c l i m b i n g i v o r y
A little blog of Catholic wifehood, motherhood & dreams
There was a week in June when I stumbled, like a sharp crack of a broken ankle, into the worst mental and emotional pain of my life and I thought I would lose him. Sobbing into my friend's shoulder in the church basement during Mass. Barely able to sleep. The situation was complicated, the details and reasons now faded and healed beyond mattering. But during that week, the hurt was a throbbing open welt in my gut impossible to ease.
For close to nine days, after months and months of closeness and daily communication, we didn't talk or see one another. An enormous heavy silence. The potential separation clenched my shoulders - an emaciated gray figure breathing into my face - and I truly didn't know how I could move on without him. Later, I would write a song, trying to piece together and process the horrible pain and unknowing. The question, the brink Stands beside them at night Watching them sink, watching them sink The question, the wait Holding their breath Will it break? Will they break? "I can't do this again," I trembled and whispered, face a wrench of tears, outside alone because that was the only place I could bear to be. "O Lord, please, I can't do this again." I had already been through one ending before. I'd done it. I'd poured myself into another person for two years across two thousand miles until a bare ceiling bulb ignited over the codependency and emotional sickness - the inseparable magnets suddenly polarized - and I had to walk away and pray I didn't shatter the other person forever in the process. I still don't know if I did and probably never will. That had been the hardest thing. Barely twenty years old, curled up weeping in my dad's lap, the phone ringing with what I knew would be a pain-filled plea to give it one more chance. I never picked up the phone. But then had come slow peace, healing, order in my life. And then - him. The oldest brother of friends. Five years older than me. The quiet swing dance partner with strong hands. The one who took the seat beside me at a lunch. The one who drove me and my sister home from Theology on Tap. The one who brought us a Frank Sinatra CD. And we slowly, gently, happily fell in love. I'm noisy, flushed, a childish breeze. You are Quiet brown eyes and mysteries. We had been together for nine beautiful and happy months, closer and closer to getting engaged, and then the bomb had ruptured and we were left huddling in our own corners smoking with shrapnel of misunderstandings and pain and I wrestled with what would happen if I lost him. I've got you under my skin I've got you deep in the heart of me So deep in my heart, that you're really a part of me. Is it worth it? the gray emaciated figure breathed into my face. When will I wake up? I prayed a novena. We actually prayed it together across that week, yet alone - a novena to the Sacred Heart. I prayed it on my knees. It was the climax of my every day. Weeping, hands folded, sobbing the words every single time. From whom shall I ask, O sweet Jesus, if not from Thee, whose Heart is an inexhaustible source of all graces and merits? Where shall I seek, if not in the Treasure which contains all the riches of Thy clemency and bounty? Where shall I knock, if it be not at the door of Thy Sacred Heart, through which God Himself comes to us and through which we go to God? The days, in a way, were years in that they threw up all my life in front of me and no matter which way I shoved and manipulated the pieces, they would not fit back together and make sense without him. We hadn't even held hands, let alone kissed. This was not the work of chemical bonding. It was something more. So deep in my heart, that you're really a part of me. Each afternoon I would cry and writhe inside myself on the gazebo swing and desperately wonder what it had all been for if we weren't going to make it. When did you really know that you loved him? my youngest sister asked one day not long ago. That it wasn't just infatuation but that you deeply loved him? That week. That week was when I knew. Pain ... pain, in the beginning and middle and end of it all, always comes out to a gift. That dreadful yet inexplicably vital week ended and the Sacred Heart gently stooped to answer my prayers - in which, despite all my turmoil and emotional exhaustion, I'd asked for His Will and not mine. He bestowed grace and mercy and strength. He gave clarity, rectified misunderstanding, showed us both a softly sloping path forward. On the one-year anniversary of the first day we met, we went to Mass together in tired quiet but peace. Later that day we went swimming and slowly started to heal. It would take time - but then, not a long time. A year later, we were married. So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me. Two nights ago, I put our baby to bed and then tiptoed back down the stairs to lounge next to him on our couch. We snacked off the pan of rice crispy treats balanced over our knees and silent-laughed at an old favorite episode of The Office. We're older, tireder, the glow of youth giving way to a quieter but more enduring glow of parenthood and seasoned, rather than brand-new, marriage. Our lives are ordinary and happy and I am an imperfect wife. Sometimes I forget what I have in him. Which is why, from time to time, I make myself remember that week in June. I run my hands over the memories and let myself breathe in that cloggy scent of old pain. And then I blink and come back. I look into his quiet brown eyes and mysteries, I smile a little deeper, put my lips to his a little harder, and marvel at the great gift of having him for my husband and our child as our own, when it all might not have been that way. Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.
2 Comments
First-born son of first-born son
Small carrier of the old name Little torch of Blue fire Crowing joy Flocking your eyes Dauntless Paper boat on a cragged coast Poised under The morning sea star Pulling from my hands Tipping your weight Reaching your foot A test, a longing You look at me Let me go Your arms thrusting up - Sighing to Dive into the wind Ecstatic, fearless, flawless, forward To run Towards broken shores Bare feet on the red Dismissing pain for The happy meetings The calloused hands The tears of the soul The final dawn. Your ancestral soldier Shield on the stones Hawk trampled in the shade Resurrection in his eyes Waits for you Work yet to be done Little torch of blue fire Small carrier of the old name First-born son of first-born son - I whisper Go. |
MaryWife to my best friend. Mama to a gregarious 3yo boy, a determined 18mo daughter, a darling baby boy due in late July, and a miscarried child we gave back to God. (photos are from Unsplash unless I note they're mine :)
Archives
April 2024
Categories |