Just Write 154

I saw in his face what something in me already knew. He was tired from staying up too late and drinking more than he planned to drink. He was tired from thinking and thinking again and thinking about his drinking again.

They were both tired, he and his wife, from years of building things and watching them crumble, building them back up again. That’s life, that’s parenting, that’s marriage, that’s work. But there was More, the mysterious illness of a child. And we who are prone to drink, genes broken up and begging for More, we will drink More. That’s what we do. Until we don’t.

So there we stood, not going to church but meeting in a church, and we recognized our matching sickness because of a hesitant willingness to see it. He finally said it out loud. All the wonderings of self, the fears and the unknowns that are truly known but just not all lit up with voicing them quite yet. He was voicing them.

You can watch the air come out of a person with truth’s sweet release and fear’s trembling all at once.

That was one year ago. One year ago, and two days, Mr. Haines.

We color in our memory of things, reds and yellows and purples and greens. Because memory is slowly wiped away with time’s chalkboard eraser, leaving white streaks on a black surfaces, dust.

So maybe it wasn’t as intense as it seems when I think of it. And maybe I said something more than I can remember? You see, some of what I say feels like Just Words in those moments. Because how do you validate pain without sounding like a pamphlet?

What I do know for sure is that I was so damn proud. And not like a Mama, no, but as a fellow. A fellow struggler, over-thinker, writer, believer, and one who knows how it feels to be starved for grace. Beaten down by my own ruminations on theology and the church’s broken heart and body and the way it leaves us lonely sometimes.

I was proud like a sister.

This was the beginning. A continuation of the grace that was building up inside all along but blocked by booze. There but not seen or felt.

Pull the cork, turn the cap, pop the cover,

pour it down the sink

and feel the flow of freedom rushing through your veins.

And then it will be so hard. Some days will cry out with nothing but craving and what Mr. Haines and I have come to learn is that these days will pass. Surrender. Let go. Wait. Cry. Call someone. Pray. Surrender again. Hate it. Love it. Hate it again. Pray again.

It was over a year ago, and maybe all the chalkboard of memory reads now is MERCY, my friend. Sweet mercy. I’m so proud of you, my brother. Just think…well, maybe not. Don’t think. Just be. Look over at that puzzle piece of a beautiful wife you have, and smile.

(I stole your photo from Facebook. So there.)

Peace.

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This is the 154th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {New here? Please see the details.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. (Then link back to this post in your Just Write post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

Also. Please take a moment to visit someone else who has linked up! It’s a really good way to meet new writers and get inspired by the meaning behind their moments. Word?