Life hurts.
There is no way to get around that truth, and yet, how many countless hours do we spend trying to get around it? We cut people out of our lives. We avoid those hard conversations. We do the right things and say the right words trying to ward off some type of karmic debt to the universe that we all know we owe. We try to convince ourselves that if we follow the rules and try to be good the bad things will slide past us, leaving us untouched and unscathed.
For me it was never the big storms that shook me, but rather those small, little goads that seem to make a mockery of all the good you ever tried to do.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem like the battle is worth it, but if you are like me, you keep telling yourself to hang in there, fight the good fight, don’t give up, sorrow may last for a night but joy comes in the morning. So you grit your teeth, take a deep breath, and square your shoulders. You can do this, all you need is to dig a little deeper and everything will be okay.
Then the phone rings – it’s that friend. You know the one who screw up a one car funeral? The one who when given a good, better, and best option will go out of their way to find a bad one?
She’s all bubbly and happy, and you could tell all that from just the “hello”. She breezes by the formalities of polite conversation and you do your best to feign some enthusiasm as your dog vomits on the carpet. Reaching over the pile of past due notices on the kitchen counter, you discover you are out of paper towels and go to search for toilet paper, praying there is some on the house, while cooing one syllable responses only catching half of what she is telling you about her latest adventure.
The kids start screaming over something that sounds apocalyptic, but you are holding on to some desperate hope that it will only rise to Word War III levels. You scrub the vomit, trying to ignore the rage pouring from their bedroom, and manage an, “I’m so happy for you” into the phone.
The resounding sound of someone getting slapped sends you running towards the fray, and you give the kids that mean mama look and point them to opposing corners. Never missing a beat, you smile into the phone, “Isn’t that great?”
“I am going to get off here now. I am having lunch at the Louvre, and the noise is making it hard to hear.” She gushes and as she disconnects you realize what you have just heard…she is on a two month tour of Europe, having an amazing little romance with some French man, and she is having lunch AT THE FREAKING LOUVRE!
The world stops as your mind flashes through each and every bad decision she has made, every time she has been crappy friend, and how she has taken advantage of all your attempts to be a good person. The children notice the change, the freeze in terrified silence, and cringing at what they fear will come.
But you are a good mom, and you offer them a reassuring smile, blink back the tears of frustration and rage you feel forming in your eyes. “Are you two good?” you ask sweetly with just enough of an edge on your voice to let them know there is only one proper answer in this moment. They nod, but never blink.
Deep breath, shoulders squared, and that smile frozen so hard on your face, you feel like it could shatter, you stride to your bedroom close the door with soft deliberateness, lean against it, and slide to the floor. The smile turns to a grimace and you feel the tears splash down angry and hot, while you send vague accusations towards heaven about the unfairness of it all, even as you realize how incredibly petty you are being - which only makes it all indescribably worse.
Wiping your eyes, a funny smell catches your attention, and you realize that you never dropped the toilet paper you had been using on the dog’s vomit.
I suppose that it wouldn’t seem strange that in that moment none of it seems worth the struggle, but then something amazing happens. There is a little knock at the door, and a timid voice asks, “Mama, are you all right?”
Then you remember why you do it all. It isn’t about you. It is about those little faces watching and wondering how you are going to handle this thing called life. It is about teaching them that life can be lived with integrity and grace. It is about showing them that you can rise above and thrive in the midst of craziness and chaos. It is about living in such a way that they can see God’s grace and provision in the hard times, and putting action to that abstract thing we call faith. Life hurts and that is a reality that we must prepare them to face, but you can teach them that even in the pain and disappointment of it all they will never have to face it alone – or if you can quiet your heart enough to receive, they will teach you that great and beautiful truth.
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