Does She Come With a Warning Label?

a blog hop with the ladies of Exhale

We show up and the first thing I notice is the candy bowl on the table filled with Hershey Kisses and That’s It bars. There’s cream colored pillows and a dimmed lamp on a side table. I sit on the couch, curl my arms around a pillow over my lap and notice the artwork on the wall opposite me. There are three bronze birds at various stages of flight—the first with its wings raised, the second with its wings straight, and the third with its wings down below its body. Together they form a seamless picture of a bird in flight. Smooth. Steady. Stable.

Free.

I can’t stop looking at these birds during our first marriage counseling session. I know I should be paying attention. I know I should be an attentive listener and an active participant and looking towards the woman who is supposed to help us with our communication challenges and our endless frustrations with one another.

But these birds keep calling to me.

What would it be like to glide steady through the air instead of feeling trapped and stagnant?

What would it be like to fly above all the problems currently suffocating my life?

The thought is so tender I barely let it cross my mind afraid of what it reveals about my current state of dissatisfaction. I hear something being uttered about boundaries and a window of tolerance, and turn my face back towards our therapist.

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“We need to schedule a progress evaluation for insurance purposes and to assess how kiddo is doing with his goals,” I hear the receptionist say as I listen to the voicemail. I dread what this will mean when we have to sit face to face with his occupational therapist.

Is he still arguing with adults? Yes.

Does he know how to tie shoes? No.

Is he aware and appropriately responding to others in his surroundings? Sometimes.

I’ve been asked a form of these questions for the bulk of the past three years. And last year, when we got the official diagnosis we had suspected, the weight of the questions became heavier. Yes, some of the behavior struggles are related to the acronym that professionals use to describe my son. But I can’t help but feel like some of it is my fault, too. I shouldn’t have shouted at him so much. I should have given him more one on one time. I should have waited to introduce sugar. The questions come and crack me open, causing me to bleed from the inside, forming a wound only I can feel.

What is a mother if she doesn’t have the right answers?

What is a mother if she doesn’t even want to hear the questions?

The wound is tender. Sometimes it feels like I’m hemorrhaging from the amount of them all.

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I enter the conference room, take a name tag, and use the pink Sharpie to write my name. I recognize a lone face in a sea of dozen. It might as well have been 1,000 faces for the amount of courage it took to push the door open and step across the threshold. The faces I do notice seem friendly, smiling as they hover around a pot of decaf coffee and plate of chocolate chip cookies. I’m broken but they don’t know it. I can’t help but feel raw and exposed like the pain of the last ten months is going to ooze out of me like an infection that can’t be controlled. I’m starting over but they can’t tell. We sit in a circle of black folding chairs and begin introducing ourselves. These women (whose names I will forget by morning) tell me how much they love this place. How they felt like it was home the minute they walked through the door. I listen to a lady with silver hair talk about the warmth she felt in the presence of the Lord through the prayers of the people here. My heart is beating faster than my breath can keep up. I feel trapped, foreign in my own skin.

How can I open up to a new group of people when I’ve been so hurt by so many before?

How can I trust these strangers with the most tender parts of me?

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The last year of life has felt like a season of one tender moment after the other. Marriage struggles. Parenting woes. Loss of community and friendship. The struggles have felt insurmountable. It feels like I should be walking around with a warning label across my forehead: FRAGILE:HANDLE WITH CARE like I might break with even the smallest crack.

I’ve been wrecked by lies spoken about me and paralyzed by the weight of my children’s’ struggles. My marriage has felt resurrected thanks to our regular meetings with our therapist and the sheer grace of God. Still, so many of the safe places that once anchored me have been ripped away. In their wake, I often feel like a broken shell of the person I used to be. Brick by brick I’ve crafted the walls of my heart trapping myself inside. I build my tower higher and higher, a Rapunzel of my own making with no golden locks leading to freedom. Is it self protection or fear?

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a distinction at all.

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There’s plenty of warning labels she could wear in this season.

“May cry at the sound of laughter in a coffee shop.” (She misses the friends she used to have.)

“May lash out at husband for snoring too loudly.” (She just needs some real sleep in order to face the reality of the day.)

“May slam the remote against the couch pillows.” (She’s not really tired of Bluey. She just misses the way things used to be.)

And yet.

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She lights a candle, opens her Bible, and breathes deeply. The real kind that her therapist asks her to do. “Inhale for a count of five.” 1-2-3-4-5. “Exhale until it all leaves your body.” 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.

She repeats this process until she can no longer notice the irregular beat of her heart or the sweatiness of her palms.

She picks up her pencil and journals her way through the ache.

She lingers in her son’s bed after tucking him watching the gentle, steady rise and fall of his chest as she caresses the tuft of golden hair around his ears.

She shows up each Wednesday night to a room full of strangers she prays one day will become friends.

She grabs her husband’s hand on their way into church and memorizes the way it feels to have him squeeze it back, a Herculean effort for those who know what they’ve endured over the last year in their marriage and in their lives.

She’s been cracked upon in a thousand little ways and yet she shows up tenderly and compassionately to the present reality of her life. (Or at least she tries.) On her good days, she stops pretending it should look like something else. On her worst days, she lies on the couch with a bowl of extra buttery popcorn and a Coke watching Gilmore Girls on repeat pretending she is anywhere but here.

She’s coming to terms with the places that have cracked her open, remaining tender to the pain that once enveloped her. How it’s shaping her into someone she didn’t know she needed to be. Softer. Kinder. More gentle towards her wounded self. Some days it looks like a hand squeeze, walking into a room of strangers, talking to the therapist.

She’s beginning to see the pain has a purpose.

The tenderness is what makes her human.

It might even be what actually makes her whole.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Tender."