like the psalmist, I turn on my music and I sing my song of desperation asking God to “consume me from the inside out”.

And like the psalmist, I am fighting for hope.

Because that is one thing I know I have. A future and a hope.

Yesterday I stood in the middle of the Hallmark store and read every single Valentine’s Day card for husbands, and I bawled like a baby. I wanted to buy almost all of them and take them to my B and say, “This still doesn’t capture it.”

How do I express it? How do I even begin? Where do I even begin?

This is a man who is waking up early to change diapers, make breakfasts, pack lunches, get kids out the door to their awaiting days and he HATES mornings.

This is a man who then goes to work all day and comes home and changes diapers, gets supper on the table, jammies kids, rocks our sweet baby, and tucks them all in bed.

This is a man who wakes up at 3:00 a.m. to the screams of a baby girl terrified of the wind and rocks her and brings her to sleep with him on a very uncomfortable couch because he can’t be in bed with me.

This is a man who internalizes it all and handles my emotional chaos with ruthless trust that we WILL get through this. That God is faithful no matter what.

This is a man who has given up ministry in order to minister to his family.

This is a man who stood with me in a parking lot and held my limp body while I sobbed when I found out I had breast cancer, and then when I found out it hadn’t spread to any organs, and then when I found out my thyroid cancer had recurred. He didn’t care what kind of scene I was making. He was just there.

This is a man who watched me lose my hair and my eyebrows and my eyelashes and my toned body and looks deep into my eyes and tells me how beautiful he thinks I am, and he means it.

This is a man who refuses to fear the future because he’s too busy living life today with us.

This is a man whose humor makes me laugh every single day.

This is a man who will sit long into the night with me and listen to me try to sort out the emotions and questions and fears and struggles I am going through, and he doesn’t try to fix me. He just promises to walk through it all with me.

This is a man who can make me angry because he’s not like me and I don’t understand him, and then turn around two seconds later and forgive me and make me realize how wonderful it is that he’s not like me and I’ll never completely understand him.

This is a man who deserves every Valentine’s Day card ever made, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

So where do I begin?

Well, this I do know. It doesn’t begin with Valentine’s Day. It begins with every day and saying three words he needs to hear.

You amaze me.

I respect you.

You are wonderful.

I am grateful.

You are valued.

I am humbled.

You are mine.

We fit perfectly.

I love you.