“I realized that I don’t have to be perfect. All I have to do is show up and enjoy the messy, imperfect, and beautiful journey of my life.” – Kerry Washington
My nephew Matt majored in ceramic arts in college. For his senior show he produced a series of intricately woven towers capped with mushroom shaped tops. The towers stand 20” to 24” tall. They resemble something one might see in Lord of The Rings or even Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School. Their detail is exquisite. They exude mystery. I find them alluring.
While Matt worked on the last piece for the show, weaving the strands together as he turned his wheel, something happened, and the piece fell to the floor. Matt was dumbstruck. He needed this piece to complete his show. There was no time to create another tower. He stared at the mangled mess at his feet, and then did a very sensible thing. He walked out of the studio.
Three hours later, he came back. He went over to the broken tower, still on the floor, and gently picked it up. “Maybe I can save this,” he thought. And that is exactly what he did.
WHAT WAS
That piece now stands on a chest of drawers four feet away from me as I write this. It does not have the slick, well-crafted look of the others in the series. It is a bit broken. You can see the weaving, so well done, now smashed in places. One of the supporting pieces protrudes to the side. The whole piece sags as if it has been through the fire. And indeed, it has. Matt named the piece “The Lamb Still Stands.”1
I bought that tower from Matt because it reminds me of myself. I am a bit broken in places and don’t quite stand right. Sometimes I literally walk with a limp, the effect of a shattered heel that a surgeon pieced back together after I fell off a wall in 2005. But most of the wounds that I carry are within –– doubts. Insecurities, feelings of unworthiness. I know likely many others feel these same feelings, work as we may to hide them.
WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS
I can trace the source of many of my own wounds. In the early years of my Catholic school education the emphasis was on God’s disappointment and hurt because of our sins, rather than on God’s endless love. Then growing up in a home as the middle child, I often felt lost in the shuffle of our family dynamics, colored by my father’s alcoholism.
Compared to the homes of my friends in my neighborhood, our family did not measure up. My mom had to work; theirs did not. Their houses were orderly; ours was often a mess. Their fathers fixed things around the house, while our porch light was left burnt out for months and some winters passed with cold air seeping in my bedroom window because the storm window was left unhung. At times, my neighborhood friends underscored this lack by ignoring me or by running away from me, not wanting to play to with me. I was left feeling my family came from the wrong side of the tracks, even though we lived at the top of a hill.
I did not know how to process all I was experiencing while young. While I was a strong-willed child, I often left to my own resources with little direction. I did not make the best decisions, the results of which had me scrambling at times, lost, confused, unsure. As I aged, I found ways to manage my life better to the point where today I know some security and comfort. But inside, I still question my value. I know the question at the heart of it all remains –– am I loveable?
ROAD TRIP
In June, I took a road trip to the eastern coast. I hiked around the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania’s Ohiopyle State Park, paddled for three days down parts of the Delaware River, and toured Annapolis with a priest friend and his sweet family who put me up for the night. I ended my sojourn on Maryland’s Tilghman Island, staying with other friends who own a home on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
After touring the Tilghman Watermen’s Museum, my friends and I noticed a woodworking shop tucked away down a side street. We went to check it out. I am not one to buy souvenirs when I travel, particularly at this time in my life. There is nothing I need or even want when it comes to possessions. So when I entered the shop, I had no intention of buying anything.
The woodworker collects driftwood and broken branches near the woods and off the shores of the wide Chesapeake Bay to the west and wild Choptank River that flowed along the eastern side of the island. He showed us how he grinds away the dirt and debris that clings to the wood until an image emerges. The results are striking, and we could easily imagine birds, waterfowl, fishes and dolphins in the exquisite pieces.
One piece caught my eye, that of a bird, lying as if wounded on a beach. It was a dark piece. I was drawn to it and asked for the price. I walked around a bit more, holding it, questioning whether to buy it. Despite my intention to buy nothing, the piece resonated with me. But something stopped me, and then I saw why.
THE PHOENIX
On a shelf across the little display area in front of the shop, there it was –– a Phoenix. Carved out of a piece of box elder, not more than twelve inches tall, the blonde wood is streaked with red, as if the flames from which the bird emerges still linger, the burnishing yet to be complete. Instinctively I knew this was the piece I was to buy. This the piece I needed, not the wounded bird. With the confirmation of my friends, I pulled out my credit card.
Yes, the doubts I carry likely will always be with me, but the wounds are really more scars these days than anything else, scars that have a beauty of their own, like those found in the sculptures I now own. I am not sure when my own wounds quit bleeding. I was so used to them gaping, that I did not notice how over time, step by broken step, each time I made a decision to meditate before acting, each time I recognized that pride that had taken hold needed to be set aside, each time I was willing to understand and forgive rather than insist that I be understood, I was healing. Almost in spite of myself.
Just as “The Slain Lamb Stands” is part of me, so now is the Phoenix. And whenever I doubt that, I only need to turn my eyes to a box elder sculpture, beautifully scarred from insect infestation, and say, “Yes. I see you. You are me, and we are loved.”
FOR REFLECTION: Reflect on the times of healing in your own life. What steps did you take for that to occur? Can those steps be repeated for future healing?
1 “Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, a Lamb, standing as if it had been slain.” Revelation 5:2
Top image: Barbara Lyghtel Rohrer
Midtext image: Barbara Lyghtel Rohrer
Side image: Pixabay/Avelino Calvar Martinez
