How many times have I seen inscribed on some pretty coffee mug or piece of wall art, the simplistic little saying, "Home is where the heart is"? It is so neat, so pat, and so it is incomplete.
I was walking leisurely through the highest hill meadow, picking up my feet in the tall grass, enjoying the thrills of my youngest sons, 9 and 5, as they ran ahead, into the sun and breeze. Tears welled up, as I watched them spread their arms, and jump and roll, spring up to climb on some downed logs, find a fortress of goldenrod growing among and around a group of weathered log slices. "This is what I want for my children, Lord, for all of them. I want them in free air, at peace, living wide open, between their schooling and their lighter animal chores, in an atmosphere where all is encouragement rather than disparagement. I want them in a home where the heart of God is held up, not slashed and slandered.
Five minutes later, Landon asked, "Are we ever going to go home?" We had paused for a rest on the downward trek, and I turned to him so that he knew he had my full attention. "No, baby, this is home for now." His porcelain face was like a slideshow in the westering sun; I watched several thought frames passing behind his eyes, before he said, not so much in argument as in probing for the bedrock, "Sure it's your home, but it isn't my home." There, he had said it, and he was hoping he hadn't said the wrong thing. Very quietly and clearly I told him, "No, honey. This place is not my home, either. But it is where I can feel safe, and start to heal in my heart, and to feed my soul again. Until we can build a new and godly home somewhere else, this is home for you and me and the rest of the children, when they come."
We went on a bit farther, adding to the wildflower bouquet in my hand. Landon shouldered his curved piece of peeled bark, a good two and a half feet long, which he envisions as a canoe for his stuffed polar bear. The next segment of deeper talk started out, "I just don't want to lose my calf. And Owen doesn't want to lose his red-and-whites." I nodded. "I know, honey, and Hannah wants to stay at the farm as long as there is a farm to maintain, because it is the home she remembers. But there is something in what you are saying, that we need to look at. You have been truly worrying, over and over, about the other children seeming to be choosing Daddy instead of Mama. But notice, we are talking about things that are keeping your brother and sisters there. Whatever they have said, they are there for the things they love. When I brought you and Jonathan here, it was because I knew that I love the six of you, more than things."
Landon had been telling me, before I fled the home with him and his little brother in tow, "I feel like I'm going to fly apart." I was in nightly agony for days, not sleeping as I strove to look coldly and clinically at the effects of my husband's hostility towards me, on my children. Drop a stone into the pool, and all the ducks catch the wave, no matter how they paddle. Landon had become so hyper-sensitive to his older brother's teasing, that he was acting out physically towards him, which always brought a nasty threat of reprisal in kind. He took to humming some time ago, not the normal singing he had always done, but the emotional 'white noise' designed to create an atmosphere of quiet in the midst of all the tension. No one else seemed to understand that he wasn't trying to just annoy everyone with his repetitive little melodies; he really was becoming so good at putting up that screen around his awareness, that he was behaving rudely by resuming almost as soon as he was asked to stop.
My son Jonathan, 5 going on 6, was putting his fingers into his ears every time Daddy started in on Mama, and reverting to a "terrible two" stage he had never gone through. The finger sucking became worse where he had previously been getting away from it; and he couldn't let me out of his sight anymore, after the other children had left for evening barn chores, without calling out at 10 minutes intervals, to see that I was still there. Where he had been fine with me leaving him at his drawing or his little youtube cartoon allowance, to just slip out for chicken chores, now he was crying at the mention of me going out the door without him.
*******************************************************************************
When the home stops feeling safe, the heart is out of place, and it craves another, a real home. Going back home to my parents isn't home, ultimately, but it is a halfway house for now, until we can get things sorted out. I wrote the above back in early October; now in the early days of January, in the depths of a cold weather spell, it is also taking a lot to keep my own heart fires burning. There is certainly enough to do, and to occupy my thoughts and energies, with providing for the little boys through the rest of the school year, and anticipating the divorce trial in the Spring. I want an escape all the time, I want to go home. But home, anymore, where my heart can rest, isn't there. The one I had built was contaminated, and diverted from how God wants a home to be. The last several years, my heart hadn't been there, either. I had been still trying to live in the dream that had died. The worst of this waiting period, is that four of my children are still back there in the debris of a broken home, pretending that now it is all fine, living that dead dream, in their own turn.
Landon and Jonathan and I, at least, have been designing our new home. I don't mean we are drawing blueprints on paper and scouting physical building sites. I do have an escape therapy technique of trolling realty websites, looking for the perfect combination of farmhouse, small barn for my animals, and some small acreage for grazing and a vegetable garden. But what we are laying out in the meantime, is the blueprint for how we will live in the new home where God is honored and served.
First, they have been having to learn that all those things Mama ever tried to get them to do, are valid and good and true. From personal cleanliness routines to everyday polite manners, they are beginning to take me seriously, instead of hearing their daddy put me down for every bit of instruction I attempt. When I explain that something on television is inappropriate, they now know that means that it is inappropriate for all of us, me included. I do not require one standard of them while keeping a laxer one for myself.
Second, the focus of our lives is on what we are putting into our daily lives. Instead of daddy letting them watch whatever comes on the t.v. or letting them play hours of a video game as long as they don't bother him in his recliner, the boys are being retrained to fill their non-schoolbook time with more books, with crafts that they always enjoy but couldn't do enough of, with outdoor play at this homestead where we don't have to worry so much about the proximity of the road, and with faith-building content in their reading or drawing or conversation. The music they now listen to is beautiful and uplifting and exciting and fashionable, without being detrimental. We have a new church and church family, the boys look forward to weekly youth group meetings and participate well in the activities there. We have been able to take more fun trips to places we couldn't when everything had to revolve around being back for the late-afternoon-to-nighttime chores in the barn.
I tried, too late, to convince my older children that home is the people, not the place. Yes, I feel the deep need for a dwelling place, to once again have comfortable and comforting surroundings for my family. I want a place to belong. Before we get to the new home, however, we are learning to live unhindered with each other, and to be at home without the conflict and rancor that so soured and ultimately destroyed the old one.
No comments:
Post a Comment