catapult magazine

More of myself

by Amy Carpenter Leugs

In the last few weeks, communities seem to whirl around me like the late-summer breezes, slowly but inevitably bringing on changes.

A motorcycle accident involving two of my husband's friends resulted in a blog community through which I have come to know their riding club and church friends in a way that I never would have known otherwise. We celebrate a resurrection of sorts, as the injuries were so serious we did not know if both would survive at first. Our friends have been returned to us from the depths, though not without serious transformation—one will use a wheelchair for life.

A younger cousin's last-minute wedding reunited me with a side of my mother's family that I hadn't seen much of in years, including a wild hooligan uncle of whom my childhood self was both very scared and very fond.

Another wedding, this of a college friend whose first wedding was the catalyst for my own marriage, has just passed, and I find myself drained with the effort of negotiating the surprisingly difficult logistics—emotional as well as physical—of bringing children to this tightly controlled event.

Each group of people, with their common purpose, brings me parts of myself I had forgotten about or had not known, and allows me to join and give those gifts to others, too.

For instance, I made sure to hug my uncle before I left my cousin's reception, even though he had been drinking and was unsteady on his feet—the wild beauty that I have always seen in him was something I had to acknowledge before I left.

In a blog community where the norm was short messages about God's grace, I wanted to write about our daily lives and interaction with the reality of our friends' injuries and healing:

Two big, lit candles sit on our dining room table, the room that's at the center of our lives, where we eat, talk, play with our children, read, check this blog, think, and look out at the wildlife in the woods behind our house. Through our days, the candles keep a vigil and a reminder, and we think of you and send you prayers as we catch sight of these small but strong lights. At night, when we blow the candles out for safety, we remember what we've always told our son about this, that the smoke carries our prayers up to heaven.

 

You are loved and thought of by people whose faces you have never seen.

And the act of negotiating with my college friend also helped bring my current life's purpose into better focus?the purpose of honoring my children and bringing them into my history and my life, just as I am a part of theirs.

 

In each case, I find that if I don't shy away, if I say the words that are rising from deep within me, if I remain true and present to who I am and where I am in the moment, I am able to give, not more, maybe, but something more meaningful. Not more than others, but more of myself.

In the end, what else have I to give? Only what I am, what God has made me, as best I understand myself.