I broke. Ladies and Gents, I broke. The recurring feeling was that of a shattered windshield held together simply by whatever thin sheet runs obscurely through the middle. A complete shattering. A thousand rough-edged pieces held together by who knows what.
But here is the interesting thing, I broke BEFORE the adoption.
Three years ago as this Liberian adoption journey was in its inception, we also decided to once again move across the country. Our youngest was nearly one and I was finally sleeping through the night and had newly regained control of my hormones. I was happy in my life and friends and family. But this is when I broke. This didn't seem like much. A move across the country to a place I'd lived before and loved. An adoption that wasn't even fully fleshed out. Two medium rocks thrown at my windshield and I shattered.
And then the kids did come and it was like that broken glass was ground down into dust.
Three years I've been living in this broken and ground state. Little by little the wind blowing away at the glass dust. I was blowing away into nothingness...a whisper on the wind not to be found or seen.
This blog, though, isn't about the shattering because there is no words for that. You know it. You already feel those shattered parts of your own life.
This blog is about rising as a phoenix out of the ashes. It is about the broken pottery ground down to be reused by the potter.
I want to say that I have finally gotten to a point of healing in my life. I'd like to say that the hard parts are over and I'm returning to my old self. I want to go back to the old Anna. I want desperately to put those windshield pieces back together in this amazing puzzle. I can do that with enough time, right?
I've been trying to put those pieces in their spots...move back to Albuquerque? get in shape? go back to teaching? get rid of these kids? make my house neat? read more Bible? travel to new sites? buy new clothes? counseling? marriage conferences? pretend harder?
Finally after three years, I feel ready to re-emerge. Almost to be born again. I did some self-discovery using some personality type testing and exploring and I felt like I was getting an understanding of how those pieces might fit together again. It was showing me parts of me I'd forgotten or didn't previously understand. My heart swelled ready and armed with these new discoveries. Ready to be Anna again. Not mom. Not wife. Not homemaker. Not churchgoer. Not ___________ but Anna. I felt invigorated and excited.
I was expressing to some friends how excited I am about this re-emerging of Anna when when friend sagely but simply stated, "But it will be more like an Anna 2.0 won't it."
I felt derailed. No! I don't want a 2.0; I want ME back!
But the thought wouldn't leave me alone. 2.0.....2.0......2.0.....
It took me a full month to even be open to the idea. Once I creaked that possibility the tiniest bit open in my mind, in rushed the truths God has been crushing me for. That's right. He has been crushing me for these truths.
Ezekial 26:36 "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you." He is giving me a new one. I had the words wrong. I wanted to be "redone," "re-emerged," "rediscovered," "refurbished," "reborn," but God was saying he wants to get rid of the old and make me new.
We all know that no amount of work, no matter how skilled or patient I am with puzzles, will fix that broken windshield. But the phoenix rises from the ashes. He must die and be dust before he can rise again. An old pot must be ground to perfect grit to be used in making a new pot.
Glass is also the perfect recyclable. Glass can be ground down and melted again and again and again into a new shape. Unlike most recyclables, glass does not degenerate or lose integrity when it is crushed and shaped again. There is a part of me that is a "re" word-I am the same elemental make-up after all- but my dust is being made into something new. Parts of me have blown away. I can never be Anna 1.0 again because some of this dross has blown away.
1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
I see Anna 2.0 only dimly. Maybe three years ago I could have been made new but I didn't want to see at all, not even dimly. I wanted to be something that was and not something that can be or will be. I clung, and still do at times, to the desperate familiarity and comfort of Anna 1.0.
The image and feeling I had of being a shattered windshield held together by an invisible plastic sheeting was viscerally painful. But God arose in me the desire for new life to refuse to continue to be blown away. And 2.0 has some serious flaws but the glass will be melted, the edges smoothed. I can trust God with the process because I have been fully known. He knows who I was and he knows who I will be.
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