When Your Bridge is Out

I'm broken and torn and gashed wide, and the lifeblood in me feels as though it is oozing out around me.  I no longer have the strength to patch myself up and walk on with a cane, I rather feel the urge to lie down and weep. To breathe deep and long, and to sit with the sadness that this is hard. I know my blog is often pensive and vulnerable, but in my real life I spend most of it looking to the good, hoping for the best, trusting in the goodness of God and relying on copious amounts of grace.  But there is something to be said for lying down. For taking a moment, or a thousand, to sit with the reality that this is so far beyond me that I will never be able to make it pretty, or predictable or comfortable for everyone around me.  And yet, in my moments where I still had to stand today, to get kids out of church, and bags packed up, and tears were falling because nothing I could do would keep them in any longer, the woman who sat at the end of our row painfully made her way towards me, and in her aged wisdom, and body twisted by arthritis, she bent down into my mess and whispered "Are they all yours?" "Yes." I managed to say.  "They are so beautiful. And so well behaved. You must be a wonderful mother."  She looked right into my spilling eyes, and held me there in her heart.  Her grace poured over me like oil, and I bent my head under the weight of it.  She patted my shoulder as she rose, and hobbled away.  I was broken in the wake of her offering.

You see, my kids hadn't been well behaved.  Tucker hadn't had his medicine this morning, and while he wasn't disobedient, he wasn't quiet either.  When he hasn't taken his medicine, his body defies any stillness in him, and he rocks and twists, and hits himself.  He is full of smiles, but it is not quiet and it is not calm.  Certainly not the behavior most people expect to see in church.
Ivy was right beside him drawing with him in an old bible coloring book and the two of them exclaimed over the images as they colored together.  No amount of stern looks and finger pressed to my lips brought her from noise to whisper.  The woman in front of Tucker moved her chair forward, and I knew that my son whose brain fires differently than others had probably banged into her chair one too many times.  The two of them gasped and exclaimed loudly as the scenes shown from the Papua New Guinea missionary splashed across the screen, and our row in that church today wasn't still, peaceful, or quiet.  As we moved into communion, I was in tears.  I no longer care what people think of my children or my parenting, but I don't want to frustrate others who are trying to listen to what is being said. I sat with my head tipped up and eyes closed and tears poured and I tried to find the grace in the moment.  I was jarred by Tucker who had spilled his cup, and I longed to lie down and weep.  The truth is that none of the things that happened today were the struggle; the struggle is the daily pouring out of me with little room for replenishment as I try hard to parent alone. The struggle is the continual waves of feelings of inadequacy and failing, and in those moments at church, I had no more strength to push back against the reality.  I was breaking, and the graceful woman whose body told a story of pain, reached out her heart of love to help me stand for a moment longer.  The beauty in that has seared my heart.
I'm grateful that in a moment where I was at the end of me, another woman stepped in to offer me a bridge. A way out of the despair that was closing in and threatening to consume me today.
Know that those things matter. Please know that your words to a tender heart, to a broken soul, they count- either for pain or for healing.  Know that you have power to build bridges or throw stones. I'm so incredibly thankful that today gave me a friend with a bridge instead of a crowd holding rocks. It matters.