Category Archives: Redemption

Exhaling

10 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Grandfostering, Redemption, Relationships

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The last time I wrote about my daughter’s first foster baby it was about the day she had to hand her over to case workers to be placed in another home.

Last year this time, Baby A and Big Brother were adopted into that family, finding their forever home.

And after more than a year and a half of not seeing her, our whole family was invited to the adoption party! We were over the moon with excitement!

The day the official adoption proceedings at the courthouse happened was the day before my husband’s and my 33rd anniversary, and the party came a few days later. I don’t even remember celebrating our own milestone, I was so ecstatic that we were going to see Baby A, now almost 2 years old, with Big Brother and their new family.

We joyfully picked out presents for them all, looked back through the pictures on our phones from those brief two months we had the pleasure of helping care for this child, and ticked off the minutes until the day came.

As we drove out to their town I tried not to analyze my feelings. I was nervous (not normal for me), but I didn’t want to think about it then. I’d wait until later to dig into the reasons.

My daughter and Baby B had gone to Baby A’s first birthday party almost a year earlier, and we had been greatly reassured to hear our girl was surrounded by people who loved her and her older brother. And even more pleased to hear how Baby A remembered my daughter, the mother who cared for her in those first months.

It had certainly eased my mind.

And now I could see with my own eyes how our little girl was doing.

Then we arrived. As we expected there was a nice crowd of friends and family come to celebrate. We were welcomed in and introduced to a number of people and the names were all a blur.

I was trying not to look for her.

It was wonderful to see Big Brother, who we had the pleasure of meeting the day Baby A left our family to join with him in this one. He had made an impression on us then, and it was a delight to watch him playing and interacting with so many people. And he was still a sharp dresser!

We saw where the food was laid out, listened as our daughter and Baby A’s mom caught up on their girls’ milestones, getting our bearings.

And I knew she was there somewhere.

Then her Nana came alongside me and asked if I wanted to go see her.

I have to say one of the surprising things to me was the sense of honor I felt was being given to us as Baby A’s first family. In the grand scheme of things we were a part of her life for only two short months. This family had been dealing with the day-to-day sickness, allergies, temper tantrums, and mischief of the nineteen months that followed.

And also all the smiles and cuddles.

But even a year later I am still awed and humbled by the respect and thankfulness Baby A and Big Brother’s new family showed us all.

Nana pointed to where Baby A was eating in her high chair at the back of the garage. And all by myself I walked over to her.

I took in the same high hairline and beautiful rounded forehead I had kissed and nuzzled many times.

We were both wearing purple. I had loved to dress her in purple as it looked so good next to her rich, light brown skin.

She looked like herself, and my heart was so full I wasn’t sure I could stand it without yelling out loud or breaking down in tears, either of which would probably scare her.

I started talking in a low voice, saying some of the same things I used to say to her as an infant. I knew I was repeating myself a little, but I didn’t want to speak things unfamiliar to her, to us.

She stilled.

She was looking at her food, and she stopped moving, stopped doing anything.

Except listening.

To my voice.

She lifted her face and our eyes met.

I was bent over to be closer to her height, and that put us face to face.

I kept talking as I saw recognition come over her features.

A look of pure love.

And Nana asking if I wanted to hold her. Yes! Yes!!

I picked her up and it seemed like right away I was surrounded by my husband and kids, everyone wanting to see and touch and hold.

And it was okay to hand her over to my husband, her Papa, because it was hitting me that I had been living as if with my breath held all these long months.

I did not realize the fear until that moment. The fear that she wouldn’t remember me. Gone in the sparkle of that first look that passed between us.

There was lots of smiling and laughing, eating good food, Baby B at 18 months old toddling around clinging to my legs and wanting up in between playing with Baby A and Big Brother and the other kids.

As time got closer to when we needed to leave, Baby A’s family wanted to get some pictures of all of us with their girl, so we gathered across the street in a big grassy area. My daughter picked her up, someone else held Baby B, and we all smiled like crazy.

And when we were done, Baby A came over to me and I knelt down and let her look through newborn pictures of herself on my phone as I told her about them. She was amazed that I had pictures of us together, the same ones that are in a scrapbook she has.

Then we walked hand in hand with others back to the house, and she wrapped herself around my leg. I picked her up and she draped herself around my shoulders, this great big girl filling up my heart just like she did as a tiny infant.

As she nestled into my neck I sang the first verse of “Baby Mine” that I used to sing as I held and rocked her.

And she fell asleep.

Her family was a little surprised. They said she was hard to get down for a nap, but to me it was just like those early days.

They offered to take her off my hands. But I was willing to hold that child until I collapsed if I could! I did eventually take her into the house and sit down with her, but this knowing was like something I’d expect to feel in heaven.

She knew me. And I knew her.

And love always wins.

Getting Justice

26 Thursday Sep 2019

Posted by in Childhood, Recovery journey, Redemption, Relationships

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I’m a person who really likes justice.

Seeing someone who has been wronged restored, and the person responsible held accountable for their harmful actions.

Someone working hard all their life and finally receiving recognition and gratitude for their efforts.

I like it when good triumphs over evil.

Especially when I’m the one receiving justice.

It was a sweet day a few months ago when Words with Friends started giving recognition for all kinds of achievements. Milestones based on numbers of times doing all kinds of things.

All of a sudden the 7 years of otherwise wasted time I had invested in playing Words with Friends were vindicated by my sudden designation as “achievement level 8” with more obscure statistics racked up than a baseball player!

Who knew someone was keeping records?

All those little victories were being counted up, kept track of, and finally revealed for the whole world to see. Well, ok, probably just the handful of people I play. If they had absolutely nothing better to do with their time than look up my achievements.

I guess if I want to someday look through them all…then at least one person will know how great I am at spelling words.

Back to justice.

Statistics are impersonal. They count quantity, but don’t define quality.

Before I got into recovery I wanted certain people to pay for what they had done to me. I wanted to help identify them as abusers, lead the investigation into who else they may have victimized, round them up and let us all have our day in court to testify or defend, and let the facts be heard and acknowledged and above all else, let justice be done.

For little girl me who didn’t have a voice or words to tell.

Because wouldn’t me getting justice make up for all those years of denial and shame and guilt and self-protection?

I considered becoming a lawyer for several years so that I could bring about justice for others. And in doing so I know I would have been trying to somehow bring restitution to myself.

But do I apply that same zeal to the people I have wronged? When I realize I’ve done something that hurt someone else in some way, am I eager to apologize and make amends as quickly as possible?

And what about those long ago sins against others that I would rather forget, but that maybe they have never been able to? How could I ever bring the same justice to each of them?

Do I want the same brand of justice that I would measure out to others applied to me?

Because if you were to number the things I’ve done wrong, keep the statistics of the nasty attitudes, the condescension, the biting words, betrayals and lies and manipulations, that would be a list I wouldn’t want anyone to ever see.

But the thing is, God knows all of it. All of me. The tiny bit of good that makes it through the selfish and evil parts. And amongst the good he knows the secret delight of the occasional selfless, loving act.

Mercy undoes me. When I started to face my own guilt, truly deserved guilt, and saw the mercy God has shown me, it changed me.

One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was to forgive my abusers.

And there is no way I could have fully done that on my own. Because in my mind, I would never get the justice I deserved if I gave them forgiveness they never admitted they needed.

There’s a verse that undoes me every time I really take it in.

Romans 5:8: 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Where is the justice in that? That even when I had no clue that I needed to be rescued, that I needed forgiveness, Jesus paid for my sin.

If God pursues me like this, if he forgives me and decides that because of Jesus’ death on the cross, I don’t have to make restitution, I don’t have to pay for my crimes, then what does that mean for me?

How can I demand justice from other people?

Because when I look only at the cold hard facts, my abusers may deserve to suffer the consequences of their sins against me. But when I turn it around on myself, I would want mercy.

I came to a place a year or so into recovery where not only had I been able to forgive them, God gave me the desire to pray for their healing and salvation.

It had been impossible for me to take that step on my own. I had genuinely forgiven, which to me meant that I no longer wanted to see them suffer for what they had done to me. But was I willing for them to ever feel the same joy and peace I have in my relationship with Jesus?

Could I really, truly, let them off the hook?

Not long after that I had occasion to see several of my abusers all together. They were, each and every one of them, broken, depressed, anxious, hopeless.

And I realized that was the justice I had dreamed of for all those years.

I no longer felt the need to pursue it. Not for me. Because of how much they seemed to have paid for it throughout their lives.

I was so thankful God had replaced my heart of stone with a heart of flesh that could feel compassion for these people.

Just the other day a dear friend, a brother to me truly, gave me the gift of a few minutes conversation, just catching up. Warm hugs, true love felt and expressed.

The thing is, he knew me when. When I was not interested in God’s plans for my life. When I was living for my own pleasure and plans, selfishly pursuing what I wanted.

And he’s known me ever since. And he still loves me.

If a friend can choose to forget and move beyond the bad they know we are capable of, how much more gracious is God when he throws our sins as far as the east is from the west?

So I do love justice. But not my kind. God’s kind.

Someday in heaven I may meet my abusers.

Because God doesn’t want anyone to perish. He’d rather everyone came to repentance.

And that’s the justice I pray for them now.

Finding nourishment

05 Thursday Sep 2019

Posted by in Childhood, Recovery journey, Redemption, Relationships

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Did you ever have a hero as a child?

A real person you aspired to be like?

I did.

I think about her often. In fact, I was just telling my younger daughter about her very recently, because hers is the standard to which I compare every female voice. Then this weekend, at family camp, the speaker mentioned my hero.

As a girl, singing or listening to music made chores easier. Like mowing the lawn.

I enjoyed this task, because I tried to sing louder than the trucks on our busy road to hear myself while riding the mower. I learned to project my voice and sing loudly by 10 or 11 years old. My favorite go-to songs were by Karen Carpenter.

In my family we all sang, both in church and at gospel “sings” in our area, where Dad brought in southern gospel quartets.

My older sister sang soprano, and I took the alto part. But I loved belting out the lead when I could, and I gravitated toward songs sung in a lower voice.

That’s where Karen Carpenter excelled.

If you have never listened to her voice, please do. She and her brother Richard were a duo, The Carpenters, and she was also the drummer.

Man! Another reason to admire her.

In fifth grade I was offered free drum lessons and a drum kit to practice on. I was excited to tell my parents about the offer, but they said no. Band concerts were on Wednesdays, and we couldn’t miss prayer meeting. So no. With no discussion.

I could have been just like Karen Carpenter – drumming and singing.

And when the lawn was covered with ice and snow, I slide around on the frozen “lake” in our middle yard, singing “Close to You” or “We’ve Only Just Begun” while imagining I was Peggy Fleming skating in the winter Olympics.

The thing I loved the most about Karen’s voice was how rich it sounded. It was low, like mine, and I could easily follow along. In fact, it helped me develop the lower parts of my vocal range because I wanted my voice to be as full and expressive as hers.

She could hold notes out with such feeling and purity. I wanted to sound just like her.

Because to me she was sure and confident. Her songs spoke of love and longing and fulfillment.

Of course I cannot know the whole truth about Karen’s story. She isn’t around to tell it. And there are different versions depending on the source.

But it is a fact that her life ended way too early. It was February 4, 1983 when her heart gave out after struggling for years with a disease that no one knew much about at that time.

Anorexia nervosa.

I remember learning of it when it happened. Outside of deaths of family members and friends, her passing probably affected me more than anyone else’s up to that time in my life.

I struggled to understand how it could have happened, how a woman who seemed so beautiful in all she did in her public career could have ever thought she was not good enough as she was.

And the hard part was that there was little known about eating disorders at that time. But it did prompt people to learn, and learn quickly, much more about it.

Soon after her death there was an attempt to educate the public about these new threats to the health of young people, anorexia and bulimia.

Except it isn’t always the young. Men as well as women are affected. And like many things that used to be hushed and covered over, it turns out there are way more people with eating disorders than I ever would have believed, living through those days of first learning it existed.

I’ve read things about Karen Carpenter since then, and while I can’t say with any certainty what led to her obsession with her body image, it seems there was something lacking in her life, something she was looking for. Some say she was seeking love and acceptance.

When she died in 1983, I was 21 years old and seeking love and acceptance myself. It was one of the worst periods of my life. A deep pit I had dug for myself, living a life I chose, making a mess of my friendships and family relationships, refusing to listen to guidance, existing only for my own pleasure and plans.

When I heard Karen Carpenter had died I was devastated.

Her songs gave me hope that the relationship I was in could someday be “it”, while my heart knew all along that it wasn’t. My musical tastes had become much more turbulent than her ballads, but I wanted to believe her fairy tale stories of true love.

At family camp last weekend, our speaker talked about Karen’s struggles right before he dove in to a part of scripture that tells us to devour God’s word, to consume it and be nourished by it and take it in and get everything you can out of it.

Just like food.

When Karen Carpenter died, she was 32 years old. She had developed heart problems that resulted from being severely malnourished.

She had lost the ability to take in and get nourishment from food.

I don’t pretend to understand what went through her mind. I’m reading a book right now that is helping me explore it, Overthrow by Jennene Eklund.

I can tell you that at the time she died, I was in a spiritual state similar to her physical state. I was unwilling and unable to take in anything nourishing from God during that dark time. I was not living the faith I had once claimed, in fact I had turned my back on much of it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was at a crisis point of my own.

Over the next year or so, I knew of several young women who were struggling with anorexia or bulimia. And the boyfriend I thought might be “it” broke up with me. I was devastated.

And suddenly not eating seemed the way to become whatever it was he thought I was missing.

I went on a starvation diet and lost about 50 pounds in a few weeks time. I knew I was in trouble when I found myself retching up water outside of church one Sunday morning, because that was all I’d had for days, yet my stomach wouldn’t keep it down.

Thankfully my parents were able to coax me to start eating again, even though I would only agree to broiled fish with mustard since it had almost no calories, and an occasional poached egg cooked with no fat.

And in my spiritual life, as I got over the loss of the relationship, I saw that the “it” I really needed was a better love, a fuller acceptance than I could ever get from another person.

I needed the love of God.

I cried out to him, and he answered, right away, with no hesitation.

I wish, I so deeply hope, that Karen did the same, and that she was able to find the love of God that answers every plea for help.

Redeemed

18 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by in Recovery journey, Redemption

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It is very hard for me to admit when I’ve done something wrong.  There’s always an excuse I can give to justify my actions, or at least throw others off the trail until they figure out I really am guilty of whatever I did.

If I talk to you long enough you may not recognize the ugly truth anymore with all the layers of stories piled on top of it.  But it’s still there, hiding its eyes so you can’t see it.

I’m a sinner.

Most people don’t use that word anymore.  But for four years now, since I started going to Celebrate Recovery, I am aware every day of the state of my heart and soul.

There’s an old-fashioned word that I think captures the essence of sin, and that’s trespass.  As in “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  A couple meanings of trespass are: ‘to make unfair claims on or take advantage of’, and ‘to commit an offense against’.

And one from the Greek meaning of sin, ‘to miss the mark’, like in archery.

Four years ago I found myself at CR every week reciting either the twelve steps or the eight principles of recovery.  They included some things  I was uncomfortable saying, but I figured I’d get used to it soon.

Realize I’m not God; I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable. (Principle 1)

See what I mean?  Well obviously I’m not God, but powerless?  Unmanageable?  That was, and still is sometimes, the hardest thing for me to admit.

I’m not going to give details, but when I was a very little girl, I was taken advantage of by a teenage boy in my church family.  It went on for a while, and I never told anyone about it.  Finally someone saw something questionable happening, and it ended.

But not for me.  Because I had gotten used to the wrong behaviors, and I felt a very misguided affection for him.  Others would later abuse my innocence and trusting nature, and again I never told.  For almost fifty years.

No one knew my struggles to know right from wrong, so I made my own definitions, and justified any bad feelings I had about my actions.

In my mind I always blamed the adults, my parents included, who let a teenage boy take me away from everyone else, out into the dark night, week after week.  I decided that I would never be unnoticed again.  So I got loud, I forced my natural shyness down deep and learned to act brave and sassy.  And at six years old people thought it was cute.

But at least they knew when I was no longer in a room.

I was managing just fine on my own.

Almost fifty years later I went to my first CR meeting, then started doing a Step Study where I had to dig deep into those secrets and bring the truth to light.  I was really bad at it.  I struggled to face my past, and even more to start naming some of the unfair claims made on me, ways I’d been taken advantage of, offenses committed against me.

When I first started facing the facts, and the feelings that came with them, I experienced rage like I had never known.  I was furious that anyone could do to a child things I’d held secret inside me most of my life.  It was a relief to finally speak the truth out loud in a safe setting, and it was torture to admit that I had been abused by people I cared about and who I thought cared about me.

And right there I saw how powerless I was, how impossible it had been to manage my experiences and feelings and behaviors, because none of them were based on truth.

And I had not even begun to look at my own wrongs.  But I did have to start facing the sin in me, the ways I had taken advantage, the offenses I had committed.  And it was not possible to do it in my own power.

I needed a power greater than myself.  Thank you, God!

We humans share a fatal flaw.  Sin.  And the bad things we do to each other are not the worst.  It’s how we treat God.

I have claimed a relationship with God for many years, but I have taken advantage of him, as if he owed me peace and joy and every other good thing just because he created me.  In many ways I have put myself in the place God should be, in what I thought was control of my life.   I have downplayed my offensive words and actions, I’ve ignored the Spirit when he prompts me, or purposefully turned away from where I felt him leading me.

I miss the mark.  Big time.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about Jesus.  I am powerless, but he is all powerful.  I cannot keep my little life moving in the right direction, and he set the earth on its axis and sustains it by his will.  And when I mess up, there is nothing I can do to ever make it right again.  I cannot undo the effects of even one wrong thing.  Because my actions affect others, and I am powerless to control how they experience those consequences.  And once I’ve done something, or something has been done to me, I am bound to it, unable to remove the memories,the feelings, the guilt.

There’s another word, one I love to define.  Redeem: ‘to buy the freedom of’.

How much would it cost to pay for all the damage I’ve done?  To release me from bondage to my fickle passions?

If you sit in a service on Good Friday, let the reality of what Jesus experienced in the beatings, the mocking, the thorns, the weight of the cross, the nails, the face of God turned away, all rest on your shoulders.  Maybe like me you will know the impossibility that I have any power to fight my  sinfulness alone.

And to  grasp the price that was paid?  I cannot.  How could he think me worthy?

But is there any other explanation?