Cross-stitch Chaos

Sometimes in life, things happen and I’m just not sure why.

I shouldn’t have done it, but I called my mother today.  It had been a couple of weeks, and I just wanted to talk to my mom.  The conversation lasted exactly 7 minutes, 7 seconds.  That was just long enough for my mother to tell me that she and my aunt are leaving on Friday to come down to Palm Springs for a week (but not see me while they’re here - which is why i moved west in the first place, to be nearer to her).  She told me she hasn’t cashed the last four checks I’ve sent her (one a month) because she hasn’t gotten around to going to the bank.  She said she’s bringing her cell phone with her to Palm Springs so that she can call my Gramma every day (but won’t talk to me for months at a time).  What she didn’t mention is the trip to visit me in four weeks that she’s been talking about for months, but has taken zero action on.

I know my mother is sick, but it still hurts to not have a mom.  It hurts to suspect that she’s only there for me in emergencies, because she knows she’s not there any other time.  My mom can love me conditionally.  She can love me when I’m right there – practically under her – ready to be loved when she wants to give it.  But if I want to live my life…well, then, I’m out of sight out of mind.

My father hasn’t had a conversation with me since Father’s day, when he texted, just like last year.  Texting provides me the opportunity to wish him a happy Father’s Day and him the opportunity to make comments designed to make me feel guilty for his absentee-ism my entire life.  When I’m not getting text message guilt trips, I can rely on what I call “text spam” from him.  Forwarded images of glittery hearts, or corny jokes.  But never anything direct or of substance.

I, am an orphan.

I’ve been telling myself all day that there are reasons for this abandoned feeling I struggle with.  I know God intends to use this for His glory.  He planned everything about me and about my life.  He placed every freckle I have exactly where it’s at.  He made my hair curl and He put that “dimple” on my butt.  He made my father black and my mother white on purpose and he made me an only child for a reason.  I know all these things as fact.  But what I don’t know, is why He made my mother sick and my father absent so that I would be all alone.

Years ago, someone used a cross stitch design to illustrate to me our lives with Christ.  The front was a cute little design, with neat, tight stitches.  “This is what God sees when He looks at our lives.”  She’d said, “Every stitch in that exact place, for a reason.  One stitch alone seems unimportant, but together they make something beautiful.  Any one thing about our lives might seem random by itself, but it’s meant to come together for a reason.”  Then she turned over the little piece of fabric, to reveal the chaos of thread crisscrossing and knotted and overlapping, tangled together, making altogether no sense…“meanwhile, this is what we see.” She said and laughed.

I am mixed for a reason and I am an only child for a reason.  I have the job I do for a reason and I am here in California at this very moment for a reason…and I have the parents I do, for a reason.  There are parts of my life that definitely feel like the chaos of the reverse side of a cross stitch pattern.  I hope that someday, God will show me the design He’s making with me.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." ~Jeremiah 29:11-13

Love y’all,
~M~