Ask Me

Ask me how to shave the ears of a pig after coaxing it to sleep in the warm grassy yard of our farm. Ask me how to train a cow to laydown and let you rest your head against its heaving sleeping belly. Ask me how to drive the truck in careful straight rows to help the hands gather the bails of hay and how to saddle a horse or clean a pen so well you could eat off the floor.

Ask me how to love with depth and devotion the three boys in my home, and how to work hard to create a place where they feel safe and loved. Ask me how to lose myself in my child’s hair and watch with amazement as my babies’ little hands grasp and ungrasp new toys or books. Ask me how to cuddle a scared 8 year-old during a thunderstorm or to dress a wound with a kiss or help my son get through his first week with braces.

I know these things…I know how to be the wife and mother, friend and daughter that I aspire to be. These are beautiful things. But you must also ask the other half because deep in the other half of life is where my wisdom lies…or at least that’s what I’m trying to believe.

Ask me how to lose my temper or yell when I’m upset, re-airing the dysregulation that my childhood thrust upon me again and again. Ask me how to run away for an afternoon and not even be missed. Ask me how to watch my mother drive away and be stuck there at the door screaming, Momma don’t leave…please! Ask me how to forgive while also hunkering down in my room out of resentment and confusion as my brother misses the mark and sets the house akilter.

Ask me how to fall into the deep sadness and desperation of not knowing what to do to help my son find his own worth and value. Ask me how to set boundary after boundary in my home, and then weather the raging storm as my children try to knock them down with fists and screaming and derision. Ask me how to try to not look on in horror as my son tells me the latest inappropriate garbage he found on YouTube without my permission. Ask me how to know that at the end of the day I can’t save my brother or my parents or my own child if they refuse to save themselves. Ask me how to wish I were somewhere else for a while.

These questions – are they beautiful? It’s sometimes hard to see the beauty, but these are the questions I am trying hard to look at, trying hard to process and understand. How do these experiences make me who I am and how do I learn to love all the mistakes I’ve made along the way. I still have yet to understand how, in an instance of stress, I will walk away, or withhold my affection, or feel the need to protect myself like Isaac being bound by Abraham begging for the ram to appear. But Isaac never doubted the goodness of god and while his love for his father waned, he stepped away unscathed. How much self-hatred did Abraham bear? Did he feel like a terrible father – having wounded his child’s psyche beyond repair? Is that what I have done or am I just scared and not forgiving myself?

So yes, ask me how to love these abandoned parts of me. I am working on an answer but the novel is just being written as a first draft. Ask me if there is a way to find the beauty and the wisdom in my strengths and my weaknesses. Ask me if there is belonging inside of both the awesome and the troubling power that I hold. Please hold…the answer is on the tip of my tongue.