the water

I sit up in bed to the dread of it again. the nagging relentless sound of what went from bountiful blessing to steady sentence in what seemed like a blink. 
Somewhere, I stopped stopping to notice and put my head down like a ram, just to get through.


I squeeze tears off the edge of my face and blast that I feel the same exact way I felt when my head hit pillow the night before, knowing I couldn't take one more step without physical rest before loosing my mind.


and I want to blame my son for being in my bed the last five hours, the last five nights, rolling over my hair, waking me. keeping the space I hardly sleep in just under the size of a human sliver, hanging on to the edge for dear life.
my muscles are sore. my head and my heart ache.


But I know that God can make rest out of nothing. So I know that I'm allowed here for a reason. a reason which I'm not to put on my son's shoulders.


I swing a leg over the side and force my weighted foot to the floor.
my kid is "starving", always. and demanding at that. and the morning hour is still in darkness.


Again. 


I can already feel myself breaking away from all restraint. 
I try to remind myself over and over again:
what comes out of the mouth flows from the heart... 
what comes out of the mouth flows from the heart... 
mine's in a sad sad state these days.


I murmur under my breath, "give me a break. really."


more words from a hardened heart swarm around in my head.
And there they will stay, taunting me, deepening my sores. because 30 years of unleashing that dragon too many times to count has at least taught me to fit my fiery tongue with a heavy bit and bridle.
i'm no better off inside.


As I hit the table to do our Bible reading over breakfast I plead silently, God how long will I hold out before I have to make change... change requires an energy of which I have no supply. 
and where will I even begin?


Sure enough, shortly after Matthew 15, two sharp disrespectful little demands and an ungrateful statement resound, and I have the answer to my initial concern.
i. am. done. 


A first-time-ever full day grounding to the bedroom feels best. safest. As for whose grounded and to whose room, I consider for a brief moment...


aren't i raising him? isn't he five? didn't he learn how to talk and walk and spit and spat and roll over the top of me somewhere?
wasn't it me?


but the same as I try to convince him, I am the adult who's responsible to guide him. 
Even if though I do fail 90% of the time.
So it's his mouth and his stomping feet that head off to his bedroom for the day.


And happy as can be he plays and reads and does his best school work to date.


And guilty and shamed, angry and hurt, blaming and lost as can be I loath and creep away to cry deep and call my best women with convulsions of confessions. 


A day of pouring out failures and fears over steaming iron, mop and dish towel... 
we are parents of single, multiple, biological and adopted children, all in a similar boat, learning how to row at the same time dipping buckets of water leaked and heaving them over and out.

I wanted a new boat.
I wanted it badly enough that I took the pills. 
and it felt good for awhile. I felt "normal". For awhile.
I stepped up my homemaker role a notch...


and that was about it.


but I heard Him in that bathroom 200 miles from home. I heard His call and I trembled at the echo in my heart. my unwilling, unready heart.


I've since dipped a finger or four into that water. the water He led me to the bank of one year ago. the water where at first response I slid a rickety excuse for a craft into, with me safely atop gripping broken oars. the water He's asking me to scale this hull I've clung to and drop straight into today. 
His water. 


I've been returning my inner workings/hormones/body to it's prior state, in ruins as it was. No more crutches. Shifting weight from man-made solutions back through me, back over to Him.


I'm warm and washed into the tall thick of the bluff. I would call it shipwrecked if my ship were worthy, but it's proven otherwise, again. 
I can feel the water rolling over the tops of my feet. I can hear the whisper and the same song segment that has broadcast interruption and run through my spirit a thousand times these past weeks...

"if only i could get lost in His ocean. 
surviving on the thought of loving You.
He's just like the water..."


This is not a test. This is the real thing. 


i have to let go and get in.
God, please.


Just Like the Water- Lauryn Hill