Stepping In & Standing Up.

Outside of my mother, I only remember three instances in my life where someone spoke the direct truth in love, clearly concerned for my health and well-being, to the point of chastising or risking my emotions.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One was my sister.  I specifically remember standing at the bottom corner of my mom's blue and white floral bedding in their blue room at age thirteen when my sister came over into my face and yelled, "STOP IT!  YOU'RE SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF ME!"

She was fifteen.

We didn't say those words.  We didn't yell.  But this day, she yelled.  This time, she said those words. And I jolted, for the first time shocking my brain and emotions straight.  Blinking.  Realizing my weight obsession, scale standing, and meal starving was noticed.

And took a ripping toll on the people around me.

Thirty five pounds in three months at age thirteen.

It had better had scared the shit out of someone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

The other was Roberta Knight.  My sixty-some year old 8th grade Assistant Principal at the Title One school I was teaching at, at age twenty two.

I was giving it everything I'd got.  And by "it" I mean everything, too.  Trying to find a church -- I'd go to 3 services a Sunday.  Trying to find friends -- I'd call random strangers, Young Life, or apartment dwellers.  Trying to pay off college debt -- I'd pinched every penny and lived off white bread.  Trying to be the best teacher -- I'd created every engaging lesson from scratching, then stay after school for all the performances and chatters and strays to connect with the kids.

I'd given everything, everything.

And I was empty.

Empty.

Soul and spirit empty.

It was mid-October, twelve weeks of desperate, trying, lonely, striving.  And she called me into her office and sat me in the chair landlocked across from me:

"Girl, you need to go home!  Girl, you need to go home to your Mama!  You are out of your world here.  You need a few days back home with your peoples, back with fimimilar, back where they get you.  Back to your Mama!  Now you take off Thursday and Friday and you fly home and see your Mama for a long weekend and then you come back here.  But you need to get home and be with your Mama."

And that was that.

Two days later, ticket bought, I landed, broken and tired and lonely and weary, in the arms of my Mom.

And I will forever be thankful to Robert Knight for stepping in and standing up and making me do so.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

I sat at the round wood table, the yellow walls encasing me, typing as she talked.  Kate dictated words Michael spoke through the phone, the resignation letter coming out of my fingertips to keys.  She had flown in, come, to see my dried bones, my worn-down body and soul, completely stripped of hope or life and love.  But she flew in to see me, let me talk and cry and be.  And called her husband Michael on behalf of me.

I was helpless, confused, overrun, angry, beaten, and alone.  All in that brick house at the end of Harrisonwoods.  And she said the job would need me no more.  She called Michael for me, he told her the words to translate, and I typed them with rote obedience, too empty to argue, too empty to think, only able to type the resignation for Wilson Middle School and quit my teaching job that October.

Others told me I needed a job, or specifically, I needed insurance.  That I had to tough things out.  Get through the years and life without my mom, without that hope, without this broken horrid family that was left.

But Kate came with a hug and a whole lot of grace.

And quit the teaching job for me.

Grace.  Friend. Grace.

That was love to me that day.  That was life for me.

Whittling of Motherhood.

These years are the whittling of motherhood.  No pride.  No perfection. No getting it right.  No healthy comparison.  Motherhood has whittled, humbled, stripped, and scoured my soul of anything I had to boast about.

But prayer.

Prayer. Discipline.  Discipleship.  Leadership training.  Centrality of kindness.  Communal confession.  And continual scraping sacrifice.  Giving.  Ministering. Loving. Caring. Sharing.

These are the carvings created of the sharpest whittling in my life and soul, of motherhood.