Simplifying… me

The above picture needs no explanation.  I probably don’t need to go into great detail about how I closed my eyes for my sixth grade school photo.  I’m sure you already figured that out.  I won’t even tell you how absolutely horrifying this was for me, or how I wanted to crawl under my desk and pull my woven sisal book bag over my head when my teacher handed me my picture packet.  The photo speaks for itself.

 

The bumpy, forty-five minute bus ride home was torture.  As the black exhaust from passing vehicles blew into the windows of our bus, I could feel tears pooling in the corners of my eyes.  I wanted to burst into sobs, rip my pictures to pieces, and never show my face at school again.  More than anything, I just wanted to be home.  I wanted to see my mom and fall into her arms.  I needed a good cry.

 

When my mom saw the image peering through the clear cellophane window of my packet, she didn’t even have to ask me how my day went.  She already knew.  After I cried, and wished I’d never been born, and begged to move to another country, and swore I’d never set foot in my school again, and wallowed in grief, my mom spoke up.  She didn’t pity me.  She didn’t stroke my hair and feed into the “woe-is-me” mood I was feeling.  Instead, she started brainstorming ways to smile about this catastrophe: “Amy, let’s make ‘em laugh.”  Honestly, I didn’t really see anything very funny about my life being ruined by sleepy eyes.  And I certainly wasn’t ready to start cutting out the wallet-size miniature reminders of those sleepy eyes to trade with my friends.  However, after listening to my mom’s pep talk, and her encouragement to stop taking myself so seriously, I slowly began to see the brighter side to the whole scenario.

 

We came up with some good one-liners for me to dish out the next day at school, too:

 

“I was feeling a little sleepy on picture day.”

“I like the way I look with my eyes closed.”

“It’s really the smile that counts, right?”

 

By the next day, I was armed with wit and ready to pass out my picture to all my friends.

 

Life is messy.  Life is unpredictable.  We start moving in one direction and then, unforeseen circumstances jump in the middle of our path, causing us to switch gears fast.  Before we know it, we are off on a detour and completely unprepared.  Are these circumstances avoidable?  Sometimes.  But not all the time.  Most of the time, life doesn’t care whether or not we’re prepared for unemployment, cancer, a sick child, an emergency root canal, a broken down car.  Life comes at us – the innocent and the not-so innocent alike.  And when life has left its mark, we are left to figure out what to do next.

 

I am a full supporter of being real with feelings.  When the messiness of life smacks me in the face, I have learned to give myself permission to feel whatever it is that I feel.  When we found out we were pregnant with Jackson (unplanned and unprepared for), I cried.  They were tears of fear.  I worried and fretted.  It took me a couple of days to process my emotions.  After I got all the crying out of my system, I realized, like the turning point with my sixth grade school picture, I was left with a choice.  Would I resent the pregnancy?  Would I spend the next 30 some weeks living in fear and distress rather than joy and elation?

 

At my first sonogram, six weeks along in the pregnancy, I chose to laugh about it.

 

Jackson was our surprise gift from God.  It took a conscious decision on my part, and Joel’s, to refocus and reset our plans.  Once we did, each moment in our pregnancy was filled with excitement, anticipation, and wonder.  We laughed about the future because we knew that God was in it.

 

I realize that an unexpected pregnancy is not nearly as hard to come to grips with as a home foreclosure, an untimely death, or spouse abandonment (all of which have afflicted friends of mine).  I realize that the detour of my life pales in comparison.  Still, God is in everything.  He’s in the winter of our lives, just as he is in the new beginnings of spring.  He grants us space to feel and express our pain, and then he offers us the opportunity to find joy in the detour.  He gives us the song, the smile, and the creativity to find laughter on our new path.

 

He holds us close and then gently invites us to “make ‘em laugh”.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!