Resurrection:My Messy, Beautiful

I have written so many versions of this essay. I have typed and deleted. I have sat down and only written whatever I felt and left it all there to be edited and made cohesive later. I have cried. I have quit. I have rejoiced in my truth. But the for real truth about me is that it’s complicated.

My earliest, most vivid memory is being molested by the preacher’s son in the fellowship hall/basement of my very tiny childhood church. I can still smell him and I remember he had cold hands. I was probably about three years old.

My other very early memory, that is a little more fuzzy around the edges, is standing between my mother and biological father and begging them to stop screaming at each other. I don’t remember much of him. The only mark he left on my life was his absence.

My life is a series of deaths and resurrections, just like the Jesus that I denied for so very long. When I was seven years old, my mama remarried the man I will always call Dad. And out of that union, I got a stepbrother and later a half sister, a few extra sets of grandparents and aunts and uncles. We moved an hour away and to a different state than the one that I grew up in so that our new family could live united. It was death of what I’d always known and resurrection of what I’d come to know, all in one.

My feelings about my mama are so complicated I’m not even sure I understand them and I’ve been living with them for almost 29 years. My mama is my champion in a crisis, when my heart is broken, for the important things of my childhood, like skinned knees, dance recitals, prom, graduation, my wedding day, the birth of my daughter, my initiation into motherhood. But for the mundane days in between, she’s less of a champion, less of a friend. She’s consumed by her own demons, her own life, her own failures, her own triumphs. Every word she utters is loaded with feelings of unworthiness and depression. It’s exhausting.

I’ve struggled with body image my entire life because my mama struggled with her body image. Now that I’m a mother, I still struggle but I wish so desperately for my own daughter not to suffer the way I have so I put a smile on, I admire myself in the mirror, I don’t make disparaging comments about my weight, my thighs, the gray hairs that miraculously multiply overnight, my wrinkles and stretch marks. Its death of my self-loathing and resurrection of self love, even if sometimes most of the time I’m only pretending.

In high school I died a little inside by choosing to give my love away to someone who didn’t deserve it and consistently proved his unworthiness. I kept choosing it until after my first year in college. My love was resurrected by a boy who came into the retail store I worked at in the mall and tried on women’s sunglasses because he was funny and unconcerned with appearances if the outcome was humor. He’s still that funny. And almost nine years later, I still feel resurrected on the days that he puts his dirty socks in the hamper or washes the dishes while I put our daughter to bed.

When I became a mother I saw the death of a life full of naps, blessed silence, late nights with friends and solo trips to the grocery store. But I was resurrected the minute I gave birth to the most perfect girl to ever live.  She’s fire and light, sunshine and thunder all in one tiny little body. Suddenly I became incredibly sleep deprived and hormonal but also powerful and ferocious, stopping at nothing to give my girl all the best parts of me.

But then she became a toddler.  She learned to negotiate, she learned to defy boundaries, to ask an endless stream of questions that I tire of answering by 9am. On the day of her very first full on tantrum, I saw the death of what I thought were my perfect parenting skills. The death of my perception that I would be so good at this, my kid would NEVER act like all the little beesters I saw screaming in the cereal aisle of Wal-Mart. I was resurrected on the day that I dropped her off at preschool for the first time and she didn’t even cry. I was free. Free at last!

This is resurrection. This is revival.

As a child growing up in a Southern evangelical home, I died a lot when I heard constant judgments of others, myself, and when I heard the name of God used to justify it all. When I moved out of my parents’ home, I also stopped going to church. For awhile that felt like a resurrection but it was more like a purgatory where I could pretend I was in control of my life.

About the time my discontent with a life without faith collided with the shine wearing off of motherhood, I picked up a new friend, who had never outgrown her evangelicalism.  That period was a resurrection of my faith. When it became clear that our differences and disagreements about faith and religion could no longer be handled carefully and with love, I saw the death of a friendship. In exchange, I found the resurrection of a friendship I have carried with me for half a lifetime.

I continue to see deaths and resurrections in my life on a daily basis. Sometimes within the same hour. 

Everyday my opinions and assumptions are challenged by this new found faith I have. I hear God whispering in my ear and pushing me farther than I’m ever willing to go alone. Pushing me past my boundaries and out of my comfort zone. I’ve only promised to be open on this journey and it has taken me to places I never would have imagined.

A few months ago I found myself on the steps of a tiny church that had maroon carpet and wooden pews just like my childhood church. All because of that whisper I heard. When I almost chickened out, the whisper sounded more like thunder.

That same whisper takes me to a women’s homeless shelter once a month. It keeps me going back because I find so much joy there. I also see a lot of Jesus there. I see Him in their faces. The faces of women who are victims of circumstance, sometimes of their own making, forgotten or condemned by a society that values possessions over people. But just like God doesn’t forget or forsake me, He doesn’t forget them either and He won’t let me forget to have a look around.

All of the deaths I survived when I heard judgments of the homeless or the poor, the downtrodden, the forgotten,  fade away when I remember to look beyond the labels. I am resurrected over and over again when I remember to look, really take a hard look, at the faces of people I meet. Their eyes tell a story much like mine. Of deaths and resurrections. Of peaks and valleys. Of struggles and celebrations.

We are all renewed.

Sometimes multiple times a day.

This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!