Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

beauty

The slow work

“Maybe you’re believing lies.”

As I drove past the church sign where this message was displayed, time seemed to stop. You know what I mean, right? It’s sort of like hitting a pothole with your car only it happens in your soul. I wanted to turn the car around and go back, make sure I’d read it correctly, but that wasn’t an option.

Church signs usually make me groan. Sometimes, I chuckle. Rarely am I still thinking about the message more than a week later.

—

Photo by Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash

I’m itching to dig in the dirt. A month or so ago, during a restless early evening, the kids and I started clearing away leaves and debris from the flower beds. Winter was finally letting go of its grip on the weather, and I was ready for spring to show up and show off. There was little evidence–a few green stems–of the flowers yet to come, but I saw our work as preparing for beauty. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.

We’re a little behind on our garden plans for the year, but I’ve been filling pots with packaged soil and planting flowers to line the porch. Even when the garden plot is ready and the vegetables have been planted into the soil, the reward will take its time in coming.

Still, we must do the preparing.

—

A friend, one of my best, graduated last week with a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy. She is a busy mama and in her spare time, she takes actual physical stuff people want to throw away or don’t need anymore or have given up on, and makes something beautiful out of those things. Whenever I see pallets or doors or windows sitting outside a home or business labeled “free” I think of her and would pick it all up if I could deliver it easily. She has a gift for trash-to-treasure.

Her job as a therapist is not much different. I know from my own experience in therapy, as a client.

It took years but my therapist helped me dig through the dirt and debris I’d accumulated in my life to find the beauty that was growing there. This is a gift to humanity–the digging together and the beauty that emerges. My friend, and people like her, are helping people make something beautiful from their messy lives.

But it is slow work.

—

The debris started accumulating when I was in elementary school. I believed one lie about who I was, and that’s all it took. Lies are slow work, too. Over time this one lie wound its way around my heart until I couldn’t see the beauty underneath anymore. Once you believe one lie, it’s easy to believe one more, until one day, you can no longer untangle the truth from the lies.

This makes me think of kite string, especially after the kite has been stashed in the mudroom closet for a season. You pull it out thinking you’re going to fly it, only to discover that the string is twisted and tangled. (If kite flying is not your thing, how about a necklace dumped in the bottom of your jewelry box?) The fun is delayed and maybe you become frustrated. (Guilty.) I do not have a lot of patience for untangling things. Exhibit A: my cross-stitch threads. If they form a knot and it takes longer than a couple of tries to straighten it out, I grab the scissors, cut my losses and move on. Same for kite string. And I have more than one necklace I’ve thrown back into the jewelry box for “some other time.”

Untangling the lies you’ve built your life on is just as messy and frustrating. It’s definitely not what I would call fun.

But the freedom … the freedom is worth the effort.

—

When I started seeing a therapist, I thought I was there to untangle the most obvious knot. If we would just pull this string a bit, we’d loosen the whole mess and voila! we’d have a problem solved. Turns out, it’s not that easy. Or it wasn’t for me.

Photo by Stacey Rozells on Unsplash

Sometimes we’d pull on a marriage string and other times we’d pull on a childhood string. Sometimes we’d be working with one section of the tangled mess and all of a sudden we’d jump to something else that I didn’t even know was part of it. The more untangling we did, the more painful it became. Those knots closer to the center were deeply formed and at times I wanted to just cut them loose. But my therapist showed me a gentler, more patient way. Cutting the knots out would have cut me off from something important. I would have lost a connection I could never get back and as much as I didn’t want it to hurt, I also didn’t want to forget. Not completely.

—

Do you remember the first lie you believed?

I’m not talking about Santa Claus or the tooth fairy or something your brother told you to mess with you (although that last one could be it, I guess). I mean the lie that sounded so close to the truth that you believed it enough to let it hitch a ride in your life.

I can’t tell you what it is for you, but I know what it is for me, and I know that believing it caused me to make decisions that I sometimes wish I could change. What would my life have looked like if I hadn’t believed that lie? I’ll never know.

What I do know is that the beauty was there all along, even when I couldn’t see it, and it took a lot of dirty work to discover it again. Now, I can’t stop marveling at the beauty that was buried beneath all the lies.

—

I spent a lot of years blaming God and other people for some of the stuff that’s happened in my life, and while there may be some truth to it, that’s a path that never led to freedom.

A couple of months ago, I decided to start forgiving myself. For not knowing better or different. For believing lies about my intrinsic worth and value. For the choices and decisions I made based on those lies.

“I forgive you,” I said to my younger self. And a weight lifted.

This doesn’t mean life got instantly better or I’m suddenly the person I always thought I could be. But it’s a step on the path toward healing and wholeness, which if I’m honest is some of the slowest work I’ve experienced. Sometimes I wonder if this is true: the slower the work, the more lasting it is. I don’t have a lot of evidence to support that statement, but it makes some sense to me.

—

Trust the slow work, friends, and don’t be afraid or discouraged if the healing or transformation you seek takes time.

This is 40

I am nesting.

On Saturday I emptied the refrigerator. Last summer’s homemade pickles in their jars. The bread ends that seem to multiply on every shelf. The eggs. The milk. The fruit and veggies. All of it sat on the floor or the counter as I carefully removed the shelves and wiped them down with soapy water. When the whole thing was finished, I almost didn’t recognize the interior of this appliance. It felt good, this cleansing.

For weeks now, I have had the attitude, especially with the clutter in our house, that it needs to go. Broken things or things handed down. Shoes and clothes that don’t fit. I am slowly and gradually releasing things that have taken up space in our home. I suppose it could be spring cleaning, although I cannot admit to being bitten by that bug too often in my life.

I am making room for something. I am nesting, but I am not pregnant, at least not in the “with child” sense of the word.

—

On Friday, I turn 40.

Photo by Miguel Sousa on Unsplash

I remember how freaked out I was when I turned 30. I had a baby and a husband and the carefree(ish) days of my 20s seemed gone forever. Which was a confusing feeling because my entire 20s felt like I was waiting for my life to start until I had the husband and babies. Having what I thought I always wanted wasn’t enough to keep me from feeling a tiny bit of sadness that my 20s were gone.

Ten years later, I am almost giddy to kiss my 30s goodbye. The babies have grown into small adult humans with lots of words and thoughts and actions, and these are the years I was waiting for when I thought the diapers and potty-training would be the end of me. The husband and I have walked through some dark days and are re-emerging in the light. Our marriage is almost 11 years old and it finally, almost, feels like I thought it was supposed to feel, but there were plenty of days I wasn’t sure I’d still be married by the time I turned 40.

Having made it to now feels like a gift.

But it was also a lot of work.

Ten years ago, I barely knew who I was. I defined almost every part of myself by my relation to someone else–husband and children primarily. I was a wife and a mother but that is not all I was and I had trouble giving voice to those other parts of me because I didn’t really believe I was those things myself.

—

I’ve been preparing for this birthday for years. I think it started when I finally made an appointment to see a therapist. Maybe it was earlier, when I read a book about women and their issues. What stuck with me was something about women getting better or bitter by the time they are 40.

Here’s what I wrote six years ago about this: Every woman becomes either beautiful, bitter or beaten (having given up on life) by the time she’s 40. We either face our stuff or we don’t. Six years from the big 4-0, I’m tracking toward bitter or beaten. That’s a hard truth to face, but my eyes are open to how I can face my issues and let God work through them.

SIX YEARS AGO. This journey goes back further than I thought. Even then, I had had my share of bitter. It took me a few more years, but I decided to get better. Bitter is easier but nothing compares to better.

This week, two days before my 40th birthday, I released myself, with my therapist’s blessing, from counseling. I’m taking the summer off from my once-a-month appointments and in the fall, I’ll reconsider whether I still want to keep going. I’ve been seeing this therapist one or two times a month for more than three years. This was the road to better. It was forged with tears and paved with hard conversations and truths.

But it was also the place where I learned to find myself again. “You are strong and capable,” my therapist has said to me more times than I can count. She has spoken words to me that I could not speak to myself. The woman I am today is partly due to the woman who asked me hard questions, who prayed for me and spoke truth over me. Sometimes I hated it, but I’ll never regret it.

—

A few weeks ago, I started making a list. A few weeks before that, I started thinking about what theme would define my 40s and beyond. I’m not into pressuring myself to check a bunch of stuff off a list in a set amount of time, but I did want to think intentionally about what I want to do. I’ve been choosing a word to guide my year for several years now. How could I translate that to the next decade and beyond?

Photo by Alexandra Gorn on Unsplash

I landed on “no excuses, no regrets.” This is a balance of risk and practicality. I’m not a risk-taker, but I’m more cautious than I need to be. In my 30s, I had a lot of reasons for not taking care of me, for not pursuing my wants and dreams. Reasons are valid, but they can easily turn into excuses and excuses are rooted in fear. I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I don’t want to look back 10 years or more from now and regret that another decade passed without me at least taking aim at the things I want.

The list is in progress and there are not firm deadlines. There are health plans and travel dreams and writing goals. For whatever reason, I feel like I don’t have the luxury of putting things off until someday. Maybe that sounds morbid, but I don’t want to live in the shadow of someday. I want to step into the light of today. Not everything I do in my 40s and beyond will be magical, but I think that’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t have to be. Sometimes being present in the ordinary and grateful for the everyday is its own kind of magic.

—

I don’t remember when I first heard about a mid-life crisis. It always sounded like such an awful thing. It was a phrase loaded with stereotypes. Of men buying sportscars or divorcing their wives for younger women or of women taking drastic measures to alter their appearance. I’m not sure I actually know any people who have done this at midlife, whatever that means anymore, so maybe the “crisis” part of it is just another lie meant to make us want things that will make us feel better for a moment but won’t reach deep enough to find the wound we’re trying to ignore.

I always wondered what it would feel like to approach midlife. Would I panic and grasp for flimsy lifelines to my younger days? Would I secretly hate people who were younger and more successful? Would the words I said reveal me as a bitter old woman? Would I be able to age gracefully?

I’m surprised to find that this doesn’t feel like a crisis. It feels like a rebirth. A chance to start fresh and do things differently. I think that’s why I feel like I’m nesting. I am pregnant with new life, but it is my life not another human’s that I’m growing. I have yet to know what it will become, but because it is composed of all the things I’ve already experienced, it will be rich and full. And oh so loved.

—

A benediction, of sorts, for my 40th birthday.

Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash

Blessed is my body, stretched and scarred from bearing children, often hated and ignored. This is the vessel I’ve been given and I will treat it with respect, honoring the ways it literally carries me through this world.

Blessed is my mind, beaten and bruised from the mental gymnastics I have performed for so many years. This is my inner sanctuary, a place of retreat and rest. I will renew it, minute by minute if necessary, telling myself what is true and right and good. This mind is the captain that steers the vessel, and I will give it what it needs to guide me on straight paths.

Blessed is my work, even when I’m not sure what that is. I will strive to do what I can where I am, giving myself grace to say “no” to anything that isn’t part of my mission in this world. I will accept that the progress might be slow and that as long as I am alive, the work is not finished.

Blessed is my presence, my place on the earth, my contribution to the human race, even if there is no measurement of my impact. I am here. I am worthy of life. I matter. I will seek to live like I believe this true everywhere I go. And blessed is my voice, when I cannot stay silent about something important. I will not be afraid to say what I think, to speak truth to others, even if it is hard to hear. I will not take responsibility for someone else’s feelings about truth.

Blessed am I, my past, present and future me. I will forgive myself for the things I believed about myself that were not true, for the choices I made based on those decisions. I will not look back in anger but with love and understanding for the girl I was and the woman I was becoming. I will remember the good things that came from even the most hurtful situations. I will hold it all as grace and remember that what I think, feel and do now will look different in another decade or two.

—

This is not a competition, friends. That’s another thing I’m learning. I am 40 years old and still discovering what it means to have fierce and loyal friendships with other women. I find it’s easier to do the more I focus on the woman I’m becoming instead of comparing myself to who other women are becoming.

I have sometimes dreaded my birthday, but this year, I feel nothing but light and love. It is a good way to enter a decade. Amen.