Here I Raise MY Ebenezer

We’ve been home for 22 months. I can think of so many adjectives to describe those 22 months and quite honestly, not one of them is nice. These have been the 22 hardest months of my life. No exceptions. I’ve tried to list out a few adjectives to sum up and I can’t do it. Each time I look at the list and it doesn’t conjure up enough emotion, enough fear, enough uncertainty, enough loneliness, enough despair so I delete it. It doesn’t matter because even if I found the perfect word it’s nothing more than a string of letters until it’s your life spiraling out of control inside that word. There’s no understanding it. (And let’s remember, there are children who have been hurt and are hurting so much more than Boohoo. There are families so much more lost than mine. Prayers and strength to all you mamas.)

I want to throw out a bunch of disclaimers here because it feels like I’m stomping through a swamp and I could go down at any minute…and be eaten by an alligator.

My relationship with Boohoo hasn’t changed. She hasn’t changed. The hurts haven’t gone away. The negative patterns of our relationship are dug deep. The rocky terrain of sibling relationships hasn’t changed. The life that we live here hasn’t changed. I haven’t changed, not really. My personality, flaws, foibles, adorable quirks, propensity to sin, lazy tendencies all of that (and more) is still there (…but I can hoop now).

I’ve been home from Orlando for a fat handful of days, hardly a huge number, or a length of time to prove myself. I’m not saying that anyone is healed, cured, fixed, fine, or suddenly madly in love. I’m absolutely not saying that I’m not going to face plant in my “new” parenting techniques. I am so going to screw it up royally from time to time. Before this is through I will even screw it up for an extended period of time. I’m sure there will be phases of crappy parenting and responding and I’m going to think that I dreamed this whole thing up. We’re not talking if, we’re talking when.

THAT is why I’m writing this post. It would be easier not to write it because then I wouldn’t have to eat my words later on and trust me, I’m afraid this is going to away. If I didn’t write this post I could just sink back into the Slime Swamp of Parenting and forget it all ever happened. But I don’t want to forget. I’m raising up an Ebenezer so that I when I mess it up I can look back and see this and remember, “Thus far the LORD has helped us.”  

I’ve said recently that I felt like my heart was baked dirt. I don’t feel like that anymore. I don’t feel like that anymore. I don’t feel like that anymore. Yes, I typed that three times on purpose. I know exactly the moment that it changed, but I don’t know why. If I’d have thought about it then I’d have had that lounge chair I was bawling on bronzed to commemorate the event. I don’t know what changed, I don’t know why it changed, I don’t know why then (and not say, 22 months ago!) but my heart isn’t baked dirt right now. It’s new. It’s full. It’s beating. It’s pushing life back into me and my family. I can feel it. I can sit here right now and feel life and cry.

I don’t have words for it, but once again, Sara Groves does.

 

Something Changed by Sara Groves

“Something changed inside me broke wide open all spilled out

Till  I had no doubt that something changed.

Never would have believed it till I felt it in my own heart

In the deepest part the healing came.

And I cannot make it.

And I cannot fake it.

And I can’t afford it.

But it’s mine.

Something so amazing in a heart so dark and dim

When a wall falls down and the light comes in.

And I cannot make it.

And I cannot fake it.

And I can’t afford it.

But it’s mine.”