A Girl and a Mustard Seed

She knows she isn’t great at many things, but good enough at most things. After countless trial and error attempts at peanut butter cookies, she felt the last batch would earn her mother’s stamp of approval.

She too wanted to be a mother. Just as she knew after earning a high school diploma she would earn some sort of degree, she would also be a mom. What she didn’t know was how it would all happen. She never admitted her pining for motherhood until she was thirteen. Written in an end-of-the-year-memory book only she would be interested in reading, she detailed a “happy life.” She wrote about how she wanted to settle down, marry a nice man, and raise children. Any evidence of these admissions was hastily lost by the use of a white-out pen upon the extreme embarrassment she felt as school mates read aloud from her book. How peculiar of a just-turned-teen to say such things. She’s an odd duck. And a little chubby.

The baby fat followed her after college graduation until she discovered anorexic and bulimic tendencies. She was careful enough to never venture too far into the practice to elicit a clinical diagnosis. Safety came first, even in dangerous and reckless behaviors. This decade was spent as directionless mess of angst, alcohol, and various prescriptions she hoped might bring a newfound high to her life. The men in her life were obnoxiously labeled with their ingredients and side effects listed. It was a matter of simply choosing what side effect was going to be acceptable: misanthropy, physical abuse, emotional abuse, apathy, and infidelity. She picked her poison again and again until she took them all. The only thing that might give her life meaning and direction was something a doctor couldn’t write a prescription for.

Exhaustion became the catalyst for her most successful change. The failed romantic relationships, endless confrontations and verbal abuse from the mouths of strangers as well as those who said they loved her, the pressure of sustaining her position knowing all too well the expectation was to climb the corporate ladder, was all an endless upward battle in her little world. She was fighting hard to maintain a life she did not want.

She had not stepped into God’s house in years. His whispers of guidance she ignored for her own voice and other’s led her to the state of disarray that was her life. She remembered the parable of the mustard seed. She would have thrown her hands up in surrender as she cried if they were not already pulling at her long brown hair as she rocked on the floor of her apartment that she considered an overpriced carpeted shoebox. She admitted to her mistakes and that she did not know the answers, nor the way. Despite the green thumb she failed to inherit from either parent, she decided to plant her prayer in Him and vowed to garden with what little faith, hope, and love that remained in her that she might see better days.

And her garden did grow. In fact, it blossomed beautifully.

To others their meeting happened by chance, but as the months of blissful romance passed, she was quick to acknowledge their individual prayers were answered upon their meeting. Upon their first introduction, she thought him a harmless and kind man that had been protected from most of the world’s truths. He seemed to meander along in this world unscathed by the true nature of people. What hurt, if any, he had experienced was not apparent. He listened intently and spoke with an unassuming certainty. He was unbroken; or perhaps once broken but put back together stronger. He was a small town golden boy with a gold heart and hazel eyes. She told him her most protected thoughts on their first date. Honesty poured out effortlessly, and it wasn’t because of the drinks he obliged her. The knots and nauseousness from the anxieties she kept down in the pit of her stomach for a later showdown with a pen and paper seemed to settle while in his company. She had admitted to him that she wanted someone to truly know her. To her the colloquialism, “To know you, is to love you” seemed to maintain some truth. And know her he did. He gave her something she never had before. It was a safe space to be her most authentic self; unabridged and shamelessly her self. She loved him and he loved her.

He helped her move from the city to live with her parents in the small town ten miles from his home. While there she went back to school to pursue one of the eight degrees choices she switched while at university. Nursing was the perfect career change. She found happiness in helping and caring for others than herself. Her father thought so too as he rarely changed his mind. Her mother’s support was unwavering despite her opinion that her daughter’s delicate emotional nature would no doubt create bonds that would inevitably end either by untimely death or circumstance and result in sending her daughter into a tailspin. The only student with noticeable gray hair in a small community class demonstrated an impressive amount of academic dedication that would have behooved her instead of the dedication for collegiate parties years ago. She excelled. The strength and confidence that grew while in the comfort of her parents’ home and in his heart led her back to His house where she shed tears while singing the songs of praise she used to sing in the church choir as a girl.

Around a year after their meeting, the baby fat returned, but with a more literal meaning. Blissfully ignorant and also critically aware of the extra pounds she gained after her first child, she considered it an acceptable nuisance and a fair price to pay based on her greatest fear. She had long feared her body was not capable of what her biology deemed it could. Prior to her golden boy now turned husband, having a child didn’t seem in the cards for her. Too much time had passed, and thirty was a hop and a skip away. She would never underestimate old wives’ tales, and perhaps she ran a broom over her foot one too many times. She would never marry. She would never have children.

After the years of work she put in suppressing her desires and hiding the envy she harbored against the countless ungrateful, unsuspecting, and unplanned mothers, she was finally able to let it all go. Her repaired heart burst the moment she knew she would soon join the grateful and ungrateful in motherhood.

The years of drama and turmoil she drew on her wrist and in her sketchbook left her with only scars and a dream for what most would consider a boring, simple and mediocre life: a husband that could love her, a child to raise together, food to cook, and a home to clean. She stood barefoot by the kitchen sink peeling off the yellow rubber gloves with the freshly baked scent of cookies wafting in her nose. Her tears scattered the glimmering iridescence the diamonds on her finger as she gazed at its beauty. She would never escape the tears she thought as they rolled down her flushed cheeks. She realized she had all she prayed for and everything she only dreamed of. She never finished the nursing degree, or the master’s degree she was so close to completing, but she had everything she wanted which was more than enough. Her husband’s words rang in her ears as he wrote his mantra on her heart, “And the best is yet to come.”

She takes solace in the space where He has allowed her better days and most importantly, peace; in her little bubble with cleaning supplies, cookies and her greatest love, her family.