Tag: #liveabetterstory

Tales of a Life Shattered and Peaceful

Tales of the Bedside Table is brought to you by real life at the Weaver family home. I gave many years of fall aparts to others in our home, but I was strong at any cost outside my doors. I imagined shattering one day and my pain flowing out in waves and drowning those in relationships with me. I had no idea that living a life shattered could put me back together and the relationships that drowned would give way for peace to breath in really living unafraid.

Since meeting the Weaver’s via text, we have had 2 graduations, a fire, a wedding, a freshman college drop off, a break up, a new love, town house flooding, and most recently a car breaking down. Keeping up the appearance of “ok” has been stripped from me and my “ok” is ruffled and rattling and raising the white flag. Yet, God went before and created the sweetest new space for our family in the most unexpected way. God sees. God knows.

All of my adult life, I did more than keep up appearances. I fought with all of my strength to exceed the “right way” because the fear of messing up and losing it all or having someone take my life’s hope and family was a very present and a very real threat. Attention at all cost to all the details was my family’s safety from the “what if’s” that continually became our “now what’s.” I let go of my “only if I…” family and gained peace for our safety. Turns out they could try and take my people and tell me my hope was false and not get either. I let go. It was hard, gut wrenching hard. They did not get our children or their hope . I buried my personal hope.

God sees. God knows.

God gives and renews and builds where once there was nothing. Firm foundations and quick sand alike can be swept away and God. Is. Still there. We’ve lost so much and gained a crazy peace. We grieve and rejoice. Today, the Weavers got the all undone as He creates all new. Today, God gives me the gift of shattered super glue living and grief unfathomable and peace not understood and strength in despairing weakness and people unexpected from my yesterday’s and could never have imagined brand new today’s. Today, I see glimpses of personal hope with my breathing in and out.

Brand new moments shared with eternity familiarity is family. Right now, the undone, vulnerable, honest at all cost about the pain and joys are who I am with my children, my husband, my friends, and myself. Realizing these truths at the Bedside Table has been my mustard seed and proof positive of His value of me and the strength He has uncovered in upending the letting go of a lifetime. God sees and knows.

He Sees Me and Knows My Frame

For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.  Psalms 103:14 ESV, 2016

More ramblings of my heart and thoughts as we rebuild and I scratch and claw to find beauty from ashes in places physical and unseen.  Editing is minimal and thoughts are long.  The combination doesn’t always make for a clean copy, but it is honest copy.

It feels and looks distinctly like a standstill with the rebuilding of our home.  Beauty for ashes seems to be mostly ashes muddled with the heavy Memphis heat and humidity.  It is uncomfortable and unsightly.  I hate it.

At 7:30 am, I muttered, “Why? Why am I up with my head pounding?” Fear settled in. I huffed and puffed and even lashed out at the hearts of my loves reacting to the familiar fear and because I couldn’t fight that I began fighting everyone around me.  A pounding headache and familiar nausea brought me right back to the helpless circumstances of the life around me that caused these headaches as an 11/12-year-old.  Our bodies take on a voice when our voices are taken and not honored. My head pounded it out.

Comfort was impossible and after making everyone around me uncomfortable, I fled the scene for home.  Unfortunately home is a burnt out house with only studs and the still familiar smell of smoke where work is at a stall because red tape like fire slows us all down.  I sat in my bedroom staring through the studs at my attic stairs.  I could stare straight through the walls of my children’s rooms and the spaces from the place that brought me comfort that I can not race back to right now.  The walls stared straight through me as the tears fell.

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My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Psalms 139:15 ESV, 2016

I can be seen through.  I do not have the energy nor the want to hide the pain of the fire or the pains of a lifetime. I am strangely comforted by the undoing the unhiding the ability to see “what I am made of” from the inside out.  I am sturdy even if charred a little around the edges, but there are weak spots and painful splinters that must be rebuilt and renewed.

I believe the frame of our home was built in 1985.  In the summer of 1985, I was 12 going on 13 and my undoing and all of the fires of my childhood were coming to a fateful peak.  My foundation was being torn away at and splintered at every corner.  Yesterday, that pounding headache from 1985 landed me on a bathroom floor sick from the heat of sitting in our burned out home and stunned by the words and actions that I flailed around in for 12 hours of childhood panic in 2018.  Facing fires is not for the faint of heart.  My rebuilding for the last 25 years includes a husband who will pull me out of ashes and children who will forgive flailing words and heated actions.  None of us will go back home the same it seems, however, while it looks like there is nothing being repaired at our address and we are at a standstill my frame is growing stronger even in the weakest most hidden places.  This is not the way I would have chosen to walk through these places.  I likely would have never visited these wounds, but I  also would have never torn down the walls of my home to make it stronger and reveal the worn places had it not been for the fire.  Sometimes beauty and healing choose us because we would never know to choose them.  I’m still not sure I will find myself grateful for this undoing, but I am willing to walk through it honestly knowing that the Lord has made it impossible for me to settle for anything less.