Beautiful Mess

How else can you describe it?

I’m raising a teenager and trying to fix all the mistakes I made with her before it’s too late; I’m raising a middle child for whom I cannot do anything right ever; I’m raising the toddler where my only goal is to keep him alive and prevent brain damage; and caring for my dad, where there is no right answer – only best guesses and hedging my bets.

But these kids – they’re so beautiful, so precious. Despite the angles and edges and crying and yelling and NOISE, they are these magnificent, intensely vibrant creatures full of wonder and intelligence and surprising insight, and humor. (Cosmo’s greatest joy in life is to tell us, “Farted on you!”). My father, no matter his memory loss, is still unfathomably deep. Unfortunately those depths are now and forever a mystery. But I can still see quiet joy on his face when he sits out in the warm sun on our back deck, bundled in 5 layers of clothing, gazing at the changing leaves.

The leaves this year are an incredible surprise. After the horror of Helene, everything was muted, brown, soggy, and defeated-looking. But then, after the expected peak of fall, in one synchronized nighttime transformation, the leaves that remained exploded into a prism of color that seemed to me a divine statement about beauty, hope, and hanging on through the dark times. Again and again and again I realize how we must have eyes to see the better things around us. The bad things always seem the biggest and most urgent, but it’s the good things that save us. They don’t strike at our soul and demand our energy and attention like the bad things, so we have to learn to see past what’s right in front of us. We have to look around us with love, compassion, appreciation, forgiveness, and an expectation that there IS something extraordinary to see.

Go ahead and have a listen to one of my favorite songs. It’s okay to cry when you hear, “If I stand, let me stand on the promise that You will pull me through. And if I can’t let me fall on the grace that first brought me to You.” I feel like I am falling all the time right now, but it’s a softer landing than I would have expected.