Do your children torture you in the van by changing the radio station to their teeney bopper pop crap-o-rama as they do me? I tolerate it because its not a battle worthy of fighting, and because I like knowing what the kids are interested in listening to. How else can I be a moderately cool and informed mother?! Since I wrote that post a day or so ago, a song from the girls' radio nonsense has been parading relentlessly through my brain. I'm not nearly cool enough to know who the artist is, but its one of those pathetic love/broken heart whiney songs.
"You cut right into me and I keep bleeding; I keep, keep bleeding love.".
Weird lyric, I thought.
But yesterday I decided to take a bit of an inventory on why I felt quiet and sad-ish.
*my own hugely personal loss that I feel too vulnerable to say aloud.
*disclosure of suicidal thoughts by someone I dearly love.
*smallest family member off to school, now two weeks into seizure medication.
*brutal, unrelenting migraines stalking a friend.
*a friend's miscarried baby.
*the devastation of a 30+ year marriage.
*the devastation of addiction and its effects on entire families and social groups.
*two year anniversary of my brother Ken's death from cancer, and all the other deaths that have followed in its wake.
*the stuff I read online about Iraq, Afghanistan, and refugee camps in Chad and Darfur.
What I don't want from this post is a bunch of obligatory sympathy. We all have harsh garbage. All of us. And it cuts.
What I wish is that we would all consistently "bleed love"as we die from a thousand tiny cuts. I suspect it is love that makes these things hurt, because without love they would just be statistics, or unfortunate events that happen "to other people". I wish I would bleed love; much as I love the concept and love to talk about it, I would like to post a disclaimer that I am utterly incapable of living up to my own ideal. Often deep in thought or churning things over in my own brain, people and their sadnesses pass me by as I obsess about my own and try to get my thoughts in some sort of order, or find some sort of mental equilibrium.
The irony of believing in love as the ultimate salve is the (self-righteous) anger that arises when people react in less than loving ways to crisis or pain or to things they simply don't have tidy answers for. Not very loving. To want to blast people for not being loving..... Hmmmmm.
Like I said, there are ideals, and then there is reality.
Sunday morning in church just kind of opened the dam for me. Broken people speaking with unbelievable courage and authenticity. Jesus functioning in brokenness. That mother and father were bleeding love. And it clearly hurt.
There are victems in this world. Then there are victems without the victem mentality. Their blood is still flowing fresh and red from the wounds, but it does come out looking remarkably like redemptive love.
What else could it be?
Remarkable.
5 comments:
On a totally different note that what your post is actually about...Leona Lewis is the singer of that song. Now you can drop her name in a conversation and 'look cool'. Which reminds me of the time (way back when) my mother was attempting to 'look cool' and was trying to say 'bling-bling' but instead said 'blinky-blinky'. I laughed the whole way home:)
Can I just say?
I HEAR you.
It's still Sunday on the north side of town too.
this post hits home for me joyce.
my prayer these days is that Jesus will bleed out of my "thousand tiny cuts". that if "good" doesn't come from any of this then all hope is lost. that love will be my main feeling in spite of all that hurt. we are all human and grace and love are what will heal all.
"if good doesn't come from any of this then all hope is lost" I am praying today for "the person you love with suicidal thoughts". Is it your sad time of year, Joyce? Mine used to be fall then it became summer but these days I'm quite sad too...a prayer for all of us sad ones?
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