I'm not sure really where to begin. Sometimes I just know I need to write. I can feel it inside.. things my heart needs to say. Things I don't even know are in there. I've been thinking about myself.. as a little girl. I can remember being really young and going to church with my family on sundays. I remember everyone smiling.. you know how church people are. All smiling, all happy, nothing wrong. Not a care. And I remember hating it. Literally being beside myself, wanting to hide.. which I often did, behind my mothers leg.:) I hated it because I knew it couldn't be real. There's no way. It had to be fake.. I could feel it. And as I grew older I began to see. When I was 9 my older sister's best friend passed away in a car accident. I remember being in the kitchen, and I can see her answering the phone and collapsing on the ground as her heart was forced to accept a new reality. I remember hearing her weeping. Breaking things. Serene had taught me to play "I dropped my dolly in the dirt" on the piano. She'd sat there with me for hours. She'd eaten dinner with our family. She'd been a part of our lives. My life. My lydsie's life... she'd been a part of her heart. Just a year later my older brother's best friend passed away at just 14 years old. I remember the last time I'd seen him. Dad had been in a good mood and bought us an above-ground pool for the summer.. you know, those cheapish ones? Levi had come over and we'd gone swimming. I have this picture in my mind of him goofing off in the pool, lips purple, laughing that laugh he always did. The one that made you want to kiss his cheeks. Then we'd gone inside and played video games. When he died, I don't remember much about it. Just that something inside my brother had changed. His heart had somehow... cracked. I remember a dinner sometime that week, and I remember his silence. When I was 16 I found my Jace. I have nightmares about that evening.. ones that wake me, and i find myself shaking and weeping. I remember that long walk down the hallway to the room where he slept. And how I'd walked it so carelessly. So.. oblivious to reality. Sometimes I wish I was still there. There are days that I ache to walk that walk forever. The one where I never have to know about all the break and cracks that make for a patched-up heart. I had found him and been forced to be the one to deliver the news to my sister. And again.. her weeping. Screaming. Breaking things. Pleading. And I stood by, silent tears, as I so often have in life. Even in my own. When I was 17 he went away forever. I remember sitting in the emergency room. I remember dad coming out, shaking his head and saying "he's gone." I remember the release. The disappointment. The letdown. The hopelessness. And finally I knew it too. The crack.. though seeing those I loved have their hearts cracked, made small marks on my own, this was different.. much different. My heart was now having to accept a new reality. Having to let go of something that I never wanted to give up. A little boy. The hope for a little boy who would grow to call me by name. Take his first steps. Ride his first bike. Play in his first football game. Go on his first date. Be my first date. And it goes beyond the heartache. Beyond the suffocating loss of expectations.. dreams.. wishes. I can remember the expectations I had for myself.. even in the midst of all this sludge. Expectations for my future. To be who everyone wanted me to be. To date only one person. The one I ended up marrying. To kiss only one man in my lifetime. To be pure. In all the ways I was "supposed to." I remember youth camps, girls groups, books on relationships and purity. And the message was always the same. Save yourself. Because it's wrong not to. It's better if you save yourself. Your marriage in your future will be better if you save yourself. God will bless you if you save yourself. I remember this analogy.. (and really this is what I thought I was going to write about.. ha.) I heard it so much as a young teenager that I almost grew to secretly hate it.. never being brave enough to admit to myself that I just might disagree with it. People would tell me that it was like I had a paper heart. And when I chose to date someone and give myself to them (however I did that) was me tearing off a little piece of my heart and giving it to them. And in the analogy the girl dates all these guys and gives away so much of her heart that when she finally finds the man she was made to spend her life with.. she has next to nothing to give to him. Nothing but a small broken chunk. It was like this picture was painted.. almost as a threat. If you do it wrong, you'll suffer. Your relationship with the man you were made for won't be as good. He'll be disappointed in you. He'll be disappointed that all he gets is a little ripped up piece of paper. How could you? How could you make such a mistake? How could you come to church with anything but a big, fat, fake smile on your face? How could you be so real? So raw? And the truth is.. as I've walked down that hallway.. the one where I was blind to all the reality. All the ache and the searing longing. I've grown. And Papa has just begun to open my eyes to see it. The truth is.. who says? Who says that the patched-up hearts are any less lovely and wanted than the perfect shiny ones? I think there is something captivating about a heart that has been through the damn ringer. The one that has suffered through the hard things. Because the hard things are the real ones. And with every memory I have that comes with haunting nightmares of sisters screaming and babies drained of life, I have a special crack in my heart. I have a crack for everything I've ever had to give away.. that I didn't wholeheartedly want to give. Everything that ends up in a different way than I had expected. Things, people that I gave myself to. Choices. Maybe wrong. But maybe just choices. Maybe there isn't really one specific way that is the absolute right one.. maybe you just have to pick one and be all in. And who's right is it anyway to point fingers and shame you for the choices you've made. Their your own. Why have I been so afraid of disappointing? No one gets to be disappointed in me. And my future marriage will be just as blessed as anyone else's. Not because I made the right choices or the wrong ones. But because I have a Papa that loves me so much I can't stand it. There is nothing I can do to separate myself from Him. And all He wants is to dine with me and let me eat and drink of Him.. let Him satisfy my thirst. He wants my heart. Patches and all.
