On New Year’s Morning, 2013 we descended through a layer of cloud cover and into the sunny, Denver sky. I was wrapping up a work trip and eager to be home. My spirits soared and I was as radiant as the sunlight that poured through the portal window next to my jump seat. After months of trying to conceive, I was pregnant. What an incredible start to the New Year! I floated gleefully through the cabin and my eyes twinkled as I engaged in small talk with the passengers. My insides fluttered with anticipation and excitement to get home and tell my husband The News. The Captain signaled our final descent and I popped into the lav to use the restroom and apply my landing lips. (Yes, that’s a thing.) I’ll spare you the details but in the loo I discovered I was NOT, in fact, pregnant. I harnessed myself into my jump seat and stared vacantly out the same portal window, my eyes glossed over in fury and defeat.
I fought tears as I offered my “Happy New Year!” parting words to our passengers. I kept it together as I high-heel clicked my way through the concourse and into the crew parking lot. In the quiet of my car I wept. I got home and my husband only needed to look at me to know that we’d be needing to try again in two weeks. I numbly scrolled Facebook and encountered birth announcements. New Year’s pictures of happy families and wriggling babies. One girlfriend posted something so innocent and joyful about her “two under two” babies and hopefully more on the way. She unwittingly became my punching bag, the target against which I shot poisonous arrows of bitterness, jealousy and rage. It would be five more months before we would conceive, but that particular friendship was never the same.
Yesterday morning before church I posted a picture of our shiny, new Chevy Tahoe. Something in me bristled as I pressed the “share now” button, but I posted anyway. I like to think that I do a pretty good job keeping it real on social media. But this was an instance where I posted our zoomed in highlight reel and (intentionally) neglected to share the whole story. Because if I zoomed out a bit, you’d learn that the vehicle we were replacing was a 2004 Subaru that wreaked of fuel, leaked antifreeze, started smoking and had become downright hazardous to drive. If I zoomed out a bit more you’d learn that we had postponed buying a vehicle as long as possible because the next promotion with my company comes with a brand new Lexus. And finally, you’d learn that behind that gorgeous, “pepperdust metallic” exterior hides an undercarriage of rust. It passed the Carmax 125 point inspection because none of the salt-on-the-road-Wisconsin-inherited rust has penetrated the frame of the car. Yet.
I don’t want to portray a picture perfect life. A picture perfect life implies that I have it all together. A picture perfect life leads you to believe that I never wonder if the grass is greener. And more than anything, a picture perfect life shows you that I don’t need God. And friends, let me set the record straight. I would be a sad, dilapidated heap of scrap metal if it weren’t for God making me shiny and new every single day.
To those of you who have ever hovered over my newsfeed and felt a twinge of “I’m not enough-ness” because of something I have posted or portrayed, I am so, so sorry. Please never forget that when you examine what hides behind my shiny exterior, you are bound to find rust.
Dramatic Paddocks 