Brave, Anyway

Tag: broken

  • Kinda Prickly Brave Girl Wannabe

    It’s been a year. A year since everything changed for my family.

    I thought I’d wake up sad on the anniversary, but I didn’t. I’m not sure what that says about me and I’m sure a psychologist would have a field day with it, but it’s the truth and so it is what it is.

    I also thought I might wake up angry. I pray a thousand things for my girls every day and I pray only one thing for myself – please take away my anger.

    I think the most accurate description of my more recent demeanor came from a very funny coworker. Beth is better but she’s a little prickly…kinda like a porcupine. I seriously laughed out loud when I heard it. Porcupines have sharp pines to protect themselves and their children from predators, and the truth is I have been in prickly mode and have shot more than a few quills in the last 12 months. But those comments were honest and with affection, and I appreciate the people in my life who I can be totally honest with and who can be totally honest with me – and who call me out on my BS. It’s not easy being my friend, and I know it.

    I have been working on getting up each day and putting something positive in front of my eyes before I put my phone or social media in front of them. I fail at it regularly. I woke up this morning, on the anniversary of all of our change, and picked up my phone. Pinterest was what I had open last and that’s what came up when my screen saver went away. Only what I saw was not a post I’d been looking at yesterday. It was a completely new post and it had a scripture I don’t think I’ve ever heard or seen.

    Joel 2:25 – “I will restore or replace for you the years that the locust has eaten.”

    I looked up that verse across different versions of the Bible and the NIV says “I will repay you for the years the locust has eaten.”

    I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe that everything happens for a reason. We may not understand that reason for days or months or years, but there’s a reason. After a frustrating search I found my daughters’ greatest helper, an art therapist, through someone I met at a mutual friend’s house for just a couple of hours just a few weeks prior. There’s a reason that my ex and I elected to attend an annual party we have never gone to. There’s a reason that that which was meant to stay hidden in darkness was revealed.

    I don’t have all the reasons yet. But I know without a shadow of a doubt that I awoke to that verse for a reason. It’s a promise, and I have been repeating it over and over in my head all day.

    And you know what else? I’m not angry today. And that’s so weird because 24 hours ago I was pretty angry. But I have been at peace all day, and I have no explanation for it. I didn’t have a big cry or a big shouty catharsis or a big anything. I just woke up different, and I read “I will restore or replace for you the years that the locust has eaten.”

    I may have angry moments ahead and I may have sad moments ahead, but I also have happiness ahead. And I have contentment ahead. And I have freedom ahead. And I have wholeness ahead.

    I have restoration ahead. “I will restore for you…” Restoring is repairing, fixing, mending – that’s how we deal with things that are broken. Broken is not the end. Broken is fixable. The only reason for anyone to embrace brokenness is fear. Fear of doing the hard work. Fear of failing. Fear of being vulnerable. Fear of exposure. Fear of consequences. Fear we are not actually worthy. Fear we will find we are not actually fixable.

    Perhaps one of the most brave things any of us can do is embrace restoration. To face restoration we have to admit that we are fallible. We have to embrace our ability to be mad and sad and laugh and pick up a sword and slay dragons and roar all at the same time.

    Remember high school history class and looking at your textbook with pictures from The Restoration Period? It produced a lot of great art, and in many of those paintings you see people with swords. That’s because restoration involves a fight. And in a stroke of what’s-not-an-actual-coincidence, that just happens to be my name. Or rather, it’s my family name – the name that is about to be restored to me.

    On the last day that the Dembitz’s existed, he bought me fancy overpriced sunglasses. It was such a treat for me and I was truly delighted to get them. I can’t own expensive sunglasses, because I can’t be trusted with them – odds are that I will repeat history and I will sit on them and break them. (This has happened more times than I care to admit.) Those Tiffany glasses were returned long ago, during my days of cloudy sadness, without my ever wearing them because to me they represented a lie.

    And I did not think again about those glasses until now. My current sunglasses are on their last leg of a sad life in the seat of my car, where they regularly get sat on. On a whim and in that good mood I woke up in, I went shopping. I bought new overpriced sunglasses – purchased by me for me. They are gold and fancy and glittery, and totally outside of my comfort zone.

    I picked up my sword and restored something. You might even say that I restored one of the things that the locust had eaten.

    Brave Girls can buy their own damn sunglasses.

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    Photo Assistance by Audrey

  • Why don’t we say Partly Sunny?

    The word broken means a lot more than I thought it did.

    I’ve always thought of broken as not working and not fixable. Like a mirror – once it’s broken, it’s done. Nothing but an annoying thing you need to clean up (as you’re trying not to cut yourself) and throw away.

    But according to dictionary.com, broken actually has a lot of definitions.

    • fragmented
    • fractured
    • torn
    • (of sky cover) being more than half, but not totally, covered by clouds
    • changing direction abruptly
    • incomplete
    • interrupted
    • disrupted
    • disconnected
    • weakened in strength, spirit
    • not smooth

    These definitions make me think differently about broken. Broken isn’t always a mirror that will never be used again. Sometimes it’s a toy that a child thinks will never work again, when really that toy just needs new batteries. Sometimes it’s a cell phone that just needs a little time to rest and dry out in rice. Sometimes it’s a leg that needs to be in a cast while it heals. Sometimes it’s an egg that’s a necessary ingredient for a cake.

    Broken is not the end.

    Broken is when your life changes direction abruptly.

    Broken is how you might describe the flow of things when your life is interrupted.

    Broken is fragmented thoughts and feelings you struggle to pull together, because you’re disconnected from who and/or what you used to be.

    Broken is when life isn’t smooth.

    Broken is not the end.

    I keep coming back to the sky cover reference for broken: “being more than half, but not totally, covered by clouds.” That’s what life has been like for a little while now. The dark and angry storm clouds have cleared out and we’re in a weather pattern that is party cloudy – or perhaps partly sunny is the better way to look at it. (Why the heck don’t we say partly sunny?)

    Days are filled with normal things like camp and dinner time and play and work and tickling and fart jokes and board games. Days are filled with happy moments. But here and there, our days have moments of sadness or anger or melancholy. Sometimes our days have many of those moments. Because things that used to function how we liked don’t function that way anymore. Because we face situations and people that challenge us. Because some of the pictures that used to hang in our house don’t hang here anymore, because some of the people that used to live here don’t live here anymore.

    I love to take pictures. I so love pictures that I still have hundreds of 4 by 6’s printed each year and I meticulously place them in order in old-fashioned tangible photo albums for each of the girls. Pictures tell our story. Pictures help us to remember events and moments.

    But when we share pictures online, we are telling a fragmented story – a broken story. And that’s because we tend to share only the pictures that show us happy and having fun. In part, we tell happy stories with our pictures because no one thinks to take pictures when they’re crying. And no one gets pictures of their family all shouting at one another as they try to figure out whose fault it really was that someone dropped the container of eggs. We often literally have no unhappy pictures. And frankly, no one really wants to see those pictures.

    But we should see those not-so-perfect pictures, because that is real life.

    Real life has brokenness. Every single one of us has days and lives filled with fragments of loving, smiley, happy, sad, angry, shouty, and cut-off-that-guy-in-traffic moments.

    The girls and I love to play with Snapchat filters. If an alien 7 light years away finds our family photos 300 years from now, they are going to wonder what the heck kind of creatures we really were. One of their current filters is called Broken Mirror, which just struck me yesterday as the most “real” thing that I’ve ever seen on social media – showing ourselves fragmented. Showing ourselves broken.

    My life has brokenness, and that’s OK.

    That’s OK because broken is fixable.

    And sometimes things that are broken end up contributing to a really awesome cake.