What broke you?
But something happened inside of me that day. I lost my sense of safety. It was like, for the first time, I realized the delicate balance of life. And it was then that I began waiting for...
I go through these cycles of absolutely not being able to stop reading. (And to be clear, these days I consider listening to books reading.)
Along with the Audible credits I get each month, I also have a Scribd subscription, which allows me to stream audiobooks like I would shows on Netflix.
Except what I didn’t know until after subscribing is—unlike a video streaming service—there is some sort of limit with Scribd. I always hit it and they tell me that I can’t listen to more books until the next billing date.
This is frustrating because there aren’t clear parameters on how much I can listen to before that happens.
If I knew how many credits I had to use or how many books I could actually listen to, I would make a list and be more considerate instead of jumping in willy-nilly to the random things that I’m currently interested in.
These last couple of weeks I haven’t had much to say, and a lot of desire to read.
Sam is home from the hospital and is, of course, carless after his major car accident. I’ve wanted to take him out to break up the monotony of being home. A few days ago, he and I went together to Barnes and Noble together. Seemed like the right place to go, the selection of books could more than make up for all the words I haven’t had.
Barnes & Noble is a very fun date, siblings or otherwise. Going with Sam reminded me of 2015, 2016, my newlywed season with Matthias.
We didn’t have a lot of extra money to spend, young and in love, having eloped without really discussing what our finances would look like with him in college and me in the beginning of my photographer career.
We loved going and getting coffees and sitting snuggly on couches and reading our own stories. It was cheap and the books were the adventures we could afford at that time.
Barnes & Noble took out all the couches by the way. Really annoying.
I haven’t been going there super often these days, but I have a routine when I do: I go to the bar and get an americano with steamed half-and-half and then make my way upstairs to this specific book stand near the top of escalator that seems to always have books I like.
There’s not a title on the book stand, so honestly I’m not sure what theme it is that they are building the collection around, but there’s always at least one thing on there that really interests me and I end up buying & reading or listening to it.
When Sam and I arrived this week and grabbed our coffees, we went upstairs together and I shooed him off to go look at whatever he wanted to on the fiction shelves. That content doesn’t interest me as much. I do wonder if it’s because I can’t see images in my mind. I only have words, so fiction and having to build worlds in my head just doesn’t work for me.
Do you know anybody without minds eye? Someone who can’t picture an apple when they close their eyes? That’s me. So if you didn’t, now you do.
Recently, I’ve been really into memoirs. Actually, this last week I finished Jill Duggar’s in a single day.
It’s called “Counting the Costs” and if you grew up with IBLP teachings, I think it’s an good read. Though her sisters book, “Becoming Free Indeed” that I finished a couple months ago now is even better, if you’re trying to sort through what’s wrong in the IBLP world.
Back to that Barnes & Noble‘ stand by the escalator a few days ago— I picked up a book called “Share Your Stuff: I’ll Go First” by Laura Tremaine. It looked interesting, but what really sold me was when I flipped over the back and the first endorsement was by Shauna Niequist. Of course I had to read it.
Shauna has been my friend for eight years now— not that she knows me, but her words have befriended me and helped me feel known. Much like Sally Clarkson, I feel like she gives form and sentences to vague ideas and understandings I have in my gut but can’t get out.
As I flipped through “Share Your Stuff: I’ll Go First” I found Laura’s writing inviting and easy, and I found—with much joy— she has that same friendly, accessible tone that drew me to Shauna all those years ago.
In the book Laura’s asking and answering 10 questions. The questions are an invitation for you to answer. But when she presents them, they are presented with stories from her own life.
One of her questions, “what broke you?” opened me up to a memory I’ve pushed down many years.
I was 15 years old and swimming with my family. It was just mom and sisters and brothers, everyone younger than me. I guess that was the case most of the time, because I only have one older brother and he moved out early.
It was a hot Houston afternoon, the silence of the neighborhood in the middle of a school day sliced by the sounds of my siblings, splashing and playing in the water.
We were homeschooled, so it’s not an odd thing that on a hot August day other kids were in school while we were still beating the heat with water.
My memory really feels like it begins with me sitting in a chair next to my mom talking, though I had been in and out of the water.
We had a normal pattern of conversation. We would talk, and then count heads, talk, and then count heads.
12345. 12345. 12345.
Everyone still there, doing what kids do in pools. Little mermaids, pretending to be able to see under water, tag. And while they played and we talked, Samuel played around the pool, Hot Wheel car in hand. A toddler and not yet a swimmer, he only got in the water with us when he was being held.
I love holding a toddler in a pool. If your life needs a little bit of joy, being in a pool with a two year old can provide it.
I can’t remember what we were discussing when we did our count and it was off by one child.
1234.
Wait. That’s not right. 1234.
Where’s Samuel?
Panic had already set in by the second count of only four children.
We jumped up to see if he had slipped somewhere else in the yard to play, but as soon as we stood, we could see him. He was in the deep end of the pool, floating face down, unmoving.
I was plunged into a twilight zone, my head dizzy and body tingling as I ran to him. Jumping into the pool already crying, I handed him out of the water to my mom, who laid his small, limp, and slightly blue body on the ground.
With just a few compressions, he threw up water and was wailing. My mom stayed calm, but I cried with him.
The story ends up the best it possibly could have: in our home that evening, every child still alive and tucked safely into their beds.
But something happened inside of me that day. I lost my sense of safety. I don’t know if it amplified something already within me, or if it created something new. Either way, a fear of loss I could recognize and name was planted.
It was like, for the first time, I realized the delicate balance of life. And it was then that I began waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The more I grew to treasure and love my days and the people that make up my life, the more the looming darkness of fear and loss grew too.
I carried that fear into my married life and into my motherhood, and when I saw from a distance people losing loved ones, it made my fear seem reasonable and warranted.
And then, my friend, my real life friend, put her precious baby boy down for a nap and he died. She put her baby down for an hour and didn’t know she was saying goodbye.
And as her world collapsed, something important inside me shattered into unrecoverable pieces.
How does one survive the unsurvivable?
Nothing made sense. I packed up my tiny Emerson, only a few months old, and we drove eight hours west for Valor’s funeral and his first birthday party.
He missed turning one year old by only a week, and instead of pancakes for breakfast and a cake smash and celebration, his mom wept with empty arms.
Valor dying did not reap within me what I expected.
It deepened the shadows of the fear I carried with me, but Mikayla’s response—his precious mother, my dear friend—having lost her cherished son, did not lose herself entirely into the darkness of his death.
And her strength, her willingness to be held in God’s love as she faced the unimaginable changed me.
Mikayla’s strength to get out of bed on the day of her baby’s funeral, to put on clothes, to walk into that church and onto that stage to share the gospel of hope in the face of hopelessness shook my world.
Someday I will lose people I love, I don’t know when I will die or when the people I love will die, but it is certain, it will happen.
But it doesn’t have to crush me, because death, with Jesus, is not an eternal goodbye, but the most important move into our eternal destination.
The place that knows no fear, suffering, sin, or brokenness. The place that Valor is, right now.
I don’t know what it looks like going to Heaven, but I know how much God loves children and the beautiful curiosity in them. It’s almost Valor’s second Heavenly birthday, what would’ve been his third birthday on earth. And I wonder right now if Valor is getting to grow up there with Jesus. Maybe he is turning 3 right now, and it’s more wildly amazing than anything we can imagine—getting to experience the truest of magical childhoods, because it’s in that place of light and joy that knows no sin or struggle or pain.
So the question…
What broke you?
My answer has changed throughout the last 14 years.
What broke you?
Fear of losing those I love.
What broke you?
I saw my friend walk in the valley of the shadow of death and survive.
What broke you?
I will not be broken by fear. This world is not our end.
In the audio version of this blog, I am including Mikayla’s words from Valor’s funeral. They will bless you.
(Photos with Mikayla from her Blessingway with Reverie, Dec 2022.)
When Samuel was a wee little one.
Being nearly 20 years older than my youngest sibling, I was into adulthood while some of my siblings were in the very beginning of their lives.
Yellow arrows pointing to me & Samuel.
I am realizing when I refer to him as a little boy, I call him Samuel. And when I refer to him as an adult (16 now) I call him Sam. In my memories, we always called him his full name. It hasn’t been until recently I’ve come around to “Sam”.
A more recent photo, the day he came home from the hospital.
A man now. I am thankful for his life.