Laugh Lines and Scars

Some years, the anniversary of my mother's death passes quietly.  Other years, like this one, the sadness, the longing erupts, seemingly out of nowhere.

"D-day is just around the corner.

It's the remembering of the invasion

into all that was good in life;

this invasion into my innocence.

It was my garden,

my Eden,

and then it wasn't."

Journal entry April 21/23

I felt it more keenly this year.  A window into a moment in the fragile, catapulted world of my five-year-old self.  I sensed her confusion and aloneness and fear and utter inability to understand why life had fallen apart.  In moments like these, I feel it as a little girl.  I lose the groundedness of being a fully functioning 58 year old woman.

There are parts of me which voice their opinions of this elongated grief journey.

Anger can still rail at the injustice of that fateful night.  Shame shrouds me with, "when are you ever going to get over this?"  Sadness tells me I will never be free.  And on and on they chant.

Always, thankfully, I eventually return to the woman I am today.  It came unexpectedly, late Monday afternoon while reading a quote.

"Every laugh line, every scar,

is a badge I wear to show

I've been present,

the inner rings of my personal tree trunk

that I display proudly for all to see."

--Pat Benetar

Every scar a badge?!

Display proudly for all to see?!

This has not been my go-to mindset.   How different life could look if I framed my loss and this endless grief journey, in such a way!

Many years ago, I chose to be present to my pain.  I know this has informed the trajectory of my life.  I am who I am today because of the laugh lines AND the scars.  Being present has meant deep pain and deep joy.

Within the inner rings of my personal tree trunk, are etched the laugh lines and scars of life.  It's easy for me to wish for only laugh lines.  So often I want to hide the scars.  

I pray for courage to live contented with all of me...laugh lines and scars.

Remembering my mother--April 24, 1970

"I can wish the first story never happened and feel gratitude for the second without either of those sentiments canceling out the other two...

two things can always be true."

Hope Edelman

"The Aftergrief--Finding Your Way Along the Long Arc of Grief"

"Mourning never really ends.

Only as time goes on,

it erupts less frequently."

--Anonymous

Reflections on Grace and Abundance

Wednesday April 5, 2023

Here I am.  The final morning of my three day silent retreat, and the closing days of Lent.

Grace and Abundance.

This was to be my Lenten practice; that which was to frame these past 40 days.  

Grace; unmerited favor.  Christy Nockels sings, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound."  Ahhh, yes, sweet, powerful and welcome.  And a part of me fully and completely desires this grace.  As the lyrics continue, "Grace flows down and covers me,"  I find myself oh so wanting to be drenched in this grace.  

Another part of me, the "doer", the recovering perfectionist, finds it difficult to fathom that I myself, cannot DO SOMETHING to earn the favor of God.  God knows I've tried...exhausted myself at times.  The cycle always returns me spent AND grateful...for grace.  

"This is what the Sovereign LORD,

the Holy One of Israel

says,

'Only in returning to me

and resting in me

will you be saved."

Isaiah 30:15a

And so to Him I return time and again...and rest.  

Grace these past weeks, in large and small ways.  Grace for the sin ever before me.  Grace for my feeble, weary self.  Grace to begin anew, every day.  Grace, that Jesus allowed His betrayal for me.

"From his abundance we have all received,

grace upon grace."

John 1:16

More and more I will determine to live in this grace.

Abundance, the opposite of scarcity.  Jesus gives out of His abundance, his very life, first and foremost.  And then, because He wills not to stop there, He lavishes abundance to me in the dailiness of life.  Abundance, the bliss of my grandchildren, Seaton and Nika.  Abundance, Sabbath rest.  Abundance, snow squalls and cardmaking garage sales.  Why?!  I deserve none of it.  Jesus could have chosen to save me and then leave me struggling til heaven.  He owes me nothing!!  And yet gives and gives and gives, in abundance.

Repeatedly, grace and abundance were woven together.  Truly, can they be separated???

For that which is abundant is indeed grace.  And grace itself is an offering of abundance.