Cracking Open

In the previous post I made reference to "years and years of hardshell hurt cracking open." The past few weeks have been gloriously, painfully, messily, joyfully more of that same newbirthing.

These precious tulips, right outside my front door, open up to the sun, just like I've been doing.

Here's what's left of my heirloom peony bush in its original space. Because of needed repairs to my house, it has to be relocated to another part of the yard. Last fall I excavated as much as I could, but this clump remained, its heartroot exposed all winter.

And yet despite all my rough shoveling and an inhospitable winter, nothing stops its persistent growth.

In just a few weeks, these homely stubby shoots will bear the weight of the most glorious blossoms, a fushcia and marigold explosion of joy.








These sturdy flowers will have to survive more transition, though. Their home for nearly 20 years needs to be relocated. So in this spring warmth, I will go out and dig as deeply as I can, yet as gently as I am able, and move them to another garden.

I have no doubt that they, too, will find a way to survive . . . to blossom . . . to thrive.

Honesty

Warning: if anyone reading this post considers a certain level of emotional honesty to be unbearable oversharing, then you'd better leave now.











Okay. Here's a picture I painted a day or so ago. It reflects much of who I am right now.











And here's a snapshot of a plant I was given a day or so earlier. The sweet little poinsettia suffered a rude shock leaving the store and being carried to the car on a frightfully cold day. It barely survived those few moments of transition. This picture also reflects how I feel right now.











Over the past few years, I have found tremendous healing in acknowledging painful feelings. It's taken much hard work to find a balance between standing calmly in the feelings and allowing them light and air, versus wallowing in them and sometimes coming near to drowning.


I'm gonna see right now if I can move forward in one particular area of my life by bearing witness to some deep pain I'm feeling. This is not at all easy for me to do. Much shame attaches itself to these feelings. I hope that by being open here I can banish some of that shame.


My father dominated the first portion of my life. My husband put his mark on the next three and one-half decades. Another man affected the few years since the divorce.



My father was a pedophile and I was his six-year-old victim. There's no erasing what he did. But oh, how I wish he had chosen to repent of his actions and apologize to me before he died.


My husband and I each brought serious emotional baggage to our union, and then faced some sharp and painful experiences during the marriage. I used every resource at my disposal to save our marriage. I wish my husband had done the same. Maybe he would have still chosen to end our marriage, but maybe it would have been easier to live with. Easier to get over. Easier to move past. I wish he had not turned to other women during our marriage. I wish I had not been so easily replaced.


I met a man at the time of the divorce who was part of my life for the next three-plus years. He said often that he valued my faith, my sense of humor, my loyalty, my spirituality, my sensuality. Then one day, without warning, he dropped me. No contact at all. No explanation. Just silence. After several letters from me, he finally left a phone message saying he'd "met someone and was moving on with his life."


I am grateful beyond words for so many ways in which I have grown and matured over these past few years. I love my friends, my faith, my family, my home. And yet there remains a raw, ragged hole in my heart, created not just by the fact of these three failed relationships, but by how each of the three men chose to treat me.


I have had to be the one to end some relationships. In so doing, I summoned all the kindness and courage I could and tried to tell the person, gently, why I was doing what I was doing.


Breakups happen. I get that. And even though my particular faith experience fills me with confidence that "with God all things are possible," I also realize that some people do feel as if they have to give up. That the emotional mountain before them is just higher than they can climb.

But can't even giving up be done with some measure of grace? When you have tied yourself to another human being, and your giving up directly affects their life and stability, wouldn't it just be plain ordinary kindness to cushion the breaking up in any way possible?


For my dear friends who are reading this, please know that I am okay. Truly. I've made it this far and I sure as heck am not giving up now. My intimacy with my heavenly Father has grown deeper than I ever thought possible. My home is, bit by slow bit, experiencing a fresh and joyful transformation. Daily I ask God to show me ways I can reach out to others with compassion and kindness.


But my heart is healing far more slowly than I would wish for. I realize that the three men I have mentioned are only three--just a mere trio out of how many millions of men on the planet. But those three men have overshadowed every single year I've been alive on this earth. It isn't being single that is difficult. I'm adjusting to that. It's being left. Dumped. Cut off. Abandoned. Ignored. Forgotten. Unwanted. Replaced. Erased.

I know that each of these three men fought their own demons. They made bad choices. I just wish that even one of them had had the courage to take some measure of responsibility for how their choices affected other people, like me. I wish even one of them had cared enough to bandage the wounds they inflicted on me.




I'll close this post by sharing another floral friend. These geraniums lived outside one summer a few years ago until a hard frost threatened. I didn't mean to be rough, but I had to speed to get them out of the ground and inside, safe and warm. They responded by hanging on.

















They are gangly and not terribly attractive, but oh, they bloom with a fierce persistence. Look at them, and you see me.

Gotta Bloom

My flower buddies are teaching me sooooooo much about persistence. And even more than that: about doing what God has designed me to do. No matter what.

One winter several years ago, I just got mad when our outdoor growing season stopped so soon. It's not unusual for a freak snow in September to wipe out flowers that are really still at the height of their growing. I heard news of a coming hard frost and went outside and dug up my geraniums and plopped them in a glass bowl. Honestly, I didn't hold out much hope for their successful transplanting--I'd been sorta rough and fast in my "rescue." But I'd fallen in love with their fiery red blooms and just did NOT want to see them end.

To my surprise and delight, they immediately prospered. However, over the next few years, my tending of them went seriously downhill. My personal life was unraveling, with marital separation, reconciliation, then another betrayal. Then ultimately, divorce--unwanted by me, seemingly unavoidable, like an emotional avalanche I couldn't stop nor avoid being buried by.

Every so often I'd remember these sweeties and water them. Every time I thought my neglect had killed them, they rallied. These pictures show them as they are this morning: gangly, wild, raggedy, and exuberantly blooming. Look how they turn to the light. True, only a mommy or daddy geranium (and ME!!) could call them "beautiful" in their present state. But oh, how their insistence sustains me.

Most days, I, too, feel gangly and disjointed, trying to survive despite arid conditions. But most days--no, EVERY day,--I, too, turn to the sun, to divine Love, and blossom. Not because I "choose" to, but because that is how God designed me. Hallelujah!

Self-Portrait

Yes, odd as it may seem, except to those of you who really know me :), I'm considering this lovely bloom as a pretty accurate picture of yours truly.

This is one of a cluster of geraniums I had growing outside last summer, and which I pulled in before a frost killed them. They have wintered beautifully indoors, right next to my "sit and think and read and write" chair.

As they inevitably grew toward the sunlight in the picture window, they would lean over my shoulder and drop luscious petals of hot pink and lipstick red, some on my lap and many more on the beige carpet below.

Nope, I didn't vacuum these petals. Too pretty. Too much of a gift of bright and brillliant beauty during a loooooooong winter.

I pinched off the tops of the several plants, thinking to "manage" their growth--hoping for thick versus leggy, concerned that leggy might snap off . . .but my sweet plants had their own ideas. They continued to strain toward the sun and shot out new splindly sprouts.

I surrendered my efforts to tell them how best to grow and just took a little easel and upended it in their soil and provided a couple loops of cotton twine to loosely secure the tallest stems. They seem safe enough now.

At last count, 9 clusters of buds are in various stages of bloom. I've never had so many at one time.

I've also never felt so much bud and blossom in my own life.

Yes, the winter of my journey has seemed very long and drear, but all during it, I also insisted on blooming. The light has also irresistibly drawn me toward it. During times when I just wanted to give up, God was there to reassure me: "Even if you let go, dear one, I'm still holding on to you." And dear friends and family have also reached out to express very specific love and tender encouragement. For that, I give my deepest thanks.

I WILL bloom . . .

Headlines in our local paper declare that we've broken a decades-old record for snowfall--120 inches so far. Some knee-deep drifts are still melting, all the while temp signs in town today read 70 degrees.

Several weeks ago I spied 2-inch-high sprouts in my flower bed. "Go back," I warned. "Go back!" Heavy snow was forecast. But those little guys didn't listen to me and my fear. They were too intent on growing. Now, the last few days of sun has finally melted away most of the several feet of snow that had buried my little buddies and they looked none the worse for the snowy assault they'd survived. Yesterday I oh-so-delicately shoveled away the last piles of snow at the end of the bed, uncovering a tangle of smooshed leaves and stalks. Oh dear. I figured that losing only these few plants was a pretty good turnout for the severe winter.

But then I happened to glance at the flower bed a few hours later. Right where broken leaves and bent stalks had lain, I saw upright plants--I could almost hear "Ta-Da . . . we MADE it!!"

When we are designed to grow, and not merely grow but bud and blossom, that imperative carries us through the coldest, harshest times.

I'm following the lead of my daffodil buddies and hollering, "Ta-Da . .. I made it!"