Elephants

I'm sitting on my fabulous back patio.  The baby is napping.  The two big boys are playing outside with neighbor friends.  Mark and Morgan are on a mini-date, looking for the perfect monologue for her upcoming audition.

Oh, and I'm wearing my favorite sweatshirt and SOCKS!!!!

Hello, socks and sweatshirts.  I've missed you so much.

And there's a fire in the chiminea.  Bless the Lord, oh my soul...

Fall is my favorite time of year.  I love the cooler temps.  I love sweatshirts.  I really love sweatshirts.

I love coffee anytime of the year, but in the fall it really does have more of an OOMPH to it.

I also get pretty nostalgic.

There are a lot of memories attached to this season.

I found out I was pregnant with three of my four children during the fall.

Mark and I were married in the fall.

My church was "born" in the fall.

My father was seriously ill in the fall.

My marriage hit rock bottom in the fall.

Depression settled itself on me in the fall.

It's been almost four years since the day that elephant climbed on my chest.  Four years since it felt like my world was crumbling around me - or rather, four years since I felt myself crumbling in the middle of my world.

Elephants will do that to a person.

They're big, heavy, cumbersome.

This particular elephant climbed into my van as I was waiting at a stop light... and sat on my chest.

I couldn't breathe.  My knuckles went white in their death grip on the steering wheel as fear set in and despair took over.

Fear.

Anxiety.

Unhappiness.

Hopelessness.

Exhaustion.

Depression.

Elephants have many names.  Mine was Depression.

Are you aware of the elephants in your midst?  These lumbering creatures find the chaos of our lives the perfect nesting ground.  The noise they make gets lost in the great din we are so accustomed to.  We ignore any danger signs because we're too busy to do anything about it anyway.

I was completely unaware of that elephant's presence.  Oh, I knew life was hard.  I knew I felt overwhelmed and exhausted.  But I was completely unaware of the danger this animal presented to my life - the havoc he would play upon my soul.

And play he did.

But God was bigger than that elephant.  He took him down.

We took him down together.

And now, four years later, I am whole.  I am grateful.

I am NOT perfect.  But I am hopeful.

This fall is going to be about celebrating the journey.

Undone.

I've been thinking about this word this week.  In bible study on Wednesday, we talked about the moment Isaiah saw the Lord ("In the year that King Uzziah died...").  The word Isaiah used at that moment was "undone."  Beth Moore does a fantastic job of bringing context to the setting here - with Isaiah's king (and perhaps childhood hero) having just passed; the state of his people at the time was fairly pathetic; and Isaiah   seems to feel pretty much at the end of himself.  Undone.

I've been undone.  Have you?

I'll give you the short list of my "undoing" moments.

The day I sat beside my father as he died.

Giving birth - all four times.

The early morning miscarriage of our fourth baby.

An evening in Juarez, Mexico when I realized I was in love with Mark, but had no certainty whatsoever that he would ever love me back.

The moment I knew he loved me back.

The afternoon depression settled on me like a giant elephant that decided to sit on my chest.

A positive pregnancy test.  Every.  Single.  Time.

I could go on.  And I probably will.  But not today.  Today I just want to reflect a moment on how both the most tragic and the most beautiful moments of my life have been my undoing.

Being undone is frightening.  It's that raw, exposed, overwhelming, vulnerable place that is just plain uncomfortable, even if it's happening when you're falling head over heels in love with the most amazing man in the world - or when you're holding this tiny, beautiful, amazing little human being that you somehow brought into the world.  And it's terrifying when the cause is rooted in great pain.

But when we're undone we get to see Him.  And that's a good thing.  

Isaiah's response in that moment was to cry out, "Here I am.  Send me."  [I see that I'm broken and really just nothing, Lord.  But use me... if You can.]

Now I'm no Isaiah, but that's what I'm looking for here.  If my undoing can somehow be used by the Father, so be it.