Category: Authenticity

::Embracing Grace::

God has been tapping me on the shoulder for the past ten, maybe fifteen years. I knew it but, for the first few of those years, I tried to ignore Him (let me add: big mistake, that one).

As the years passed, and my grands were no longer spending weekends with me, my life became very … very quiet.

Finally, one evening, I attended an event put on by an organization called Portico Story. A dear friend from church, Tammy, had posted it on facebook, and God got in my face: “You need to go.”

So I went.

This event was about babies. And mamas. And forbearance, and grace. The speaker was a woman who shared her own pregnancy journey. She was passionate, funny, heartbreaking. Riveting.

At the end I hugged Tammy, thanked her, and told her I needed to meet with her about something God’s been pulling on me about.

We met. And, as they say, the rest is history. I’m being little vague here, mainly out of an abundance of caution. But the short of it is, I’m now a safe haven for Mamas and their babies.

I am delighted to say, the Portico organization, their people and I have become a loosely linked, spirit-directed team. My first Mama and her newborn arrived in April of this year, a referral from Portico.

Having someone live with you is a journey. Especially when your first introduction is at your front door. But it’s been five months, and now we’re halfway through September, her last month with me. We’ve gotten to know each other, and I’ve gotten to watch her baby grow. When I see this Mama lift her chin, find her feet, and begin to establish a life for her and her children, I know God put this here.

I’m present for her as supporter, and counselor, and prayerful watcher. I provide a cozy bedroom, nutritious food, and a peaceful place to call home. A sanctuary.

It’s not all clean and perfect. It’s real life: messy, disorganized, a little chaotic … dirty diapers and spit-up rags; communication breakdowns and slight misunderstandings. But we muddle through, as humans do.

And everyone in this house is human. I remind myself of this from time to time, and extend as much grace as I can.

In the end, this Mama and her baby will go off and live their lives. I pray that, in some small way, I’ve made a difference.

As she steps forward into this new chapter, I trust that God will continue to shine His light, His grace, and His mercy, down on us all.

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::Becoming Real::

I was a child of the sixties, and grew up in a household centered around the Holy Catholic Church and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. My parents were children of the Great Depression; they learned that life means do without, stretch a dollar, work hard, and drink harder. I was their first child, born to them when they were still young, tragically beautiful, and very much in love. When I was a little girl I would shyly study my mother’s face … her wide eyes, long eyelashes, full red lips. She was clearly a movie star in hiding. I wondered what she was doing in this little life, in this house on North Marion Street, with its linoleum kitchen floor and one parched sapling in the front yard. Even at five, I knew she’d been miscast. Through the years, five more babies, and alcoholic chaos, it became an undeniable fact: my mother belonged in a different movie. 

As the oldest daughter, I took on the job of laugh inducing peacemaker. Lots of oldest daughters have that role. My brother, two years younger, was mother’s tenderhearted caretaker. We spent our childhood together in the family foxhole. Nothing will bond siblings like friendly fire. It’s a sort of hellish, heartbreaking love that no one else knows. No one. But at the time, it was our family’s brand of ‘normal,’ so imagine my surprise when, years later, I learned that some families have no foxhole at all.

I lurched through the decades, reinventing myself over and over, determined to be whoever those claiming to love me told me I was. It took over forty years, and one spectacular betrayal for me to stop, and turn my attention to the whisper of truth. It was there all along, but I hadn’t heard it before, because I wasn’t ready. Not only had I become ready, I threw up the white flag of surrender. I’d run out of things to try, people to be. And I was exhausted.. All I had left was me. When I finally gave into myself, it felt like declaring bankruptcy. 

I remember the date. May 12, 1991. My attorney’s call that morning woke me up. She was calling to let me know the divorce was final. She’d used the word, “Congratulations.” I got off the phone, and laid in bed, waiting. I didn’t know what to expect, but I thought surely I would feel … something. Relief? Excitement, maybe? All I got was silence. I threw off the covers, walked into the bathroom, and stared in the mirror. I looked into my own eyes, searching for … someone. Who will I be now? I whispered. I had no idea.

Ever since I was a tiny girl, there’s been … something … like a tiny thread … woven deep inside me. Piled over with years of Catholic school, alcoholic parents, sweet babies, abusive marriage, broken dreams … you’d think that thread would have broken, or suffocated, or disintegrated. It never did. 

Like a flower finding its way to the sun through a crack in the stone, that shimmering little strand found its way back to me. 

The very thing I feared would be most difficult has become easy, feels natural. Coming home to myself is simple, and honest. I am moving back toward the center of someone I’ve always known. It warms my heart, settles my belly, and brings perspective into sharp focus. I know where home is now. And I see that I was right here all the time. 

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::Big Brown Boots::

At Marquette School every day, Monday through Friday, started with Holy Mass.

Each class sat together with their Benedictine nun sitting proudly in charge of the group.

Once I received Holy Communion, I was able to partake every morning. This was back during the days when it was the rule to abstain from food after midnight in order to receive the Sacrament.

So I received it every morning. Recipients would file into the lunchroom to break their fast after Mass. My mother tied a dime and a nickel into the corner of a handkerchief. This bought me a cup of hot chocolate and one glazed donut. At that young age, this seemed the prize, and I confess to you now that – more often than not – it was that cocoa and that donut in my head when the priest placed the Host on my tongue.

At one point I needed rubber boots. I dreamt of getting a pair of white boots with a big tassel on the front. I’d seen the drum majorettes wear them and that was exactly what I wanted!

The next memory that comes to mind is me, late to Mass, shlepping down the aisle in big, brown rubber boots. Christ the King church was filled with every student in the school, and was dead silent except for me, age six, clod hopping my way down that center aisle to the front pews, where the first graders sat. I wished the marble floor would swallow me up.

When purchasing them my mother had pointed out, quite briskly, that my brother could wear them once I’d outgrown them which – give the size – would surely have taken several years.

I hated my mother, I hated my brother, I hated those big brown boots, and I hated myself for all that hatred. I knew, in my freshly ordained young heart, that hatred was a sin. So I hated, more than anything, the hatred that I had.

It seems like I wore those big brown boots for years. At first every time I pulled them on, I willed them to be white boots with a big tassel on the front.

They never were anything but brown rubber.

Such a big lesson in humility for a six year old.

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::Breaks My Heart::

I was so young when I had my babies. I knew only enough to keep them diapered and fed and loved. I sensed there was something deeper still in the act of loving them, but I didn’t know how to get there. I thought about that often, and it broke my heart.

As my babies were growing up, I took them to Sunday school, and to church. They learned to ride bikes, they played dominoes and Uno. They jumped off the pier in Perdido Bay. I was there as mother, but also as observer. I tried to give them all of me. But I often thought that just fell short. And it broke my heart.

They grew into teenagers. Music blared, the house filled with their friends, and sometimes we laughed till our sides ached. Good, rowdy kids who pulled on the reins. It felt like I was always scrambling to keep up but I fell behind so often, and it broke my heart.

Now as I look back on those years. I swear, it feels like a different lifetime. My babies are grown, married, and my grandbabies are almost grown. My goal, my intention, is to always be there for them. But even now, it feels like I fall short, and it breaks my heart.

She had no idea how good a job she was doing. She always felt she never measured up to what she should be. I guess love is like that … you have so much to give, you give all you have, and yet there’s a longing to give more, to be more.

Now, when I tell them how sorry I am for any wrongs I might have done them during their childhood they laugh, feign outrage, and tell me to stop.

If I could, I would live long enough to spill love on all my kids till they day they die. 

But I can’t and it breaks my heart.

So I’ll just keep doing my brokenhearted best, as long as I’m here, and hope it’s enough.

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::So The Kids Will Know::

I want my kids to know.

I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil. In my mind, even then, it’s “what you do,” isn’t it? Write. Draw. Express yourself on the page.

And I’ve done a lot of it through the years – decades, really – that I’ve been alive.

But recently I’ve been thinking about something. And that is, what will my writing tell my children about me?

I never really knew my mother. She was a cold and distant woman, and no matter how hard I tried, I could never bridge the gap. I could not reach her.

She died on October 31. Halloween. In some weird, standup comedy way, that seemed fitting. But the humor dies out and gives way to the heartbreaking fact that whoever she was will remain a mystery.

Now back to my thought about my kids. I want them to know their mother. I want them to have all the pieces, so they can more clearly understand themselves. I want them to have no questions about who I am, who I was, or why I was and am this way. They need to know.

So now we’re at the memoir. I’ve dragged my feet through a couple of decades, because a lot of the truth isn’t pretty. And on some level I kept thinking the people who treated me poorly would die, and then the book would be safe to write.

But it’s not that simple. It never is. My goal has never been to disparage anybody. My intention is to tell my story, and to share how I survived all that happened. 

I want my children to know what sturdy stock they’re made of. They need to know how, on more than one occasion, their mother “sucked it up” and carried on.

They need to know that the three-legged stool I’ve referenced all their lives – the one with the legs of faith, music, and humor – has, in very real terms, always held me up and held my life together. 

I pray for the courage to write it all. I hope that readers will see that the pattern of broken pieces of their lives is, from a distance, a stunning mosaic.

I hope people understand that the sturdy, fragile, holy, horrible, inspiring, hysterical, happy, messy lives they live are beautiful.

I hope my kids fully embrace it all; that knowing who their mama is will help them see that if I could do it, they can too.

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::Ask Me How I Know::

Have you ever been lied about? And have you tried to “out truth” the lies told about you?

I have. It’s a grueling and ultimately a hopeless exercise.

The effort can leave you breathless … the kind where, with every rapid gasp of air, your aching lungs cry out for mercy.

Lies told about you can be so dark, so extreme they can make your hair and eyelashes fall out. They can cause you to get therapy five days a week for months on end, keep your therapist on speed dial. Move you to write all night, and into the morning, just trying to claw your way out of the black hole you’ve been thrown into. It’s the PTSD of the violently besmirched. And it’s real.

Ask me how I know.

You’ll learn, sometimes the hard way, that silence is the best defense. In this case, the UK’s Royal Family has the best attitude: “never complain, never explain.”

Yup, it’s difficult, walking that path. Counterintuitive. But it’s where you’ll ultimately land when the gossiping “whale of Jonah” finally upchucks you onto the shore. There you’ll lay, waterlogged and exhausted. And, really, relieved to finally give it up.

Ask me how I know.

Do not think less of yourself for how someone’s lies about you have hurt you. It’s hard, it’s confusing, and it’s heartbreaking … especially because there’s never any good reason for it, no purpose other than to hurt and/or destroy you.

But here’s the thing: peace will abide. There’s a saying, “What other people think of you is none of your business.” Butbutbut … what do we do when “What other people say” about us is … so very, very wrong?

The answer, as hard as it is to grab onto, is: be more you. Lean in to who you are. Your authenticity is who God put here in you; it is your key to everything that is good, and true.

It’s tricky at first, and it takes some practice. But keep at it long enough, dedicate yourself to it deeply enough, and you will be present as “fully, wholly you.”

Once the ‘real’ version of you is strong, the chatter of untruths will no longer matter. Lord, yes, it takes time. But start. Start now, if you can. Because ninety days from now you’ll be ninety days older, whether you’ve been more you or not.

Give it a chance to move you toward the good stuff. Because it will, I promise.

Then you’ll discover that this is the good stuff that is born of the bad. And it is so good that, in a funny way, you’ll give thanks for all of it.

Ask me how I know.

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::Where Jesus Flang It::

Leave it Lay Where Jesus Flang It

Yes. Do that.

Do not look back.

Don’t masticate the past.

It is the trail you’ve left, the one you’ve taken

Over insurmountable odds.

That path is made up of happiness, 

Confusion, glitter, strife, untapped potential,

Broken hearts, broken dreams, unwavering faith, 

Resolute determination.

Never forget how resolute you’ve been, even in your

Darkest, most hopeless hour.

Where did you get it? That determination?

Your faith stood firm, it brought you here.

And here you stand. 

Not “Here you sit,” or

“Here you crawl.”

You stand. 

There were times when you thought you’d never

Get here from there.

But you did.

Here you are.

Well done, you.

Carry on.

Best foot forward.

As for the past?

Leave it lay where Jesus flang it

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::The Party::

I was not allowed to go. Anywhere.

Well, that’s a broad statement, too broad. I could attend school, Confession on Saturdays, Mass on Sundays. The time in between these events, when I wasn’t doing chores, I spent in my room … a small converted sunporch at the back of the house.

My bed was a chair that unfolded into a flat metal frame with three hard cushions. It was not a comfortable sleep, but at least it didn’t take up much room.

I was a budding artist, the one thing I did that mother seemed to approve of. My art supplies included a small box of pastels, and I treasured those short stubby chalks. I got lost in the process of creating with them, while Bobby Vee played on my little record player.

One night, in the middle of summer, after being told I could not attend a party my friends were throwing, I went to my room. I was sixteen, and not allowed to wear makeup.I looked at my chalks, and something “other” happened. I took the pastel rose colored stick, and with tweezers, shaved a bit to create a pile of dust. I took the sable brown color, and did the same. Then, a water color brush. I touched the shaved blushy color and brushed it over my cheeks, spreading and blending with my fingertips. The brown color I swiped gently into the socket crease of my eyelid. I softened it with my fingers.

Then, I put some of the pink dust into a spot of Vaseline and touched it to my lips.I brushed my hair, and looked in the mirror. The difference was remarkable. Who was I? Who is she? I leaned my forehead against the reflection and thought, “I am ready for a party that may never come.”

That was almost sixty years ago. I was so young and so naive then, so full of dreams and wonder. The road from there to here has been extremely rough at times, but passable.The bed I sleep in now, and the beds my grandchildren sleep in when they visit, are beautiful and stationary. They are piled with down pillows and spread with the kind of cozy bedding that would make Goldilocks swoon; they are clouds of heaven. To tell you the truth, there are times when I check the clock to see if it’s too early to end the day, climb the stairs, and climb into my bed.

I can go anywhere I want, any time I want. There is no one to tell me I can’t. I am, at long last, the boss of me.

Do I still get ready for parties? Sometimes. When I want to. Not when I don’t.

And really, I’m beginning to think that the party I thought I was ready for so many years ago was, in fact, this life I’m living now.

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