Wholehearted.
In the remaking of my blog I was contemplating letting go of my subtitle, my meaning of what this blog was when I started writing nearly two years ago. After all, we grow and change, maybe this no longer fits my mission, my statement, my purpose. Maybe its not glamorous enough, or maybe it is the wrong target audience. Maybe its just not me any more. Maybe….
All of this kind of boils down to who am I, and is it enough?
And bigger yet, should I continue to put myself out there, bare my soul, my heart, be vulnerable to the masses to show that we all really are ok, that we are enough, just as we were created to be.
Imperfect in an imperfect world that screams for perfection.
Talk about an oxymoron.
Let me tell you about my week.
Today is the first day for a week that I haven’t met the sunrise with oceans of tears and desperate knees on hardwood begging for a new beginning. Hard raspy whispers for release from the death grip of collapsed lung heaving desperate soul language that cannot be formed into words. My failings spilling out like guts of a lost cause. Heart shattered, soul pierced pain searing through like such a hot knife, looking desperate wild-eyed for release. Feeling as if it is too late to right the wrongs, too late to fix the broken.
Just too late.
Too late to go to the baseball game that disjointed and fractured a seventeen year old man child. Let me tell you when that child is laying in an ER room after a wild ambulance ride, and a wilder mama driving hard to meet where she failed, he is all child and no man, in spite of a beard. When you walk in expecting the smiling twinkle in his eye kiddo and you are met with incoherent pain, droves of medical professionals, IVs, and screams it shakes you hard. Rocks to your core when you will that child you birthed to breathe when the flashing screens and lines go blank, even if just for a few seconds. Those seconds link you to the eternal. Throws you back into the birthing room, when you were willing life hard fought to come forth and live. Paining for that life, pushing pulling willing anything for that life. Your life for that life. Your body for that body. Your soul for that soul. In an ER room where suddenly it feels as if everything is in HD, the color, sound, smell of it so loud and nauseous, so raw, so on the line it can bring you to your knees the reality and fragility of it all. The veil is thin here. The dance of the eternal waltzes by, and this mama gasps for air. Desperate to cling onto anything, since she was barely hanging by a thread to start.
Broken. One word to define by. One small word that says so much.
Fractured. Bones fractured, lives fractured, fragmented, all changed in a moment. Unsuspecting souls marching through ordinary when suddenly fractures appear out of nowhere. That strong independent seventeen year old jaw, fractured. A dream of starting varsity team, fractured. Supper making, fractured into emergency. A blow to reality as real as a heavy-weight punch.
How can you still be wholehearted when you are broken? Fractured into pieces. Your strong now weak, your whole now fissured in two. How do you take your broken bleeding heart with you wherever you go?
We break in this life sometimes.
Sometimes this life breaks us.
Cracks us open dynamite wide, exposing the vulnerable raw of hearts.
How do you put the pieces back together humpty-dumpty like? We know that story didn’t end well with all the kings horses and all the kings men, couldn’t put humpty back together again.
There is only one king who can take the pieces of a broken heart and place them gently together again.
He was made in our image. Sent to walk this earth. Sent to break. Sent to die for us. To redeem our lost souls.
God knew we couldn’t do it on our own.
He knew that we needed to experience what great love is. He knew He would have to go through the birthing, the laboring, the bloody deliverance of it all. Right there in the dirt and the dark. God birthed light into a dark world on a dark night to a teenage girl. He pained and labored alongside. God watched and waited knowing the pain that would come, but also knowing the joy and the birth of the incomparable love that would come as well. The eternal parent. The original parent. Comfort comes in knowing that God knows my broken mama heart. He cries alongside me, He holds me tender when no one else will or can. He soothes fears and scars. He meets me where I am. In the dirty, in the messy, in the chaos of being a mama to four boys, a wife to a loving husband, among dirty dishes, and dirty sheets, and mountains of laundry. He meets me there. In all His loving glory He covers my mess. He tells me that yes, I am enough. When I am bone tired, heart fractured, gasping breath on bathroom floor, He gently lifts me up, calls me by name, holds my hand and my heart until it can sturdy and still, and puts me back on my feet again. Every day, over and over. Because that is what parents do. We comfort our children when they are hurting, we love them through the ugly, the messy, the things we call life. We take joy in their triumphs, we cheer them on, we strengthen where they are weak, we share it all. It becomes a sacred holy dance that moves us through days. Holy ground that wells up under feet that walk through ordinary days, not reserved for buildings or temples. Building Holy in homes, in lives, in families.
So during holy week one mama lived through a little hell.
Holy.
Holy ground under all our steps.
Not restricted, freely Holy, right here, right now.
Steps on worn kitchen linoleum, in chipped hardwood, the sanitized sterilized ER.
Holy in the moment. Because wherever you go, I go also.
Wholehearted.
We break.
Fracture.
For reasons beyond our control. But in this breaking vulnerable we are given an opportunity to be put back together. New again. Stained glass heart shards carefully placed pieces of puzzle artfully and creatively arranged into an entirely new beautiful expression of who we are. Made whole again. Made beautiful to shine radiant color in light.
So yes, wherever you go, go with all of your beautiful stained glass heart.
Wholehearted again.
It is who you were made to be.
wendy snobl 
Mama, you did not fail. Even this is Divinely driven. Who are we to say…?
What if the man-child needed to face that solo ambulance ride as a man so that he could then appropriately appreciate other current aspects as a child–and thus allow for his loving embrace and acceptance of where he is on his child-man continuum?
What if his experience catapults his inner world forward into healthy manhood beyond more than our fierce mother experience of a very same event could ever understand?
Trust that he ultimately needed you to NOT be with him on that ambulance ride–otherwise events would have indeed unfolded that you were.
You may wish for yourself that you were there at that time, but please never feel that in not being there you have failed. For whatever reason, angelically you were not supposed to be at that place at that time.
God bless you. And your son.
❤
Thank you for your kind words my friend, soothing balm for the soul! I think as mamas, we always want to be there for our kiddos, especially when they are hurting or weak, there is an instinctual drive to want to help, and when we are put into a place of helplessness it is hard not to let shame creep in the dark cracks of soul. It’s hard not to feel as though we failed even though sometimes we are supposed to. We cannot and should not prevent them from growing and learning, even if it is sometimes painful and part of their life path. I know you are right, that divinely, events unfolded just as they should have, perhaps for both of our growth. Thank you for all your love and support! You are such a blessing to me ❤