Letting Go

I knew a young lady once.  Beautiful blue eyes and a shy smile shielding a suffering soul.  I can close my eyes and see her and feel my throat close tight and my heart go out to her.  I want to tell her to hold on because all things have their season.  I would have bet it wasn't possible to have your heart that broken and still be walking.  But she did it, somehow.  She had her sister.  She was broken and battered but she had her sister.

I speak of course of the girl I once was.  I've made no secret about the abuse I grew up with.  What I don't believe I've said a lot about to more than those closest to me is how relentless and heart renting my life had been up to that point.  How often I had attempted suicide.  How little hope I held for any future.  How deplete of affection, love, warmth, acceptance my daily existence was.  Instead, I was being torn down and beaten and I had nothing left to give.  The act of removing my sister, destroyed the last I thought I had to hold onto.  And I found myself being moved to live with my mother and her roommate, Sue.

My sister and I, of course, had nothing nice to say about Sue.  She was that horrid woman that encouraged my mom to leave my dad.  (Now, in fairness, that was a friend giving great advice, but being the child left behind with a madman had created a little resentment).  So, I was very unhappy about the prospect of living with her.  I had a CHIP on my shoulder.  Oh yea.

I was also in college.  Hostile.  And once in a safe environment.... I began to unravel.  I couldn't sleep.  I no longer could eat.  I shifted into a pattern of anorexia.  I was an emotional time bomb and a complete wreck.  I was prickly and incredibly difficult to get close to and to also to love.

And yet.  Sue held her heart open for me.  She loved me.  It was such a gentle invitation to be held in her love.  She didn't coat me with words of love.  She spent time with me.  She watched TV with me.  She talked to me.  She set me straight and taught me boundaries.  And one day she gave me a ring.  It was gorgeous.  A lindey star sapphire diamond ring.  I didn't' think it was real at first.  But she had me try it on and she told me about her daughter.  She'd had a daughter that was stillborn around 17 years before that.  My age.  Sue said that she'd always had difficulty finding anything that would ever fill that void, but that she'd realized I was the daughter of her heart.  In one instance, she honored the truth of our bond.

She also knew that I needed reminders of the precious being I am.  And she thought if I could remember, every time I saw the ring, that I was more precious than those stones, it might help.  She quit being Sue and she became the Mama Sue that has been the cornerstone of my foundation.

It always sounds a little dramatic when I say this, but I am offering a literal truth.  I would not be here today if Sue had not been there back then.  She gave birth to the spirit in me that has plodded forward and has been repairing all of the things that are broken.

She has a wicked funny laugh.  I'm sure that by now she's forgiven me for laughing at her as she cried over Susan giving birth in the show "Eight is enough".  I remember watching tennis matches on TV just to be in the same room with Sue.  (You have no idea how much that speaks to my love of her both back then and the fact that I would do the same today speaks to my love of her now).

Sue is the staunch advocate that insisted I begin therapy to address the issues of the abuse.  She is the feisty woman that insisted I address the eating issues.  She is the mother that forced me to be responsible to bills.  She is the voice in my head that reminds me that I can do this.

I think I may be the early model that broke Sue in (Probably the other way around to be sure).... But Sue went on to become a court appointed advocate for children.  She has nurtured and fostered the hopes and hearts of more children than you can imagine.  She's changed lives and has created a better world in the expansive space of her love.

My friend, Rod keeps talking about what he sees as my courage.  Those seeds were planted by one Sue Abbey.  Watered by her.  Held vigil by her.  I courageously seek the truth and strip away the wounded pieces of me because I am held in love by a ferocious Mama Lion and I can do no less than honor this life of mine.  For many, many years I plugged away at growing and letting go of the things that were not serving me so that she would be pleased.  In an effortless grace, she helped me shift things so that I was growing because I wanted to.  I needed to.  And I had hope for the outcome.

I know that her time here is almost up.  I believe I wrote something recently about avoiding that emotional understanding.  It has hit home and I find myself grieving.

I wish I could say that it was simple and pretty and honorable.  It hasn't been.  I have found myself curled into a fetal position in the middle of the night, unable to distinguish between this moment and the heart shattering pain of a seventeen year old.  I have become afraid that all things I hold so dear to me are going to leave.  I have felt so unlovable.  I feel like I am being hit from all sides and I hear rejection - both real and perceived - in many places.

In talking to my sister last night, I said that.  And she said, "That is not what she has taught you".  And it isn't.  Sue taught love.  Plain and simple.  She taught love.

I crave tenderness and a balm to this pain.  I find myself needing reassurance that I am loved.  And the simple fact is, this is grief and it is just going to hurt.  And instead of fighting it, I need to surrender and allow it to render me hollow.  Someone else asked me what I have left undone with Sue.  What needs to be said?

I can celebrate with honesty that the answer is nothing.  I have said and honored and held this sacred bond.  I am certain of and wrapped in the incredible love of my Mama Sue.  There is nothing else that needs to be said.

Now all that needs to be done is my surrender.  A walk through the pain.  An acceptance.  An honoring.  I will grieve.