Like a Drum, My Heart Keeps Beating

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but as with most of my posts, sometimes there is just someone who needs it or a piece of my life that deserves mention. My family and our weekend deserves this.

Some days are picture perfect; you just want to frame them. Then a song comes along and frames it in your memory and writes a message in your heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV2yMnzWkkc

I was watching three extra kids the other day and to my dismay, two of the three were stung by bees. To make my embarrassment even worse, none of the three were mine. We have a play area for the kids. That is their part of the yard, the rest is ours. The kids are great about staying in it and playing there. We’ve never had a problem with our kids getting stung.  I felt horrible. 

After the incident, I noticed my oldest daughter asking one of them after they had been treated for it, “Does it hurt?” In my motherly frustration I told her, “Please don’t ask if it hurts, ask if it is getting better. If you ask if it hurts, it makes it hurt worse, if you ask if it’s getting better, usually, it is. If you don’t make a big deal out of it, it will disappear unless it is a big deal.” I didn’t realize what a huge lesson I was teaching myself, much less my kid and the rest of them, at the time. 

I’m a gardener… hope always springs eternal in the gardener’s world. We invest in the future through perennials and starts. We constantly say the words, “Next Year.”  I didn’t realize as I carefully transplanted my roots from Washington to Oregon, that I was planting something that would sustain me from year to year. Not in ’97 when we moved and passed a ghost town on the way, or when we’d been here for years and I offered to support a friends’ mom through marketing.  But the friendships and addition of family built in our transitional period has sustained me through all of the craziness this last year. 

I wasn’t sure what would happen when things changed as we shut down and moved church to home group, but guess what? We’re okay. We’re doing better. And no one has asked if we’re hurt. The ones who care ask if it’s getting better. My book might be on hold, but I know that when I release it, it won’t be from a position of hurt. I won’t be another pastor’s kid made into a statistic. Because my heart, my faith and my family have been carried by so many who tended my garden while I neglected it. And though I didn’t realize it, they healed my heart. 

I thought that the church held my family together, but the truth is, my family held the church together. And my friends who were like family made up the support to hold our family together while we held the church together. We all made it through this tumultuous time intact. As the dust settles, my friends and family are still there. Some still encourage us to grow our faith and the rest still get pulled with us through the momentum.

When my faith has been broken, there has always been someone there to carry it for me and direct me back to my roots. Oddly enough, they may or may not have been connected to my actual roots. They carefully tuck my heart away and carry it, like a treasure to be released later.  Family is amazing, something that reaches out and pulls you back from the edge. Family takes on many different characteristics.  It’s investing in history, because that’s what your family has always done. Though not the same way, just as valuable. And it’s what we know.

As a pastors’ kid, I always wondered what a “normal” family looked like. Day by day, I’m finding that it looks like mine. It looks like the ones that I’ve been adopted into as well. They are the people you miss, the ones you send a text message to, the ones you stop in to see, because when you don’t see each other weekly, it feels like you stop breathing. That thing that so many people want and are so hesitant to give: right in front of my face. Sometimes it feels so suffocating that it makes it hard to breathe, but so missed when it isn’t there. 

It’s the people who know that the quarter you put into that carousel out in front  of the Wal-Mart is ending and they still hold on… riding it til the end. Just for kicks, they will buck and snort, just to make it look like the thing is still moving. They are the ones that embarrass you and you realize that your life wouldn’t be the same without them. 

Don’t ever stop appreciating the kids with their finger in their nose, the ones you think are cute or the ones you think are annoying. There will always be those who you wish you could do without, because they are just plain embarrassing. And, if you are really special, there will always be the ones who will take the time to air pet you invade your space and give you awkward hugs even when they know you don’t want them. Family doesn’t always look the same as you, but the heart is still the same and beats with the same rhythm. And like a drum, it won’t stop beating for you.