I found mascara on the white pillow in the kids' room today. Stains from my eyes, from crying last night.
It all fell apart around the dinner table, which is actually quite typical. Elias was in trouble for complaining about his school work, Keziah was in trouble for telling her brother he wasn't in trouble. Ezra was painting the table with milk. Thomas was in a mood. I was exhausted. Completely exhausted. Which is where I find myself every night these days. I made an incredible vegetarian lasagna (if I do say so myself...) and I just wanted us to sit and be a family...for twenty minutes at best. Is this too much to ask? Apparently it is.
As the world was falling apart in our home, which included a pouting husband and, at this point, an angry, bitter wife... Elias, who had finally gotten his teeth brushed and V E R Y S L O W L Y slipped his pajamas on (seriously, this kid moves slow... he tries my patience on every level... and I have to admit, I have a lot to learn from him...) turned to me, with huge blue eyes and a face so sad you would have thought someone had died. With big round tears he says, falling to his knees, "I just want to change... I just want a new life."
I melted into the floor, grabbing his little skinny body, holding him tight, remembering the night he was born. I began sobbing. Keziah had many questions. Before we knew it, we sat in a pile on the floor, holding one another and crying. It was a hopeless, yet beautiful moment. A moment where my boy's words went somewhere deep within me. A moment of truth, if you will. "I want to change too..." I cried.
There are those minutes, hours, days, or weeks in life, when I feel so incredibly desperate for Jesus...like a seven year old begging for his punishment to be taken away... And I can't help but run to Him. He was familiar with grief, with suffering... but does he understand my guilt? Does he understand how I daily feel that I am never and WILL never be enough...not to all the many people who are counting on me. And I hear the band-aids of people's well-intended words haunting my subconscious, cramming me further into the cave...further into desperation.
And somehow, He meets me there. With a kiss from my child, with a kind word from my husband...with shared tears that remind me of how needy I am...how needy WE are...and how we WILL make it as a family.
The questions of doubt quickly follow. The mirror of my soul leaves me with questions. And alas, I begin comparing my life. A hopeless trap. One that leaves me unsatisfied every time.
Later that night in bed, as I held Elias' shaking, sniffling body, I watched as he slowly went through a pile of photos. Photos from all the people he loves in Indianapolis. I noticed as he stopped at one photo. The shaking got worse. The sniffling unbearable. My heart hurt so bad. I couldn't make it better and I wasn't about to try. I knew he needed this moment. I asked him who the photo was of, and he said, through sobs, "Katie." It was his Aunt "Katie." He held the picture to his face...stroked her face as if it was an ex-girlfriend. It was so dramatic, but so real in his little being. He kept putting the picture on the bed and then taking it in his hands, gently, like he was holding a seashell, and bringing it to his face.
"You miss her, huh?" I asked.
"I just feel like I'll never see her again. I want to go back to Indianapolis." He bawled.
"We'll be going back soon..." I offered.
"No, it's more than 60 days and that's a long time."
I didn't have much to say to that. How do you compare adult time with child time? Sixty days IS a long time to a seven year-old.
"I just don't like how I act here. I'm mean. I am in trouble all the time." He continued sobbing.
It always makes me laugh a bit when he pulls this one out of his hat. He really thinks this is true, not realizing that if I was over 30, I'd probably be completely gray because of him. He is so strong-willed and stubborn and has been this way since he was a toddler.
I lay silent. Holding him.
"Do you want to call Aunt Katie?"
He perks up and we reach for the computer, searching for her number.
We dial. She picks up. She asks all the right questions.
And I hear him in the other room, and I know he's smiling. And I can see his dimples in my mind and I know that when I can see his dimples he is happy....from his gut happy. And I feel relieved.
Today I have heard his words over and over... "I just want to change." There's a song that he sings for school that goes "Little by little, inch by inch, by the yard it is hard but the inch what a sinch..." And I reminded him that change happens little bits at a time.
But how can I tell my child this and believe it for him if I am not believing it for myself? I grow desperate again. And I hear the words of Isaiah running from my mind to my heart, leaving their footprints all over, so that I will again have hope.
He was "a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering." (Isaiah 53:3)
I know that my child's sadness... my sadness is familiar to Him.
And I know, inch by inch, we'll make it.
