Why I Cling to Broken Women

I have been clinging to women lately. Clinging to women that keep my feet on the ground and my eyes on the cross. My husband is my rock. He braces me up when my legs have failed and helps me to stand, even if he’s on his hands and knees himself. But even when I’m standing, sometimes my chin quivers. My shoulders slump. My eyes stay fixed on the floor. In those times I need my girls. My mom, my sister, my circle. My circle is made of women who are woven from a tapestry of many cloths, full of vibrant colors and varied texture…

• my barista who hears my daily struggles over the coffee counter;
• my pastors’ wives who pray ceaselessly for my chaotic life;
• moms who will take my kids for a little while for any reason at all;
• coworkers who stop by to ask about life’s daily misadventures (they hear my posts lived out in real time);
• online acquaintances I treasure like old friends

I’ve gotten better at reaching out to them when I need them. I’ve recently found the strength to share the unsharable and tell the untellable. I’ve wept bitterly in their arms, sobbing “Somebody has to help me. I don’t know what to do.” and was answered by a dozen sighs of understanding around the table, condolences that come not from sympathy but from empathy and experience and sisterhood. I have women who can hear the whispers of my heart when I cannot bear to speak my need.  But today I realized that they call me, too. Sometimes it’s the same pillars of strength, giving me the honor of reciprocating. Other times, it’s out-of-the-blue calls for help, desperate attacks of need that take you by surprise, a stunning confession of familiar brokenness.

And there it is. The brokenness.

It’s like we are all little piles of shattered bits walking around, taped together with grit and determination and a desire for wine, or sleep, or a place to hide. Forget guilt, ladies. “Mom guilt” is child’s play. If we all get real with ourselves, and real with each other, we start to see what’s underneath. Slick, black fear that roils in our bellies and muddles our minds. Shame that causes our souls to recoil as if they’ve touched a hot stove. Grief that swells our throats closed so tight that we dare not swallow lest we break the seal and find we can never stop crying. Fear of the overwhelming ugliness of this world, so in need of knowing their savior. Shame for what we’ve done. Shame for what we haven’t done. I think the latter is tougher to take – humiliation for what happened on our watch, don’t you agree? And once you are awash in the heady brew of these bitter burdens, the speaking of it is incomprehensible.

How do I start? How do I ask for help when I can’t even figure out the first words to say?

Here’s the thing – if you look around with eyes bent on seeing, you will notice that others around you are not starting because they can’t figure out how either. But I assure you the need is there, the pain runs deep, and the joy of being known is boundless. We are known by our Creator; and we are loved in all our messy, disastrous splendor. How much greater, then, to be known here and now? And to know others! Oh, the joy of knowing others! People are fantastic, do you know that?! They are beautifully quirky and delightfully marred. The less like you they are, the more fun it becomes to unravel their tales and to be of some help. The sweeter it is to open your wounds and unwrap your fears to give them the peace of knowing they are not alone. Company is balm for the soul. Acknowledging another’s brokenness and showing your own is liberating and can get you from this day into the next, even if you can’t manage it any other way.

I got more than one call for help today. I imagined myself as a tattered old teddy bear – one button eye missing, seams torn, an ear hanging by a thread – and they like fractured china dolls, or maybe some of those weird toys from under the bed in Toy Story. Remember how awesome those toys really were? They were like warped and tangled heroes! And here I am, on this island of misfits, with a heart that is bursting with gratitude (when it will quit feeling sorry for itself.) My appreciation runs bone deep, both at having the help and at being the one others call in times of need. It affirms my place in the circle – a balanced track record of giving and taking. It can’t be all one or the other. It requires a willingness to show your broken bits. Sometimes you need to pick up a single fragment from your pile and show it off, chin quivering and shoulders slumped, for no other purpose than to say “THIS is how I can love your fragmented self. THIS is why I am qualified to relate. This piece here? I keep it hidden, but for you I would let it see sunlight; because I know you are hiding your own, and I want you to see that we match.”

If you hoard all your brokenness, if you cover the shards up with paint and cloth, then how is the broken world to know that you can be trusted to help? One of the most powerful sentences can be, “I know you are embarrassed to talk about this, but please know that it doesn’t embarrass me.” Sentiments that free others from shame are priceless treasures that we must be brave enough to find and authentic when we deliver. From the trivial to the unspeakable, the shame we carry stops so many conversations before they ever start.

If I came to you with my emotional duffel bag overflowing, and a nameless, shapeless shadow of doubt and fear at my side; wouldn’t it be great if your fear and mine made fast friends and ran off to the other room to play like children so that we could sit down and have a much needed heart to heart? Those have been my recent days. My fears and doubts are getting better at making friends. Just like kids at a playground, once they feel comfortable with the others there, they hardly come around bugging you on the bench where you are sitting, building relationships with others who need it, too.

Memory, Go Fish, from an early age we all like to make a match.  Let’s walk around trying to find matches to our broken pieces like an ice breaker game.

Find your circle.  

Then mine the matches.  Dig in the dark places and toil for the sake of the find.  It really is the only way to make it through this mess.

So let’s make friends.  Take a deep breath and go find some matches.