becoming: puzzle pieces

when i got the news of Ronel and Ernest making a flight finally headed toward Houston i felt an emotional awareness of his first mom. my mind is constantly flooded with a mixture of words, phrases, and pictures. this particular moment i felt as if the presence of Ronel’s mom was literally with me. in some direct fashion our inmost spirits were now connected. i sensed her intent eyes watching her son’s story unfold. within myself i also felt her deep love for him coupled with a strong longing to be with him. it is the kind of love only a momma has for her children. it was beautiful and painful. the next few hours were spent rejoicing that our desired boy was coming home but also inwardly grieving over the lost relationship of Ronel and his first mom to death. in feeling all these emotions i had an even more present awareness to protect our little guy, my new son, our newest Parker. 

i think it was feeling close to Ronel’s mom that allowed me to feel connected to my own first mom. i hesitate to even write that last sentence. my fear of rejection and the intimate protector rises up and says, "no don’t let them know you feel anything." there is no running from this. the day my dad told me she cried something beautiful broke open. one of Ronel’s first days in our home he accidentally broke a bottle of my favorite anthropologie perfume. the smell that had been contained immediately filled the house. in much the same way i had a sudden awareness that Mary, my first mom, had feelings and emotions about carrying and birthing a child that she could not watch over for life. all the longing emotions i cherished about Ronel’s mom, whom i have never met, were now allowing me to believe that this person who birthed me must have, if only for a season, loved me. 

you may think that is a given. that the person who made space in their body for you to grow, labored in pain for you, and even whom you may look like, would love you. before this time i never allowed myself to believe i was loved like that. i never allowed myself to grieve the absence of it either. instead i lived many years trying to resolve love in my world. i am an in love kind of girl. i love everything and i love everybody. in the same way i want everyone to love me. for a season i even needed everyones love. 

after Thanksgiving dinner our kids stayed overnight with my parents. i remember being excited to spend some quiet time with E. we got home and within minutes we were fighting. i don’t even remember what about. after a few minutes it was evident that i was just throwing my own pain around to hurt him. that night my husband held me and together we prayed for God to bring peace to my pain. we asked for joy over the years i spent holding my beggars cup out to others. i had been asking for love when it was there all along. He loves. He loved. i knew it as truth but i was scared to really believe in the unfailing love of God for me. to let go of my emotional protectors meant being exposed. i realized i was using these walls to protect what i believed about God. i believed that He loves me wholly, BUT if i allowed my walls down and found out that for some reason he did not love me like that... then what? then all the lies i hear in my head may be true. no one loves you. everyone hurts you. no one wants you.

for the last ten years i have been teaching young women about how deeply God loves and pursues them. in my twisted and hurt, yet healing heart i had not allowed myself to be free in this, His love. could that be why i so desperately desired it for others? but only now through risky conversations and the adoption of Ronel and fights on Thanksgiving day i was desperate enough to be raw. it is in this open space that God has placed the final puzzle piece to wholeness. love is vulnerable, it’s true. it is also a place of great awakening and enjoyment of relationship with a God who is literally more than we could ever imagine. 


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