Such a beautiful, sunny day outside of my window, with Debbie Gibson belting out “Lost in Your Eyes” through my speaker and it’s all I can do not to sing along.
It’s been a long week.
Even though I truly do love when we spring forward, because I love feeling like the night isn’t ending just as I’m getting home from work, somehow losing that hour takes a toll on me that I can’t explain very well. We all three diligently napped last Sunday, tired anyway from a weekend spent at my sister’s house, where we jumped on trampolines to celebrate Natalie’s 8th birthday.
(I took all four girls to McDonald’s for breakfast on Saturday morning and then to see The Lego Movie 2 and Natalie declared it the best birthday weekend ever.)
But tired we all three are. It doesn’t much help that the school chose this week to have extended days to make up snow days and I gave up pop for Lent. It’s all wound into the three of us more tired and cranky than normal.
But I did finish a book last week that is most deserving of its own blog post. It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way is written by one of my own personal favorite people ever, Lysa TerKeurst. I know that I have said again and again how much I love First Five, which is the devotional app that I use, but it’s my blog, so I get to say it again. Lysa’s ministry, Proverbs 31, publishes First Five and that is how I came to know Lysa.
It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way was written in the wake of Lysa’s discovery of her husband’s affair, and is pretty much exactly what I wanted to have in my hands three and a half years ago. I wanted a how to guide-how to find any grace in such a situation, how to live with my completely shattered self-esteem.
It’s difficult for me to find the words to explain how I felt just as Nick left. Because I did not feel mad-at God or Nick or anyone (this sincerely bothered many people who love me)-but I felt something deep in my soul that scared me. I felt bereft and abandoned and alone. I felt like an idiot, most of all, because there were so many signs.
Mostly, it felt like being the punch line in someone’s joke, the ultimate practical joke.
This person that I am today is so full of scars.
Lysa takes her journey and holds it up to the light and it meets you where you are.
Where I am now, of course, is not the me of three and a half years ago. I’ve worked through reams of this, with therapy and books and God and my family and my friends. And all of this writing. What Lysa reminded me of is that these scars are a part of this journey-there are bits of this that are never going to make sense to me, no matter how much I write, no matter how much I manage to heal up this heart of mine.
Nothing stings your soul quite like the disappointment born of realizing that you love someone who has broken your trust. Lysa illustrates this again and again by saying that she felt like dust. Like you have shattered until nothing remains of who you were.
Of course, from my personal experience, as hard as it was to shatter like that, as painful and sad as that time was, I can only look at who I am now and be nothing but grateful. Betsy says it best. She says, “I’m sad that Daddy left. But I like my life now so much better.”
So do I, Betsy Anne. So do I.
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