goodbye. hello. (a year's review)

I am a few days late on my yearend review.  And that may be all you need to know about 2012.  Our family of five became a family of six.  Don’t be thrown, I still count my first and why wouldn’t I.  This was a year of letting go.

A year’s distance further down the road of saying goodbye to so many things I at one time thought I wanted or needed or needed to want.  I can’t remember much about a recent discussion with a friend, but I remember him throwing this out and it sticking inside my ears and ringing therein for quite some time.  He unknowingly managed to sum up my year better than I had been able:

We’ve been just watching idols fall one after another.

And there it is folks.  Shattering pieces of things I valued, right up until they were gone.  But as they lay in their remnants, only then could I see the hollow nature that each one possessed.  Cheap imitations all of them- prostitutes not lovers.

• The perfect family.
• My own goodness.
• All appearances.
• The perceived perfection of my marriage.
• My parenting skills.
• Ability to be involved in the lives of others.

When you choose to enter into dark places and partake in the hurt of others.  You do not walk away unscathed.  You realize many of the fears that you hoped would be silly in hindsight.

We knew that bringing Lena into our family would require quite a bit of time for transition if not a lifetime of such.  And we were right.  Her disability.  Her institutionalism.  Our inadequacy.  It’s aggregates into a big messy weight of reality.  And we’re not always good at reality.

It has been hard, hard, hard as we have been left unable to rely on any of the things we are used to being propped up on.  Ourselves are not sufficient and we prove it over and over each time we default back to what we knew or the way we used to operate.  It’s a new world and we’re fumbling, bumbling idiots attempting to raise these 3 in ways we are incapable of doing.

BUT.

I would not take back those broken idols if offered whole to me.  I cannot.  They have been exposed in their demise; I have been exposed in their undoing.  The evil I only attribute to others, I have seen in myself.  I am a weak and awful person on my own.  Selfish, prideful and prone to jump in and help with the demolition of me.

This last year has afforded a sober look at my weakness.  Not in some huge sin that I got caught in.  Rather, just through a long, honest look in the mirror.  Coming face to face with the vulnerability of another often reveals our own vulnerability- the very thing that we have, up till now, labored to bury and forget.

I would like to think that this year I have begun to trade confidence for compassion, knowledge with wisdom, and plans of action with love.  In this season my children are my constant teachers.  I didn’t always like my teachers growing up and I don’t always now.  But the good ones I learned from.  And these are good ones.

And so to review this year:

• I am a heap of dung.
• We are hard-wired to run from hard realities, and yet these make us more of who we ultimately want to be.
• Kids can be hard- disability or not.
• When our own vulnerability comes into view, we see things as they truly are.
• Ginny will be a saint when (and if) you get to heaven.
• The pain of the world is an invitation to the life you desire not a hurdle to the life you desire.
• When life is wild and sleep is rare, I eat more chips and bad stuff.

Okay, that was only the review….I hope to post our annual “Mooney best of” list as well as a look forward at the year to come.  But if 2012 has it’s way, I wouldn’t hold your breath for either of those to actually show up.

Don’t be cynical.  You can change.  I can change.  We can make it.