Held in the Mire

I looked Sheryl in the eye, face to face with her weather-worn skin, and with despair dripping from my voice I confessed, “I can’t do this. I can’t do motherhood. This is too hard.”

She stroked my hair and put her palms to my cheeks. I know. I know. But you can do this. We’re praying for you.

Tension started to leave my body at her touch, my shoulders visibly relaxed just a bit. I received her comfort, and for a moment I didn’t have to be composed or strong or any of the other impossible qualities we women manage to summon up in the cobwebbed corners of our days. Sheryl put her arms around me, and I allowed myself to be nurtured.

There are few women in this world (besides my own mama) from whom I have felt such maternal love.

Sheryl has a prison record. She has a sordid past and addictions that insist on following her like a shadow. She loves Jesus, but isn’t one of those “saved, sealed, delivered” stories we like so much to hear. Life is far messier than that for Sheryl, and I get it. Boy, do I get it. What I love about the God-Man is that He doesn’t care as much about erasing our broken places as He does about putting skin on and sitting down in the shards with us.

I used to run wall to wall, trapped in a box that rote Christianity had built for me — a box in which there were the “good” people and, well, everyone else. I loved people from there inside that box, but I could never bleed with them. I believed that they belonged to me, but I could never understand how I belonged to them.

So in His sweet, sweet mercy He broke me.

My story of motherhood is one of brokenness. I have been trampled down and beaten up and, oh, glory be to the One who comes to sit beside me in my mess. Finally, I am the poor in spirit. Finally, I get to really see the kingdom of God — a kingdom where a woman like Sheryl holds up the arms of a woman like me, because we are women just like each other.

I am weary of a church in polished shoes. I have no place there.

Give me the church with bare feet caked in mud, the church with a prison record, the church who knows she’s a wreck but extends arms wide to hold me anyway. I will be stilled by her touch.

Once, after a service, a well-meaning woman in freshly ironed trousers patted Sheryl on the shoulder and said, “You’re welcome in church any time!” Without missing a beat, Sheryl brightened and in her raspy smoker’s voice enthusiastically responded, “So are you!”

We are all welcome here. We all have something that the other needs — today, right here and now.

Not next week when we’re not so depressed, not after 12 months of sobriety, not after we stop yelling at our kids. We need each other today. Let us recognize the gifts that we have within us to give and let us believe that every human being we meet has something to offer us, too. Let us believe Paul when he says, “we belong to each other.” {Romans 12:5}

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Related: Celebrate each person just the way they are by hanging this hope-filled pennant that says: Home is where you are welcome, just the way you are!