walls crack, waves wash, love lives
Divorce is worse than death, that’s what Mamaw told me. I wasn’t sure I believed that. I’d watched decades of hurting hearts hurt each other.
Divorce, to me, was maybe just polarized souls thirsty for peace. Peace. More peace to soothe a rollercoaster love.
She said divorce leaves more questions than answers, but death catapults closure. I wasn’t convinced.
So I prayed.
It wasn’t a prayer to usher angelic applause, more of a coarse chat with the Above, me pounding at heaven’s gates demanding how I wanted this life to play out. And. If He could just please give me a piece of peace, a sliver to salve iced aching numbness. Please, just peace.
Prayers don’t get answered by pick lists we demand of Heaven. God unmistakably answers, but I wouldn’t reconcile God’s answer-the manna He chose-for close to a decade. I’d treat His ways like a flogging, completely fogged that He is a choice.
When a marriage flatlines, you resuscitate or you walk away to plan funerals and grieve. You can close your eyes and pretend you don’t feel the sting of death or you jump in its rhythm to start beating hearts every way you know how.
Because, Mamaw had told me a flat line was worse than death. And I believed the woman who believed in me the most.
How do you revive hollowed spaces between a husband and a wife? What if love is a choice? Shaken, pulled apart, down in your bones, a choice?How could burnt hearts rise from ash to form rhythmically whole again?
He found their phone number the day I hunted apartments, the day I drove myself trying to find a place to escape rollercoaster love. I returned with apartment papers and he had an appointment for us. Defenses up, I walk away, don running shoes, and leave to pound feet into a pavement track, running circle after circle, each circle returning where it began.
There are times that the best self-care won’t be manicures and facials-it’ll include a couch across the room from a counselor that begins our appointment in prayer. I go alone, February afternoon clouds puff across the horizon high. And when floodgates of held shame pour down cheeks, she continues to pray peace into the room. She doesn’t flinch as heavy mascara leaves traces down my winding roads. February rains normally bone chilled, these rise heat of shame across my body. Why could I not control the weight of my rain?
She asked about roots and journeys, the kind that build gates that cupped these tears. She wanted to know about me. I don’t think I’d been asked that before, the pieces puzzled together that form me. How do you speak what you’ve been taught to hide? Doesn’t pulling out a piece of our puzzle to display illuminate flaws, exposing holes, slivered unwholeness? How safe am I here letting walled gates open, I couldn’t even look at her. Would she see my holes, places I clutched to keep the mystery of me tucked hidden safe? Is it family betrayal to claim worth and stake claims in unknown lands?
Pause. Breathe in, peace come. Shaky sliver speaks.
I’m from sawdust of my grandpa’s shop, inhaling African missionary dust he survived. Feverish malaria dreams, he builds my net. I place him on a pedestal, no man can reach.
I’m from stuttered grandmother prayers-the kind that know how to reach glory. The kind that make a blank tv stop talking back. She teaches prayers as grace, watching snakes.
I’m the regurgitation of genetic overdoses, And the lobby of a jail where we bail him again and again.
I’m runaway hopes on crunchy autumn leaves, returning to discover no one noticed an eleven year old was gone-a reminder of mistakes, the reason two prodigals settled,
grace must be earned.
I’m hidden closets, green smoke choked, knifing extremities screaming run.
I’m bean soup with ketchup, the southern Winn Dixie kind.
I’m hopes and dreams that felt much too big for small rural towns.
I’m the home of unseen undergarments named fear and shame, leaving and cleaving, forgotten until gone, estranged.
I’m from the shadowed Dixie corners where Kentucky bluegrass melds into Carolina clay-Where grit is renamed unwelcome sandpaper, so you learn to become steel wool if you ever hope for change.
I’m from the line of a woman who bowed her head on a wooden pew and prayed while the family root was swaying under the weight of Irish whiskey.
I’m from bruised and battered women that called themselves liberated and burned their brassieres, While covered enough to hide their hushed scars.
I’m from women that call men the enemy, when the real enemy is in a punch-cracked mirror.
So you settle. You call it contentment, but your soul understands you settled safe. You’ve crashed like waves, rarely in sync, more like strangers in different directions that meet, then part again and again.
Swell, rush, part, rinse, repeat.
And maybe he wanted settled too, but lifted a veil and got my dashed hopes and dreams.
I’m from revolving doors-and naps in lunchrooms.
Smoke and sway and swing and swag.
A bear that protects cubs, in fierce infertile Petri hover-
I’m from doubt and hope, dream and dismay, pivot and posture. Biting lips tremble, swollen humble lower than pride.
And I am changed. It stops here.
She hands me a Kleenex. Exposed, but safe. Does she see this thick skin thinning, puzzled slivers scraping into my layers? We make an appointment for next week.
My baby doesn’t let me hold him when I return. Does he see how exposed I feel? Does he sense his mama is more broken than wholly whole? He’s my only sunshine on that February gray evening, light drizzle rain taps on the windows.
He refuses dinner, maybe he tastes the rot that pours from me. I sing, our song. He pushes me away. Instead of patting my cheek, his pudgy fingers push. He arches, pinches, screams, and scratches. I feel rejection. Can he tell those cheeks had held floods just hours before? Is the erosion too much to touch?
He cries until red swollen eyes succumb to slumber. Rain taps tinkling on the windowsill, slowing. Fatigue whispers sleep next to his small toddler crib.
Fear corsets its choke while sun rises. My heaven boxed prayer is answered.
My only sunshine breathes shallow struggling. No response as the sun rises to his crib, his blue eyes stare gray blank to the wall. Maybe he’s looking for sunshine, too.
The most sacred spaces in this life will be when we feel like we are in darkness; when, in fact, those are spaces we can become most aware that light breaks through cracks named hope.
No, God. Please, no, not like this. This isn’t the resuscitation I told You to give, this is a child.
I clutch his limp body, pulsed low, breath shallow, he doesn’t push away.
Fear hisses this is my fault and I believe it. The lies you believe are the lies you breathe. Shame clutching tighter. Heart beating faster fighting. God’s answer to prayer led us off grid to grace-we’d have to leave the world to find Him, find ourselves, open space for healing bruises and battered souls.
We sat in a counseling office-he and I and a stranger. Summer pushed through a window pane in the corner-I shift to avoid the light, its unavoidable brightness. Our unsaid expectations there, ready to lunge crumble the foundation holding us together. Just because the plaster cracked doesn’t mean you take down the whole wall-that was what we learned. Fix the crack and figure out why it cracked to begin with. If you try to merely fill cracks, polish it pretty without dealing and healing the foundation, the crack return bigger each time. The unsaid was said-our foundation was brittle.
I felt cold as ice that night, and-it wasn’t because the winter was again here . It was the way a man didn’t notice a woman-frozen silent and still.
I’d placed four walls of ice to protect my still beating heart-rhythmic frost standing guard.
I wanted to change. I’m not sure exactly what I expected. I didn’t know how. When all you see are the frozen cracks, you forget that’s where the hope enters in.
The sun rose again. I notice and squint. It feels bleak. The toddler in my arms is still gray, we syringe feed day in and day out, nothing is sweet. His eyes still turned to the light through the windowpanes. Does he see the unseen?
I slow to smooth and soothe. Week after week, month after month, leaves fall, snow melts, flowers bloom. His eyes turn blue, he turns to me. Each day becomes a welcoming gift as he returns to arch, squeak, screech. I feel hope and bank everything on it. We give the house to the bank, leave gold at the pawn shop, hand in a notice to the employer. We leave the world, move to the pines, looking for hope in the wilderness. We left all we knew, gutsy hunting for hope, peace, a place to build an unshakable foundation, to heal a boy and stitch our hearts. We allowed the threads that held us together to be woven by the Divine.
Maybe we were banking on the miraculous, looking through cracked slivers of humanity clutching faith, learning faithful. It was all or nothing, nothing held back, ride or die, because we already felt the stench of separation, the flatlined rattling of dry bones splintering where they stood.
The next year brought warm autumn days, leaves emblazoned with always autumn majesty. Our toddler’s weak arms strengthened and stretched. It looked like a cross, it felt like a miracle. The more the warmth warmed his tiny arms, the more the cross became clear. When we keep our backs to the cross, the shadowed crackings of our flesh illuminate-we might feel the warmth of the sun, but we are intentionally turned away.
Love never stopped holding the heart of our humanity. It outstretches arms, holding our hand, telling us that knocking on gates of heaven is still an option. To pursue Him, I would have to choose to turn and follow His direction. That first step, that intentional turning around, was a choice. It was holy ground. Something changed, my soul slapped awake and felt its heartbeat.
And while the world continued to rage and rotate, the separation slowed me to quiet the noise and hear His whisper. We turned and breathed in a grace the world never had to offer. To just be and sit in sorrow and sadness and let the shaky ache feel soothed. A shift off grid to grace, walking away a bit from fast times and sit with slow and remember the sacred tending of hearts matters. Hand over my heart reminding me that God cares, that joy wants a space. Joy needs room. My heart had to crack a bit and let soothe flow so joy had space to enter.
Turning is the scariest freedom-blinded to yourself, yet willing to be fully seen, all the nooks and crannies you’ve tried to hide to polish pretty. Most of all, it’s a willingness to accept you are fully loved. Absolute abandoning the ugly to be beautifully and wholly holy loved. The greatest love story you’ll ever known.
I think we’re scared to reach for goodness and truth-we’re scared that truth will roll in like tsunamis, ready to purge distraction to see what’s left. We’re scared of what’s left. That maybe what’s left isn’t enough, like I’m not enough. And God says no, this is goodness and truth. What’s left is the space that separates you from Me, come. Waves roll, wash me to Him, heart resuscitated beating with peace. This story, your story? He knows the end and it’s good.
photography by Annie Spratt
