The Frame, pt. 2

I am framed in insecurity today. My pain is a struggle. I finished writing “The Frame” and after posting it to my blog, I got dressed in something least beautiful, and ate breakfast. As I spooned the cereal into my mouth and pondered what I had just written, I could still hear tender words being spoken to me.

Tears came readily to my eyes as I tried to form in my mind a picture of my framed beauty, but all I could see was a picture of a filthy, muddy little girl. Of a naked waif. Of a shamed little thing. Of a misfit. Of an outsider. Of the “wrong” Rocker.

I saw a Mom who failed this year. I saw a Mom whose daughter is now unprepared to enter public school because she just couldn’t get the homeschool thing going anymore. She ran out of whatever it was that had kept her surviving for 7 years.

I also saw a woman whose difficult tasks are another woman’s easiest chores and I saw a woman who feels like she’ll never “get it” when it comes to homemaking and how she’ll be a failure in everyone’s eyes who have worked so hard to bring her to health.

I saw a whole gallery; Pictures of myself in different poses of brokenness. One thing I am sure of, He wants me to trade them all in. How do I do that? I think I already know. I have to take one frame down at a time and look deeply at the image so that grief can come. Every dim picture, cast in stark shadows and exposing harsh light, with a slight young girl huddled in a corner or fading into the background must be acknowledged. Every image of that woman with lost and vacant eyes must be seen. In that look, in that recognition will come what I need to be able to pass it to him.

Trading one gallery for another.

The background missing in these pictures is grace. There is only the stark black and white of the reality that feels so familiar to me right now. Familiar is not good. I have recently learned when things feel familiar, I need to move. Familiar is abuse. Familiar is “fade”. Familiar is escape. Familiar is invisibility. Familiar is façade. Familiar is death. Familiar is all black, then all white, and back again. Familiar is judgment. Familiar is without grace.

How do I step out of familiar? How do I step into “unknown” if it’s not known to me, only to others?

As I try to imagine what the unknown will look like I see him take the framed print and cradle it in his hands.

Under his gaze a transformation takes place and a new photo begins to emerge,

     one with natural sun light and life, and

        an innocent care free girl in a

           a simple white dress dancing in

              flower filled fields with

                 a lifted face of joy and

                    blonde curls trailing behind.

And my breath becomes a whispered prayer, and escaping from my lips it hopes, “Oh, Lord, you would do this for me?”

Ezekiel 16:14 "And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign LORD."

photo credit: s2art via photopin cc