In the first grade, I brought home a sheet of paper that my mom raved about. It was the usual first grader-fare: stick figure drawings on the top portion, lazily basking under a long-fingered sun. This masterpiece followed by boxy scrawled letters on the 1-inch red and blue lines below.
Mrs. Nunn, a teacher I recall as being a dark-haired mousy version of Mrs. Claus, had praises to give for my exceedingly short story.
“You have a natural talent as a writer.” my mother beamed at me.
“I do?” I had thought, confusedly, to myself. I recalled a reading test from the week prior. I made up a bunch of nonsense about the little girl with the bucket pictured on the page opposite the dense typed paragraph Mrs. Nunn was asking me to read. She seemed concerned.
Apparently, making up a bunch of nonsense shows some kind of story sense.
If I was born to be a writer, or if I was nurtured into the love of story, I suppose I’ll never know, but the art of words has filled my heart with longing and joy since I can remember.
I have been asking God for a long time to help me understand what it is he is calling me to. For three years I have struggled with my sense of identity as I embarked into staying at home, leaving my nursing career behind. Once a week, like clockwork, I have despaired in the monotony of my role.
I wanted to be at home with my children, and have felt (and been told), that it is a great blessing. I am grateful for the blessing, and there is a flowing river of sorrow in me, that wells up, cutting through the banks of me, changing me, eroding me.
People seldom ask me how I am anymore, or what I might have going on in my life. They must assume that the kids are the totality of my inner existence, that by choosing to live this way, that I don’t care about or want anything “more”. I suppose I can’t blame them for this, after all, I do have very little to say at times. A lot of my life is cleaning the same messes, and having the same arguments, perpetually.
And, what I never could’ve guessed, is that a lot of my life would become a conversation with God.
"...His mother treasured all these things in her heart." Luke 2:51
“Lord, I don’t have the strength for this fight with my pre-teen again, please grant me the grace to be open-hearted.” I whisper under my breath a moment too late. He rolled is eyes at me again, and I feel the helplessness of a loss of patience roll off of my skin. ‘Don’t you dare look at me that way….’
Damn. Another day I wasn’t full of saintly perfection.
Sun echoes in shafts of light, bursting through the oaks outside our home, and landing in the length of eyelashes on my daughter. She has the rosy pink cheeks of a doll, blue eyes like sea glass, she is so beautiful it could bring me to tears, and every day I wonder on the type of man she might find, the mother she will be. Will she be happy? Will she call me? I hope so. Today she reminds me that I am her best friend as we sit and color bumblebees all yellow with her new crayola coloring set.
And, suddenly there I want to be with my children, and I want to give up everything that I have considered to be “me“.
Jess and The Fiat 