When I mentioned that I'm a train-wreck on legs, I was not joking! We're talking highly factual, easily document-able information here. I didn’t always admit that I was a train-wreck on legs. In fact I thought I had it pretty well together and spent a whole lot of years propping up my high-achiever, very-impressed-with myself kind of life I was attempting to lead. And basically surrounded myself with others doing the same thing.
It wasn’t until some major dents and dings of events began to penetrate the armor of my happy-go-lucky, do-as-I-please lifestyle that I began to ask some of those serious questions….ya know, some of the BIG questions….like “is this all there is to life?” kinda questions….and “what in the blankety-blank am I doing here?” kinda questions. The underbelly of my façade was revealing itself to me in ways that were increasingly more difficult for me to ignore—or laugh off.
One day in my early thirties, college-graduate working as a hostess, single, and having just spent a long sleepless night under the neon lights of one of those sober-up tanks in the downtown Dallas jail struggling through the remnants of another hangover, I concluded that my life at that point was pretty much one….big….fat….zero.
Now let me clarify a bit. I hadn’t been driving drunk and I wasn’t arrested. I had been out with some friends in my perky little suit and designer shoes drinking way too expensive black martinis at some nouveau shi-shi bar. The cops actually thought that I was some attorney so they didn’t hassle me too much. But that’s all just semantics and geography. A jail is a jail is a jail. Drunk is drunk is drunk. And I knew that. And I hated it. Something in my life, my ideals of what I thought life was supposed to be was going completely haywire. It was spiraling toward pathetic and yet I didn’t know what I could do about it. I had no idea what I needed—or even wanted. All the things I thought I wanted were looking more shallow, and plastic, and cheap, and ridiculous with each passing day.
Somewhere buried back in my sweet sixteen youthful naiveté, there was a wholesomeness…a pureness…a goodness that I perceived and that I wanted in my life. I had adored babies and children, and I loved the idea of being a wife and mother. But somehow I had grown to a point where I barely glanced at kids and mostly tried to avoid them. I also had done much thinking and studying about God back then but as I went into my senior year of high school and then to college, I basically blew all that stuff off. By the time I was immersed in college life, all the deeper things in life were….well, pretty boring…plain-Jane vanilla…unexciting. Besides, I needed to take care of myself and that meant a career—a glamorous one, of course.
I also wanted to travel. So as soon as I graduated, I headed for California which is what every fresh-faced college-grad does who sorta wants a job/ sorta wants to party. I spent the summer living in West Alki beach with my college roommate and her boyfriend who had just landed a job with Boeing in Seattle. That was a fun summer but not so great in the finding-a-job department, so through some connections I became a manager for a posh athletic club in Vail, CO.
From there I spent the next 8-9 years living my version of the high-life: Caribbean island vacations, Banff Canada, fancy ski resorts, Sonoma wine country, owned a yacht, antiques, followed friends to wine tastings, horse events, horses races, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, pretty much the whole Town & Country deal.
But there was always this lonely, empty, hollow void that followed me around like my unpaid credit card bills. So after a bitter break-up, and a few months hiatus licking my wounds in Australia….well, have you ever heard “when two trains collide—matrimony?” Or “matrimony and twins all in one breath?” Yes, my husband and I met (in a bar—a swanky bar, of course) and he was what some refer to as a back-slid Christian. A quite young and handsome back-slid Christian, I might add. And I was still a bar-hoppin’ basketcase. Let me just say that our relationship, our marriage, is living, walking, breathing proof that God does exist--and that He can and will make beautiful music out of manic mayhem if given the opportunity to do so.
While I was still a basketcase pretending to know it all, my husband did have a really deep love for Jesus Christ that was buried somewhere under his own confusions and disillusionments at the time. And what this young, handsome guy saw in me (11 years older than him, by the way) is still a freak of nature in my mind. But since I’m the Romantic Mom now, I’ll just say it was a miracle! We just totally fell for each other. We went camping. We went for long walks. He continually told me how I needed to clean up my life. And I just kept on ignoring him. And we were inseparable at that point—and always will be. Believe me, I’m not being smug here. I’m not even being romantic (if that’s possible). We’ve done everything in our power to chase each other off and It just ain’t happenin’! I guess we’re both just too stubborn to quit. Plus, he keeps trying to convince me that he adores me—but I don’t believe it—not even for one minute!
Then one day not long after the twins were born (1999), I just up and decided that I was going to stop playing mind-games with God and just believe what the Bible said…literally. It was a regular ol’ day, middle of the week, and I didn’t mention any of this to anyone. I decided, out of the blue, that if this is what He says, then I’ll just believe it. I decided that I would give God another chance in my life—which, in the first place, is so entirely presumptuous—He gave ME the chance…after chance…after chance…after blessed chance. It demonstrates, once again, how conceited and arrogant I was still—even after so many humbling blows I had endured by then. I would give God another chance. Ha!
But He was gracious with me as He always is. After that point, it didn’t happen all at once, I did begin to change. I began to understand things that I never understood before. He began to teach me what love is—what it truly is. I was never able to get it before. And we managed to get through situations and problems that would have destroyed us otherwise. Four years later, after our fourth baby was born and right before we moved to Maine, at my request my husband baptized me in our hot tub in TX—right where I had birthed our baby the week before!
We’re still on this journey. We’re still learning and growing. And our love grows for Jesus Christ everyday. That’s what strengthens me so much in this walk, this path, that I’m trying so hard to stay on. For a long time I just didn’t get it. I couldn’t see what this living, daily walk was to look like. But the more questions I ask and the more I grope and grab onto Him, I see it all more clearly. Not everything…and not everyday. But that’s OK. And I’m ever so grateful that I finally at least get that much! It’s the daily-ness of this walk with my Savior…give us this day our daily bread…and that’s all I need…and it’s enough…it’s more than enough!
Time is like a railroad train;
A one-way ticket – no turning back.
And the prayer of every passenger
Is to stay securely on the track.
But, there’s victory over fleeting time,
Anxious moments, fears and strife.
Just trusting God to lead our way
Brings decades of abundant life.
John and Edna Massimilla
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