To Ab, because it's your birthday, and because sometimes, well, the check just isn't in the freakin mail

Today is the day after my little sister Abby's 27th birthday.  She looks 23.  Her hair is like spun gold; fine spun because it's so light in hue and so numerous in strands.  She's strong as an ox...please, if you had been through half the crap this girl has been through you'd have keeled over from the sheer insane heft of it all about 11 months ago...or even earlier, who knows.  If I don't mind saying so she is beautiful as all get out: ladies are jealous (believe me I've seen their eyes light on fire at catching a mere glimpse of her) and the men are stupid with love (STUPID..S-T-U-P--I---D).  The most insane thing about Ab is how insanely capable she is...there is not a thing that she cannot do.  There isn't a place she goes that she isn't coveted for her ability.  There isn't a person who works with her who doesn't think, "that brilliant woman is the most indispensably awesome part of this organization, hands down, and here's a scarf to prove it."

When Abigail and I were young, we were incredibly close.  We were best friends and worst brawlers.   We invented a language together.  We designed haute couture dresses that could rival Cristian Siriano's designs.  We endured a mutual misogyny at the hands of all close males who will deny it to this day, but, caused some deep scars that have required some serious working out.  At least for me.  

Because I only write for about 20-30 minutes at a time, I don't have the time or the discipline to tell you the millions of things that commend Abby over the past two decades.  What I'd like to focus on, is the serendipitous reforging of our friendship in the past two years, like the sword of Elendil into Anduril (yes, I'm a gigantic nerd).  

For whatever reason, WP vs. USAFA, husbands, children, sibling rivalry, apathy, superiority complexes...etc...we drifted apart after (or maybe even whilst in) Maine.  

My divorce and a year later her widowhood have left us the two old maids at the ball.  Or young maids if we are being honest.  Evidently, having had a first go at husbands and chidren (failed though it may have been for whatever reason) renders one a second class citizen.  Or so far and above the other classes of citizen that one is considered an untouchable.  Regardless of the manner in which life has chased us here, Abby and I have arrived  at a closer friendship than we have probably ever had before.  I hope for her it is the same as it is for me.  

For me, I see the open-hearted way in which she accepts the Peter Pan (which is even less tolerable in a lady than a man) period of life upon which I have embarked as a sign of real love.  I don't even like me in this place...and yet, she passes no judgement.  For the past year I felt like I was the one who was there for her in her time of need, but in recent months I have begun to see that the door swings both ways and she is most certainly someone I can lean on in my time of need.  I lost ten years of my life to an impossibly bad marriage to someone who was not my type, whom I may never have loved, whom I will likely never understand.  Sometimes it seems like she's the only one who understands that.  It also seems that though this time of need may have no determinable end, she is willing tostick it out with me.  All the while she has to endure her own widowhood, which is unending, with consequences one could never have foreseen.

I am so happy, and blessed (which seems church ladyish but is not intended in that way at all) to have renewed my friendship with her in these past few years.  I hope that we continue this manner.  I hope that we provide for each other a support like that of Aaron and Miriam back in exodus.  I hope that she feels about me the same way i feel about her.  I hope that I have provided her with some sort of comfort, or support or unconditional love that she can feel and hold onto when she is feeling low. 

Because sometimes the check is not in the mail.  Male.  Sometimes people fail us.  Fale.  Epic.  Fail.  Because fools rush in all headlong like they can handle the awesomeness, and then they buck out, in reverse, pedal to the floor.  Because you can't straight punch these jokers to the throat when they pull a 180 on you.  Because you can't legally knock a motherf--r out (or physically when they outweigh you by half a buck and out-testosterone you by a million) just because they see something and get scurred.  Because being the strongest most courageous lady most people have ever met doesn't get you much more than a high five and a dozen roses from someone who will never (and would never, and ps you would never want them to) like you like that.  

So happy birthday to you Ab.  Happy birthday.  And I love you.  And appreciate you.  And I get that recently, my childish behavior has not overtly said so, but I want to be there for you.  And I intend to be.  Happy freakin birthday.  

To those who failed (fail...will wail) to recognize.  Sucks to your asthmar, piggie.  big time.  

   

finished

On this ash Wednesday, wherein I have been rightly repeatedly reminded that I am dust (and what exactly is dust?), I look forward to the end of the Lenten season.  Yesterday, fat Tuesday that it was, I was visited by an echo of the words Christ spoke on his final mortal moment on earth, "it is finished."

Yesterday, I was divorced.  I signed a binding agreement that lacks only a judge's signature, stating my marriage was officially sundered on Feb 12, 2013.  I thought about sacrilegiously writing on my facebook wall "it is finished."  I opted for a less messianic "done."

But the more I think about it, the more I know that this is a part of the redemptive work done by Christ on the cross.  That my freedom from a terrible marriage that religious devotion to tradition espoused by my family had kept me in, was bought by the law-fulfilling, love drenched blood of Jesus Christ.  That, indeed, my marriage, my divorce, it is finished.  Rent like the veil in the temple.  It is small, and myopic, and egocentric, but amazingly, and of course ironically (paradoxically) it draws my attention to the cross.

Remember, you are dust, oh man, and to dust you shall return.  Remember that you are nothing but a collection of molecules, common to all living things, atoms present even in those things that are not alive, taken from the ground.  Remember that if not for the breath of God, breathed into your nostrils upon your molding you would never have been.  Remember that if not for His sustaining hand each and every moment of your vapor of a life, you would cease to be.  Remember that without the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, physical and spiritual, temporal and eternal, you would remain unchanged, drowning in a sea of consequence of your own sins' making.  Remember that because He Is, you can, too, be whom you were truly meant to be.

Three years ago I was imprisoned in a marriage for a myriad of reasons.  The majority of them were fear centered. I was afraid of living the rest of my life alone. I was afraid of financial ruin.  I was afraid having been a few years out of the work force I would lack the ability, fortitude, skill set needed to return.  I was afraid of the lies that I knew my ex would tell about me. I was afraid that if I divorced, my family would reject me because I had done the one thing that "we just don't do."  I was afraid that without a partner, I would find out how truly incapable I am of raising my four sons.  I was afraid to move.  I was afraid to believe that God could carry me through, because, after all, didn't I really deserve what I had gotten myself into.

But somewhere in that darkness of fear, I heard a song.  It sang to me of freedom.  It sang to me of light.  It sang to me of life.  of Love.  It told me to move.  It told me to run.  It told me to stop believing the lies that played into my human weakness with a tendency toward fear.  I didn't stop.  I didn't look back. I didn't ask whence this song came.  I knew.  Perfect love casts out all fear.  The peace I was feeling, the knowing I was experiencing,  the light I could see at the end of the tunnel.  I knew it was He...the light of the world...Love...the beginning AND the END...He was calling me out of bondage, into freedom.  He was calling me with His sweet, undying love to leave fear and hate behind to truly follow Him.

Remember that thou art dust...and when I remember that, I know I don't have to do anything.  I am only dust.  I am just water and bone.  I am only clay thrown by the Master potter.  He is the breath.  He is the life.  He must do.

I never had to say a word in my defense.  (or very few words)  I never felt like the outcome was dependent on me (or at least not the majority of the time)  I never, even amid my doubts, forgot that it was God who was going to get me to the end of this marriage, and out of it...whole...

I have reentered the work force.  I do a good job at something I thought I would never do in my life.

I have, with the help of amazing people, built a comfortable home for my children.

I am poor.  In debt.

My kids are a bit of an emotional mess.  But they are strong.  And smart.  And so sweet.  And loved by many.

It is finished.  Standing at the beginning and end of time, the one who strides forth out of Bozrah in the greatness of His strength told me, "it is I, mighty to save,"  and brought me through all of this.  I would never have made it on my own.  In the mundanity of my divorce I find a most profound illustration of mystical truth that in my distress, He too, was distressed.  That as I wept, He wept with me.  And when we could take no more, He finished it.  And when the Son has set you free, you are free indeed.  In your circumstances, and despite them.  That is where I stand; though I walk through time-in a world that is still yet not completely redeemed, in a skin that retains its own desires to sin and err-though I linger here, I belong to eternity.  He will finish each moment in my life.  Each lent will end, with a glorious, eternal Easter.  Every mistake, sin, misery, and death is answered with a thunderous, unquenchable, eternal echo of it is finished.

You are dust.  He is not.