Becoming Mary Bell

Hope

I can still hear my grandfather's laugh. I still think of his fingers on the keys whenever I hear a piano version of "Silent Night" or "Jingle Bells". I still enjoy magic shows, but no magician can ever measure up. No trick can match his amazing Clunk Box. There is no one with his expression, the twinkle in his eye, the movement of those creative, white eyebrows.

I still look for my "miracle of the day", and I still laugh at myself whenever I get the chance. I imagine him laughing with me, and even the most dire circumstances are transformed into a story to be told...a smile to be had.

Granddad knew how to make magic out of life. His tie-clip. His car. The orange soda and peanuts that were ceremonisouly brought to the card table for "Happy Hour" each afternoon during his visits. Ordinary things that I'll never be able to view as ordinary.

Even as a child, I was something special to him. Not just as one of the grandchildren, but uniquely special. He was like that...always looking for the one thing that set someone or something apart. I remember the morning he found that something in me.

The cool air brushed my cheek as I pushed the blanket off my nose and stretched my arms to the wall, spreading fingers and toes with satisfaction. I rolled my head to the side and looked at the clock - 7:16. I smiled. It was my favorite time of the day.

I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake my sister, pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, twisted a favorite scrunchie around a short bunch of spongie hair, and brushed my teeth. Without pausing to check my relfection, I headed for the living room. At ten-years-old, I hadn't yet learned that, to some, it might matter what I looked like. All I knew was that Granddad would look up from his paper, see me, and smile.

On that particular morning, he was planning to drive to the canteen for a bag of ice, and he asked me to join him. I nodded, a grin spreading into sun-baked, freckled cheeks as I followed him outside to the little, blue Buik. I felt pleasure tingling through me as he opened my door.

I climbed in and waited as he made his way around to the driver's seat. He didn't turn on the radio as we crunched out of the driveway, and we didn't talk, but there was a simple happiness in the rumble of tires over the ruts and rocks of the narrow, mountain road. I was with Granddad, and I felt his pleasure of being with me. It was my very own moment with him, and I savored it.

I felt so grown-up helping him carry that second bag of ice. It was heavy and awkward in my arms, but the cool wet felt good against my skin, and his smile made me float.

When we got back to the house, he told my dad that I had "a servant's heart". I knew by the way he said it that I had made him proud. I don't think I'd ever felt more valuable to anyone, and, in that moment, a part of my character was formed.

Now, even though he's gone, what he left in me remains...
Hope that I'm of value...that I have something to offer the world.
Hope that even my mistakes can be learned from...laughed over.
Hope that, when I reach the limit of my strength, I'll be able to find yet another "miracle of the day".

Vision

No one can accuse my dad of wanting to settle into safe predictability. His eyes constantly roam, finding possibility in everything and in everyone.

His pen scratches furiously at napkins, bulletins, and receipts. He's forever found diagramming new dreams of greenhouses, goat farms, churches, schools, scholarship endowments, smuggling, "Flights of Mercy", bumper boats, springs, and the list could go on and on!

I still join the family in laughing at some of his more outrageous ideas, but, as I get older, I find myself more inspired than amused. I think Dad's complaint that none of his children got his eyes, is not quite true after all, for I'm realizing that my eyes - though blue - are his.

For the first time I understand the blessing and the curse of vision - the painful death of many dreams and the crushing weight of hope that accompanies our work as we wait for miracles.

Looking back, I'm amazed at how Dad allowed his vision to remain unclouded by disappointments. I'm sure there have been many, but there's one in particular that remains vivid in my memory.

It began when I was in first grade. We had moved to the inner city, because Dad wanted to help the poor in the area reclaim hope and dignity. One night, a man came to our door, pounding at the heart of Dad's dream. This is how I remember it:

I was wide awake, but my body was rigid beneath the covers. My heart pounded along with the fist falling fast and heavy against our front door. I heard Francie sit up.

"Molly," she whispered.
She sounded more scared than I was, and I got up to grab the hand reaching for me. "What if he gets in this time."

"It's okay," I said, "Come on."
She slipped bare feet over the side of the bed, and we crept forward together. We paused before darting down the hall to my parents' bedroom. We knew whoever was at our front door couldn't see through the old quilt that hung over the glass, but we could see his shadow, and, in the hall, we felt dangerously exposed.

The pounding shook the house, reminding us again and again of his presence as we crawled up onto my parents' bed.
Harry and David were already there, crouching close to my dad, who was whispering something to Mom. She was nodding, but her top lip was pulled down over teeth that usually showed in a wide smile, and I could tell she was scared. She watched him pull that old, blue bathrobe over his white T-shirt and boxers as he stood. His black socks were silent as he made his way down the hall, but, after a moment, we heard the lock draw back, the pounding stop, and the door open.

"I'm scared," I whispered. Mom didn't say it would be okay. "Let's pray for Dad," she said. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed as hard as I could.

When Dad came back into the room, he sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped. No one said anything. It was a quiet full of questions. I watched Dad's face. Usually he was so brave. Usually he stood tall, and I knew he could fix all the problems of the world. It was just yesterday he had been gesturing excitedly as he told us about his "Castle of Hope" for the people who couldn't afford places for their families to live. Mom had watched his glass of milk nervously as his hands swooped across the table, but I could tell that she was proud of him.

Now, she looked worried, and he looked very tired. She put a hand on his arm, and he reached up to squeeze it, but his expression didn't change.

"Okay, kids," she said, "It's all right now. You can go back to bed."

I didn't want to leave our little huddle, so safe there in the rumpled blankets, but David scooted off the edge of the bed, and Harry followed.

"Come on," he said.
We went, but I couldn't sleep. I lay in bed and wondered. What had Dad said? What had happened to the man at the door? Would he be back?

I asked my dad many years later what had happened that night. He only shook his head, defeat in the wrinkles creasing his brow. "His name was Emanuel," he said, "God with us". That part I knew, and I waited for more, but nothing came. "But," I pressed, "what did you do?" "I didn't know what to do," he said, "I didn't know what to do."

Emanuel came back, often in the middle of the night, and, each time, Dad would plod down the hall as we huddled on the bed. Each night, he would return, discouraged.

Despite disappointments, he never stopped looking for the potential in those around him. He never stopped dreaming of new ways to encourage and to offer hope to the people in his world.

As a little girl, he gave me Mother Theresa and Mary Slessor and Amy Carmichael to admire. As a woman, I look at him and find another hero. His life taught me to care about the poor, the foreigners, and the fatherless. His excitement taught me to "dream big", and his perseverence taught me to love in the face of bleak prospects.

I look at him and cherish the gift he's given me.
The gift of his eyes.
The gift of Vision.

Faith

I heard a song on the radio. It's chorus went something like, "I'm going to love myself more than anyone else...I'm going to be a stronger woman." I smiled, wondering what the writer would think of my mother, a woman who loves everyone around her, often at her own expense.

I wondered if the artist would label my mother as weak. In a culture that cheers for women who stand up for their rights, my mother could easily be overlooked...dismissed even, as a diminutive, mindless house-wife. But I could never see her that way.

She is a woman willing to sacrifice all her own comforts in the service of God and others. She doesn't watch helplessly as her rights are taken from her but chooses to give them up out of love. And in the void, her faith sustains her.

The older I get, the more strength I see in her. Strength in the way she relates to others. Wisdom flowing from time spent pouring over Scripture. Renewed strength bubbling from her conversations with the Lord.

She walks through every day with a deep awareness that she is in "Her Father's world". And, though surrounded by trouble, she rests in the thought.

I admire her. She is anything but weak.

I remember her, lying on the bed, a pile of pillows propping up a knee so swolen I imagined if was full of water, like a balloon. If it got worse, I knew Dad would take her to the doctor to have it drained...again.

Mom's knees were always hurting and swelling. The doctors said she had arthritis, but I think it had more to do with stress. She hadn't wanted to move to Grant Park. She hadn't wanted to home-school all four of us. She was afraid. Afraid that she couldn't teach us to read. Afraid that, one night when Emanuel banged on our door, his desperation for a fix would drive him to hurt my dad...to hurt us.

But more than being fearful, my mother was loyal to my dad. It didn't mean that she wouldn't speak her mind. It didn't mean that she wouldn't pull him back to reality when his visions took on a hint of insanity (often brought on by a morning cup of coffee).

When, however, Dad had listened to her concerns and considered her cautions - when they had prayed together, and he still felt strongly about a certain step - she would offer him her full support. She would bear the discomfort of having to learn a new way of life. A life her family couldn't understand. A life of hand-me-downs, coupons, and miracles coming in the form of milk bottles delivered to our doorstep.

Of course, at age eight, I didn't understand all of this. I only knew that Mom's knee was hurting again, and that we needed to be as kind to each other and as helpful as possible.

Later, however, I asked her, "How did you do it?" I was imagining my own life with someone and wondering if I'd have the courage to trust the decisions of a man...even a beloved husband. I liked being in control of my life. What if he wanted to take me into a situation that I couldn't handle?

Mom smiled. "A wise husband listens to his wife's advice, but, at some point," she said, "you choose to honor him." I must have made a face, because she went on. "Your trust though," she said, "isn't in the man. You honor him but trust God."

Trust God - Mom's solution in almost every situation. Some might call it weakness. Some foolishness. Yet, in her fifty years, no bitterness has marred her joy, and, though her patience has been tried, her hope has not been disappointed.

Lately, my own hopes have been deferred, and my patience tried. I see how foolish it is to trust in any man, and I wonder if I can trust God. I moan as I wake up to aching knees. I try to think about my day, but a mental "uh oh," keeps interrupting my thoughts. "What if I've inherited Mom's bum knees?"

Then the thought hits me: "What a gift that would be!" In fact, if I could choose to inherit anything, I would ask for them above all else. Of course, I don't desire the pain that her physical knees have born, but I long for her faith. I long for the view she has of the world - the things she has seen and come to understand from the hours spent on her knees.

The greatest gift my mother gave me? It wasn't any of the sacrifices themselves. It was seeing the faith that sustained her through them. Giving me reason to believe that I too will be sustained through a faith found on my knees.

Striving

I peeked through the blinds. The girls were back. They were standing on the corner outside my window, hips cocked, cigarettes hanging lightly from slim, ringed fingers. I wondered why they just stood there so late at night.

Remembering this scene from so many years ago, I still find myself wondering. How old had they been? How did they come to stand on our corner every night? What things had carried them to that point in their lives? Were they somehow trapped? Did they know it, if they were?

As I contemplated those things, I suddenly found myself asking the same questions of myself. How did I come to this place? When had it all begun? Was I trapped? Where would I end up?

Looking back through my journals, I discovered that I had created my own street corner in highschool. It was then that I had first heard the lie. It was then that I had begun to believe that I wasn't innately valuable...that I had to market myself.

It was then that I began to strive.

I began sneaking surreptitious glances into mirrors and windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of something that would give me a renewed burst of confidence. Maybe if I were pretty enough, someone would want to know me…really know me. Perhaps my personality would bloom, and I’d no longer be the sweet but rather dull girl who always sat to the side, smiling at the enthusiasm of others.

I watched them all carefully. Some were beautiful, and I envied their ability to be completely secure despite the circumstances. Even after a hot, sweaty game of basketball, they looked radiant, with perfectly positioned roses on their cheeks and hair adorably disheveled. Others, though not quite fitting our society’s ideal, had something else - a spirit of laughter and fun, of deep intellect, or of passion - that made them irresistible.

I wasn't one of those girls. So I began to hide. I began to perform. And I continued to worry that, unless I could somehow make my facade more intriguing, then what was inside would never be discovered.

So began years of trying to be what everyone wanted me to be. Trying to be what the magazines and movies told me made a girl valuable.

So began my addiction...to the approval of others...to the ability to control their responses by the performance I was daily perfecting...by my appearance.

If I were honest with myself, I didn't really want to be approached on this corner of mine. I wanted someone to see through the marketing. I wanted someone to see me. But, at the same time, I was terrified of the prospect and so spent more and more time standing, hip cocked, smile in place.

One day, however, things began to change. My secret flaws were exposed. My family knew. My roommate knew. In all honesty, it was as if I too were discovering it for the first time. Realizing that, rather than being in control, I was trapped.

I was filled with guilt and shame and panic…panic, because I knew I had to do something, and I wasn't sure if I could. Would they all watch my flailing? Was every ounce of pride to be taken from me?

I knew they’d be supportive at first. They all cared about me. But what if I couldn't change? How long would it take before their compassion turned to frustration, and their frustration to contempt? I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't lose the few people that really cared. My mask may have slipped, but I was determined to pull it gracefully back into place.

I would conquer this! And if I couldn't, I'd find a new way to hide. I couldn't let the illusion crumble. I would strive to remain whole and beautiful...to be who they wanted me to be.

An Offering of Desperate Surrender

This year, I studied desperation, though it wasn't a course for which I registered. I've always imagined that, no matter how bad things get, given time, I can handle them. My eating disorder proved difficult, but, in the end, hadn't I managed to get back on track?

A relapse this spring, however, sent me spiraling into depression and doubt, and I began to realize, for the first time, that I couldn't, in fact, handle it. The lesson, despite the wreck it made of my pride, turned out to be an unexpected gift. And it all began one afternoon with an unexpected visit.

Mom leaned back in the rocker and studied my face. I dropped my eyes to the painting in front of me and smudged a blob of blue across the horizon.

“I wish I knew what you were thinking,” she said.
I looked up and stared at her, not quite sure how to respond. How could I tell her that her little girl was failing…again.

“I tell you the important stuff,” I said. I laughed and let my eyes fall back to the palette. “There’s just not that much going on right now.”

She didn’t say anything but looked at me. I knew what I’d see if I looked up. Pale blue eyes, searching. Eyebrows slightly knit. How did she always know? I let my eyes connect with hers for a moment before sending them out towards the sky.

“I guess I’m just scared of the future,” I said. At least I could give her that. She could lavish me with reassurance and go home feeling better. And I…I’d be her happy daughter again. The darker parts of me - the ones she discovered last year…the ones supposedly healed – would be safely hidden away. And life would go on.

She stared at me. “You know,” she said, “Mothers love their daughters no matter what.” She paused. “I can’t explain it. You don’t have to be fixed for me. I’ll always want you…just as you are.”

I nodded, and, though nothing else was said, the silence felt good.

For the first time, I felt like I didn't have to hide. She saw me. She loved me. Part of me felt bruised. It hurt that I couldn't be perfect for her. It hurt that she knew. But, at the same time, something in her words set me free...free from the trap I was failing to escape on my own.

For the first time, I let myself admit that I was desperate. Let myself admit that I needed others around me...even in my undignified moments. It wasn't easy. It still isn't easy. I want to cling to the illusion I worked so hard to create. I grieve its loss and wonder if this is what it means to be "poor in spirit".

I think, in a small way, I now understand what Emanuel must have felt all those nights as he pounded on our door. Like everything that matters is on the other side. Like life itself can't go on unless the door is opened.

The gift of desperation?
Surrendering to be seen.
Finding the boldness to pound.

It's funny. I thought I'd already knocked. I thought the proverbial door had already been opened to me. But perhaps it was only unlocked. Perhaps I had never bothered to push it open. As I began to pound, however, I fell through into a grace and strength I didn't know existed. Into a tangible love that stirred in me, more than ever before, the desire to be the pleasing aroma for which I was named.

It's an expectation I've been growing into ever since I was little. Even then, Dad would tell me about myrrh - bitter, but releasing sweetness when crushed. He told me I was created to be a "beautiful fragrance" in the world.

I believed him but always wondered what it meant. I never imagined this...this tearing exposure.

Nevertheless, in an amazing paradox, recognizing my brokenness is allowing me to reclaim my value. It's not the perfect facade I held up for others to see. It's just me...the one my Father had in mind before the tiniest part of me was formed.

And I offer myself, marred as I am, back to Him.
I offer myself to others - not the saint I'd like to be, but real...touchable...no longer aloof.

Vulnerably available.

Thanks be to God, who leads us in triumphal procession...
Redeeming the crushed in a beautiful fragrance.

Trust

I went walking with a friend today and told him of my favorite tree – gnarled, old, beautiful knots and twists, wrapped in tangles of green not its own. As I described it, he shook his head.
"Sounds like mistletoe," he said, "It must be dying."
“Dying!" I cried, "But it looks so alive!"
“The mistletoe lives off the life of the tree,” he said, “It’s a parasite.”

On my way home, I stopped and stared at the tree, wondering what it would look like stripped of the vibrant, dripping clumps that would eventually cause its death. I sighed.
Why does so much of life's beauty get snarled in sorrow?
Life and death.
Sadness and joy.
Curling tendrils intertwining until you can’t quite distinguish one from the other.

It depressed me at first, but then I realized that, despite the inevitable, the whole, connected process is fascinatingly beautiful. Death, of course, will come. Disappointments and loss are part of life. Yet woven through moments of pain are wisps of fresh, winding hope that bind us to the beauty of living…of, in our hurt, giving of what remains.

Grammie was like that.
I often wonder how she had the courage to lie there, day after long day, in the nursing home. How did she face the months and weeks knowing that she wasn't getting stronger? How did she not despair knowing that she'd never again be able to do all the things she'd spent a lifetime learning to love? How did she manage to wake up every morning when she could no longer imagine or pursue a tangible purpose?
Yet, despite any sense of diminishing physical presence in this world, her last months and days were marked by an extravagant giving of all that she had left.

I remember walking into her room, knowing that she was in pain, unsure of how to act, but quickly being put at ease by the warmth of her smile and the excitement that leapt into her eyes as I began to tell her about my week, my students, my writing. Hours would pass, and I’d forget that her body ached. I’d forget that her hearing aid made listening uncomfortable. Her expression told me only that she was glad I had come, and, after a few moments with her, it was hard to believe anything else.

She could have made a final grasp for that ever elusive Holy Grail of our insatiable longing to be understood. She could have tried to let me share her feelings of loss. Instead, she spent her energy making me feel like the most important person in the world. She poured her last bits of life into everyone who came into her room. Eventually, her physical body broke down, but her life still sustains those who knew and remember her.

She was one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever known. There was a lovely softness in her face – a gentle contentedness that could only be explained by a deep and abiding hope. Hope that wound through broken places and disappointments. Hope that held her close to the ones who disappointed her. Hope that convinced her of the One who never disappoints. Assured her of the life within that can't be snuffed out.
Hope.
Beautiful, life-giving hope that enabled her to give without reserve, without fear of loss, because what was most precious to her existed outside the law of subtraction.

She didn’t lose anything in sickness or in death, because she had the One thing that mattered. She was secure in her identity.
She didn't cling to her moments of success as a hostess, a wife, a mother, a scholar. She knew herself instead as one who was made to gaze at the unending beauty of her Beloved…as one in whom He forever delights.

With that hope, nothing could steal her joy.
She was rooted in a love that she let overflow without worrying about it ever being returned. A love that nourished her with hope and adorned her with a compelling beauty that defied infirmity.

Mary Bell.
Beautiful fragrance.
I proudly bear her name
and treasure her secret in my heart.

Her secret? Trust.

Trust that there is value in the tangles of life
and purpose beyond what I can see.

Trust that I can join her
saying with confidence,
“Let it be to me according to Thy word.”

Trust that I am free to give,
Sharing my life with extravagance,
Hope twisting
through life and death,
things present and things to come,
Resting in the assurance
that nothing can separate me
from the One thing that matters.

I am His.
He is mine.
What, then, is there to fear?