A Dirty Life

Mar 1, 2015 | People

[title subtitle=”words and images: Jessica Sowards”][/title]

Once upon a time, my life looked very neat. I had it together as a mom, was a housewife to a traveling husband, went to church on Sunday and Bible group on Wednesday. I made lots of crafts and posted photos of them online. My kitchen was full of organic food. I made fruit roll-ups and cheese crackers from scratch so my two sons would never have to eat a snack from a box.  I started a book club. It was orderly. Impressive. Clean.

But it was a lie. I spent years on the brink of a breakdown. Anxiety was like a cloak, depression was my constant companion. I lived in despair.

I constantly told my husband he was failing. I sang words in church that never broke the surface of my heart. At night I would scream at my three-year-old to go to sleep. He would lie down crying with organic, from-scratch snacks in his belly and I would sit in the hallway outside his door, hating myself for the person I really was.

When my broken marriage became a very public divorce, I ran a thousand miles a minute from my role as a good girl. It came as quite a shock to those who knew me. “I thought you were so happy,” they said. And words failed me. I couldn’t describe the struggle driving me to turn it all upside down. I was doing everything in my power to pursue happiness, constantly smoothing the surface on a good looking life, while the innermost part of me was a hot mess, void of joy. Even the joy I found in my children was so often stifled by guilt. I felt like I was suffocating, face down in mud.

It was then, when my life was exposed and the tangled mess of my truth came out, that the most beautiful thing happened. Grace.

I stepped onto the road to recovery. No, not from drugs or alcohol or anything you would think when you hear “recovery.” I stepped onto the path of a recovering good girl. I began to learn a way of life that embraces the imperfect and leans heavily on God’s perfect grace.

Remarriage has been good to me. In Jeremiah, I found someone as deeply damaged as myself. We were honest with each other, set realistic expectations and promised to love God and consider Him in how we loved each other.

Building a family from the broken pieces of past attempts is never tidy. The more time that passes though, the more love grows and peace prevails. This month we will welcome our third child together, bringing our total count of kids to six. His daughter, my two older sons, and the three sons we have from our marriage.

Five boys and a visiting girl on a little farm in rural Arkansas. I don’t need to say another word to impress upon you how literally filthy our life is sometimes. The pile of Muck® boots in the garage, the muddy coveralls that somehow always find themselves thrown across a basket of clean laundry, and the poop. My goodness, there is so much poop.

I think of the way I used to judge the job I was doing as a woman by how behind I was on the laundry or by how elaborately themed the boys’ birthday parties were. Now, through a group effort and a lower standard, we keep a house I’d be happy to show a stranger on a five minute notice. However, I certainly don’t find an ounce of my identity in the pile of clothes in my laundry room or the smudges on the mirror or the fact that birthday parties, now that there are so many to do every year, have evolved into more down-home affairs.

Sure, I’ve scolded my boys (and husband) more than a few times to check their shoes at the door. Even still, after the next rain, I will undoubtedly find a trail of footprints to the bathroom and back outside again. Will I remind them about muddy shoes in the house? Probably. Will I tell them to stop playing in the rain? Never. There is always balance, and I never want to spare memories to avoid messes.

Literal dirt aside, I’ve also learned just how nasty life can be.

Several weeks ago, we arrived home one evening after a few quick errands to find that our newly adopted German Shepherd had dug under the fence to the chicken yard. We pulled in the driveway mid-massacre. Jeremiah, who had spent several months building the fence, the coop, and raising birds from chicks, flew from the van before it had even stopped rolling. The boys, all of them in the back of the van, started to cry as they realized what was happening.

It’s the kind of crushing story every homesteader has to tell. Thirty-two birds were killed in less than an hour. After the feathers settled and the bodies were cleared from the yard, we went to bed at nine o’clock and barely spoke. I prayed all night, begging God that Jeremiah wouldn’t give up, that he’d have the heart to rebuild even after such a setback.

The next morning, as he came back inside from checking on our battered and shaken survivors in the coop, he leaned against the doorway to the kitchen and said, “This is a lesson that will make me better in ministry, marriage and fatherhood. When God gives you a flock to take care of, you can’t be careless. Because sinners act like sinners and dogs act like dogs. I hadn’t taught him any better and I gave him the chance. A lot of damage can happen in a short while of carelessness.”

It was ugly, but I felt so proud of him in that moment. For even though he was greatly disappointed, he stood there in the hall, feathers stuck to his boots, and wiped the mud off of a bright, shining lesson.

Opening our eyes to the fact that life’s gems usually present themselves covered in hard work and imperfection has changed us for the better. When you stop looking for the neatest avenue to happiness and start hacking your way through the most worthwhile path, it is infinitely rewarding. The best things in our life are those which are the most unusual, dinged up things that don’t have a great explanation.

For example, my ex-husband and his wife are now some of our closest friends. How? God. It’s the only possible way it can be explained. We do life together, raise kids together, go to church together, have family dinners and lean into each other in times of need. When people ask us how we’re able to be friends when there was so much baggage, I just remind them, God doesn’t need a blank canvas to make a beautiful thing. In fact, I’m learning that He rather likes carving something lovely out of our messes. All we have to do is let Him.

I’m not the woman I was once, back when I had it together.  I run late, miss play group, lose my keys weekly, and buy convenience foods for the snack box. The idea of a book club is laughable. But I read my Bible every day. I talk to God and I don’t cry at night. I no longer have a problem saying, “I’m not good at that,” or, “I messed up.”

I lose my patience with my kids and husband sometimes, but instead of being quick to berate myself, I apologize to them. Genuinely. So they have learned that I’m just a person. They give me grace and put their faith in Jesus instead of me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My ineptitudes were always there. Embracing them has only made me better. My weaknesses are where God shines most brightly. My flaws are the best tools I have to reach people. Why would I ever want to trade those in for some false image of control?

I lead a raw and real life. I live it openly, unapologetically. Because mine may be a very dirty life, but it’s the most beautiful mess I’ve ever known.

Do South Magazine

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