a BEAUTIFUL mess - 8/3/14
She twirled a ringlet into a tangle. There is irony in a beautiful curl slowly turning into a tangled mess, beyond resurrection. After all beautiful locks don’t go from beautiful to disastrous in a matter of minutes. It’s a slow process, that you may not even see happening.
Isn’t that how life is? Things can go from beautiful to “tangled” without us even realizing.
I am the youngest daughter of a 39+ year prescription drug addict and alcoholic. My mom is 75 years old and this is basically the only life I’ve known with her. Come join me for a moment in our beautiful mess; between the breaths, between the heartbeats, between the words spoken and not. My sisters and I bent, we broke, but we survived. We have lived both horrible and beautiful moments, but at the end of the day, we lived.
This was our life, but I know it’s also some other little girls’ story as well, who longed for a mother. I sit here, even now, staring at the screen of words; trying to focus on the keys, with a tear slowly falling down my cheek. I hold to the thought of all the little girls, bound by the common denominator of an addict parent and I am deeply saddened, not angry but sad.
Writing has been my refuge and a backbone to my courage on many days. I can let my guard down, writing raw from my true inner self while discovering who I was and who I truly am. Some days writing is my soft place to fall and some days I cannot even stand afterwards. Pain is fierce on some days and it’s still numb on others.
Our life was a monumental catastrophe most of the time, oftentimes, much more than a minor annoyance. Despite the sun shining, pouring through the windows, the rooms in which we lived appeared dimly lit. We appeared to have it all, nice clothes, nice cars, a nice house, but not a home and not a mother.
Mother painted manipulation, pain, distance, selfishness and sadness with broad brushstrokes all over her children. It’s only by God’s grace that I am the encourager I am today. We were tiny gifts from God that she had been given the privilege and the duty of raising and we were not worthy of her love. We were tainted, marked, scarred with the ugliness that we lived in. We were far from beautiful. We were left to fin for ourselves, to learn to love, have compassion, honor and kindness and bestow these things on others. We learned to be who we wanted her to be! We learned to carry on while we had mother’s shards of pain in our sides. I learned how to be a mother from her, by not doing what she did. This is still true today. I learned how to be something from someone who wasn’t what I was learning to be! We tried to live the rite of passage without our mother’s example as if being tasked to paint someone’s face that you’ve never seen. There is irony in learning to be a mother from a Father, our Heavenly Father. It was He that was with us along the way; every step, guiding us to be the moms we are today. Our mother was supposed to stand in the gap for us, like we are doing for our girls!
Philippians 1:29 “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake”
Some days the pain is unbearable! Tears run down my cheek, mixing with what’s coming out my nose and I swallow and blink and swallow and blink again so I can focus on the screen while I try and type the sadness that never, ever leaves me.
If mother put makeup on, it always consisted of red lipstick, perfectly blotted with a piece of tissue. This meant she was probably leaving the house, sober or not, with no concern for herself, us or those she would come in contact with. Somewhere along the way she lost her hope, she lost her faith, she lost our names.
Mother was stunning in her time! She was a slim woman, with dark, striking features, who made men’s heads turn without hesitation. Once beautiful, now she spends the day in an old tattered t-shirt with more burnt cigarette holes than not, and this is fine with her. If I saw my mom on the street today, I would think she was homeless. Her legs, unsure of their next step, continue to hold her up, even when we can’t, until one day when her body will say that’s enough. Mother will forever walk with a limp, dragging one leg behind. She will lean on a walker for strength and we will continue to lean on Him.
It was a gradual change, just like the ringlet, nothing that just happened overnight. Each day the ringlet became less and less of a curl and more of a tangle, and each day she became less of the wife our dad had wed and less and less of the mother we knew. Each day we lost her just a bit more.
Mother’s betrayal colored me with sadness. It’s hard to forget, yet at the same time it’s hard to remember the person before the thirst consumed her, before the liquor became stronger than the shared blood that ran through our veins. Blood is thicker than water, but I’m guessing that’s not true for alcohol. I realize now that she had a choice to make between her drugs and her daughters and she chose the one that benefitted her most. What gave her right to “bail” on motherhood? We were on a journey together, one foot in front of the other and she got off the path – she stopped walking. She released the grip she had on our hands, we kept walking, even without direction, and we walked without her! We would never know how it felt to finish the race with a mom by our side. We were like paper dolls, hands linked, shoulder to shoulder, connected by our hearts. Our lips were laced with tears. We were three girls bound together by one woman, bound by the one heart that beat in her chest. On the nights I was scared I could feel that heart beat rapidly inside mine. My quiet bedroom echoed the steady rhythm of that beat. Tears hit my pillow before I even knew I was crying. No matter what happened on our journey, nothing could separate us from our common thread. Our stories were intersected by the blood that ran through our veins. We weren’t three stories after all, we were ONE. We would not be quiet in hopes of helping the silent one that lay with her hand upon her chest, feeling her heart beat, longing for her mother’s touch.
We never had to wonder what filled in the cracks of our broken hearts, God’s Grace, His sweet, beautiful Grace! We have often said that God “poured His grace right over our heads,” filling in all our cracks, while drowning us in His Mercy. His grace kissed our fingertips and Mercy gently blew away the bad, the negative, and He breathed life into our souls, so we; as sisters, could one day pay it forward. The grace of God is glue for the broken. God had to unclench our hands in order for us to raise them to His glory! There is power, freedom and beauty in the smallest open palm. God loved us as little girls and He loves us now.
Acts 20:24 “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord has given me the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”
I just wanted to go from victim to “healed.” I didn’t want to hurt anymore. I wanted to be someone that made it through. Sometimes I felt as if life should stop when things got so complicated; however, life continues. The sun rises and sets, the moon and the stars still sparkle in the night, even in our darkest hours and weeds still grow between the cracks in our driveways. Life continues and so shall we. So many prayers prayed, so many prayers answered! All He wants us to do is ask. All He wants us to do is step out of His way and trust Him. He is waiting to make things beautiful.
Psalm 55:22 “cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken”
I am feeling very blessed at where I am when I turn around and see how far I’ve come. I remember walking the path as if barefoot in a field of mesquite trees, trying to reach the green meadow while stopping to pick out thorns from my feet along the way. Today I dance in the beautiful meadow!
Bravery doesn’t always mean standing. Sometimes the bravest thing to do is to sit, rest, gather God and all He has for you. Sometimes we have to be still, quiet to ultimately ROAR.
“There’s a God who can bring me UP and OUT. Turning ugly gaping wounds into scars that serve as badges of honor and trophies of the GRACE of God at work in me.” – Bev Murrill
When the dark veil of our mother's drugs and alcohol covered us in darkness, His mercy allowed us girls to "unwrap" the darkness, the sin, the filth, the shame and begin again, walking with Him in His beautiful grace and light! Right now it is raining grace! It is everywhere I look, everywhere I go, everywhere I breathe! Today is a day where no umbrella is needed; let us dance in the beautiful rain.