Category: Family

>Standing Knee Deep in a Storm, A Reminder

>

I remember pain tonight. I have been reminded. Pain of loss and question when all that you think is one thing becomes quite another. Pain of realizing you have allowed your self to believe a lie about your life, the ones you have hurt or been hurt by and it all comes crumbling, crashing like waves one after the other into you so that it is easy to forget that the depth is only to your knees, as the pain is sucked in like salty sea water. Grasping for ways to end the pain, quickly, with harsh tones, hushed silent treatments, desperate prayers while it gurgles in your throat the pain. Calm. Calm is what has come after torrents of pain in my life. That weird calm that tells me,”just do the next thing next, Suzanne, breathe.”
Lighting candles and sending up prayers, washing the dishes and putting kids to nap, going to church and crying during lunch, making to many phone call and turning the phone off…..pain has driven me to do insane things that didn’t make any since then or now, then I would breath.
My life is different now, not as much pain, I am not having new pain come at me constantly….anymore. I am reminded of the causes of past pain often. I have given up on being rid of the residual pain it is much like the joint pain in my knees and hands, I breathe and find ways around it, different things work at different times.
I must remind myself often that the pain I feel, the lump in my throat, the urgency to fix….it is not about now, but more about then and more….way back then or is it way back when?
There is nothing I can fix about the pain or the lump in my throat (does that ever go away?). I must just realize that I am only in knee deep water and that the waves aren’t so high I am not able to wade in the water and continue to enjoy the sites and sounds of the ocean…..life.
Now, I know warning signs of choppy water, unsafe seas, I see the red and yellow flags go up and I get out of the water. The storms still come, I am still often tossed and I still get choked up a bit. I am not afraid of drowning.
Not today, I will never say never, I have faced too many unexpected, uncontrollable storms, to say never.
Today I am okay the pain is okay, I will feel it, I will remember it, I will grieve it, I will NOT drown in it.

>The Family ‘It", Getting ‘it’ and Having Just Enough Everyday of "IT"

>Women…
I have 8 aunts, 4 Holton family and 4 Walker family, my father and my mother. They are different. I fit with some….
Yesterday, I sat behind four of my aunts at a funeral, 4 women, the last living siblings in this family, both of the sons have died.
I have 4 daughters and two sons, interesting how my life as been similar….in that.
I had so many rushing thoughts as I sat behind them. I don’t have siblings that I really know and none that I grew up with or around. I don’t know what it would be like to loose a brother or a sister in this context. As I sat there it was a rush of emotion, a rush that I wish somehow I fit, I fit comfortably with this family, they are nice enough and I have cousins that seem to fit quite comfortably. This is after all the family that I was raised around for the majority of my life ( I only spent summer with the other side of my family). For many years my aunts (and now deceased grandmother walker) treated me like a princess, we talked of the times where I was dressed up and trotted around the Goldsmiths store, I remember special times. I have memories with my cousins, but as adults, well I fell from grace. There are lots of reasons…
I am sure they have forgotten, but I realized yesterday as I was there laughing with my head thrown back and my high heels then kicked off, all of our young children circling around us, I long to fit, but I don’t know if I ever will again. I have forgiven for some recent pains and hurts, forgiveness for things that were never admitted, but only talked “about”, but the wounds are there and I am sad that like my children I can’t just hop back on the bicycle or slide back in roller blades or climb a tree, even with a fresh scab and keep playing nice. I am playing nice and I do love them, but the pain was deep and hard. I wanted to tell them, I wanted to shout it to them (not at them), but now at nearly 4o I realize, they would not hear, or understand….they only saw from behind their on personal, perceived correct points of view how things happened how I fell from grace and then maybe some even took credit (rather than giving it fully to the Lord), when my sweet life turned around. There is certainly something difficult about wanting to both fit and turn away and never look back at the same time. The lump in my throat even this morning is a reminder that needing family that just can’t understand is probably one of the hardest hurdles of my short life. I want ‘it’….I will explore what that is later, but I do I am guessing they do love me, but maybe just don’t understand why I can’t see how right they are, about the things they did. It cost me, I have counted the cost and they were high on every front from the check book to the heart.

I don’t know.

I hate that, but I don’t know, how to work through this pain, so instead, I will home educate, fix lunch, smile for my kiddos and rest in the fact that there are those that get me….and that will be enough today. Always, just enough, but sometimes I want more, just the way I want it, when I want it.
I want those who get it, who give me ‘it’ close, I need them close.
Lord draw near to me.