Undone

by Michele Cushatt

  “This is the Denver Rescue Mission,” I tried to explain. “Homeless people — people who don’t have a house like we do — come here. The mission gives them food and a bed for the night.” I waited to see if they understood. “Did you know that some people don’t have food or a home?”

  They stared back at me in the mirror, the quietest they’d been in days. Of course they knew.

  By the time we arrived at Trinity, the candlelight service was about to start. Late had become the new normal for us. In spite of our best efforts, we just couldn’t seem to get everyone where they needed to be on time. We searched for a place to sit, but churchgoers filled every wooden pew. I could see seats for one or two here and there, but not enough for nine. I wouldn’t split us up. No way. More than ever before, we needed to be a family, sit together. But where? There was no place for a family our size to go.

  A woman, older, decked out in her best holiday dress, motioned to us. We followed her, hoping she knew of an empty pew we hadn’t been able to find. She turned left, taking us down a side hallway. Maybe to the staircase and balcony?

  She passed the stairs, made another turn, our family following like obedient little chicks connected in one long chain of hands. About the time I’d lost all direction and wondered if we’d ever find our way out, she opened a thick wooden door and pointed to a long row of empty chairs.

  More than enough for all nine of us to sit together.

  In the choir loft. On the stage. In front of the entire room of gaping parishioners.

  You’ve got to be kidding me.

  I turned, certain we’d fallen for some kind of joke. But she was gone.

  This would not end well.

  While it’s true my preschool parenting skills had grown a bit rusty, I remembered enough to know you don’t prop three small children and three adolescent boys on a platform an hour before midnight. Not on the most sacred night of Christendom’s calendar year. And not without calling in the national guard and throwing me a stash of fruit snacks.

  What should we do? Sit and risk turning Christmas Eve into a circus for a roomful of worshipers? Or split our family on a night that was far more sacred to us than anyone could know?

  The nine Cushatts filed in and sat down. On the stage.

  Have mercy.

  In a move of strategic parental brilliance, Troy and I alternated big kids with small kids, placing our moderately mature selves at equal intervals in between. And we started praying. And fasting. And calling on the angelic hosts of heaven.

  Choir members, sitting down front in their perfectly pressed white robes, turned to take in the family of nine sitting behind. I could see their confusion. Or was it panic? I feigned nonchalance, as if putting a family onstage for the length of a church service was an everyday occurrence. I turned to the audience, noticed the hundreds of round eyes staring back at me. I’m pretty sure they thought we were part of the show.

  Dear God, I hope not.

  Although I expected our kindly usher to return with additional latecomers, she never reappeared. That Christmas Eve night, the Cushatt family alone populated the church platform. Behind the robed choir and the line of reverend church staff, we celebrated the birth of Jesus from the best seats in the house.

  Two thousand years ago when a young man and pregnant woman traveled by road and donkey to a Bethlehem inn, they didn’t receive the same welcome.

  “While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”21

  We know little about that Christmas Eve night. Two parents showed up in Bethlehem, the mother swollen with child. They searched for a place to rest, where they could be together. But the innkeeper couldn’t spare a single room. His home was too full to add three more.

  I wonder, at times, if the innkeeper’s refusal was more personal than logistical. Surely he’d had a corner where an expectant mother could’ve slept. And what about his room? Couldn’t he have sacrificed his own bed for a single night? Maybe his lacking wasn’t in home but in heart.

  Sitting center-stage with a four-year-old leaning on my arm, I saw myself in Bethlehem’s innkeeper. In spite of my proclamations of love and service, I’d grown to love comfort more. It’d become my addiction, my idol. I didn’t know this, at least not fully, until discomfort interrupted my comfortable life in the shape and form of three little people at my front door. I wanted a life of convenience. Saturday morning sleep-ins, a clean kitchen, vacuumed floors. The freedom to go where I wanted, when I wanted, without burden or surrender.

  I still wanted to think myself generous. At times I was. Didn’t I box up food for the homeless? Didn’t I make meals for the sick? Yes, and yes. But rarely did my offerings stretch me to a place of inconvenience and discomfort. Of sacrifice.

  The reverend took his place behind the podium. With Bible spread wide, he told the story of Mary, Joseph, and a child whose ordinary manger birth rocked a hope-hungry world.

  God dressed in flesh. Leaving the comfort and glory of heaven, he took on pain, illness, emotion, and heartache. He chose to exchange his world for ours, his bedroom for a stable. So that, someday, when we show up at heaven’s door, we won’t hear the words, “No room!”

  My little girl’s head slipped into my lap, tired beyond her years and rocked to sleep by the preacher’s voice and the choir’s songs. I circled one arm around her shoulders, pulled the fingers of my hand through her hair.

  So this is what it’s like to have a little girl, I thought. This is what it feels like to be a mama all over again.

  His story and message done, the reverend found his chair as the choir began to sing, a cappella.

  Silent night, holy night.

  All is calm, all is bright.

  The ushers walked through the darkened room, lighting candles. Soon light spread, filling the room with illuminated faces. I looked down my row, seeing the smiles of those I loved most in the world. Each one different from the others. Some delivered through birth. Others through marriage and unexpected circumstances. Each a gift, regardless of how they came.

  Twelve months before, I’d hovered on the brink of life and death. I’d never imagined that, one year later, God would bring me to my own Bethlehem to give birth to a new family.

  Round yon virgin, mother and child.

  Holy infant, so tender and mild.

  I looked down at the girl in my lap, a girl I hardly knew, and watched her chest rise and fall, her eyes flutter in dreamy sleep. Like the subtle brush of angel wings, I felt the first stirrings of a mother’s love. A child is born!

  God help me, I didn’t want mine to be the innkeeper’s story. I could cry, “No room!” and get a good night’s sleep. But then I’d miss seeing the Christ.

  A couple of weeks later, I’d tell a trusted friend, Melissa, about Christmas Eve, how a late-night candlelight service and nine chairs on a stage helped me see the truth of our scenario.

  “Just because something is hard doesn’t mean we’re not called to it,” I’d tell her. “And just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not good.”

  Yes. And yes.

  God left the comfort of heaven for a complicated, uncomfortable human life. The world has never seen a calling more difficult. Nor a calling more good.

  The sacrifice required to redeem a life.

  The light offered in the darkness.

  With that I offered my bed for three children. And to the sound of “Silent Night” I made room for whatever would come.

  Sleep in heavenly peace,

  sleep in heavenly peace.22

  CHAPTER 17

  Attached

  To love is to assume an infinite debt.

  — SØREN KIERKEGAARD,

  “Our Duty to Remain in Love’s Debt to One Another”

  “YOU’RE A BAD MOMMY!”

  His words couldn’t have hurt me more if he’d grabbed a knife and ru
n me through.

  “I don’t wike this family! I want to live wif someone else!” He threw his weight against my favorite living room chair, an effort to overturn it in angry punctuation. He aimed to cause me pain. It was working.

  “Jack, sweetheart, you need to calm down. Look at me for a minute.” After several weeks of living together in the same house, I knew if I could get his eyes to connect with mine, maybe he’d settle, feel safe. Instead, he avoided eye contact. He looked everywhere except at me, a cornered animal looking to flee.

  “No!”

  The windows rattled with his screams as he ran away from me. My head pounded, hands shook. I looked at this boy, not yet old enough to read. So tiny, and yet so angry. I didn’t recognize him.

  He turned and glared from beneath furrowed brows, his cheeks flushed with fury, hands balled into fists. This wasn’t a mood swing or bad moment. This was his pattern, almost every day.

  I cringed at what the neighbors must think, certain they heard his rampage through walls and windows. My boy appeared entirely charming when playing in the front yard. No trace of an alter ego during those brief public appearances. But inside, this. What horrors did they imagine happened in our house, something awful enough to cause a preschooler to scream?

  If only they knew. This time, I’d asked him to put his socks away.

  The ridiculousness of his anger triggered my own. I could feel the pressure mounting in my shoulders and back, my cheeks turning hot. It wasn’t fair the way he commandeered our family with his unpredictable and irrational rage. I’d given up everything for him! And what for? To watch this monster overrun my family.

  Still. I reminded myself of his story, of the deep pain that triggered his Hulk-like transformation. Behind the tantrum huddled a little boy trapped by profound fear and anguish.

  It’s not his fault. It’s not his fault. It’s not his fault.

  Like the boy in Hollywood’s movie Hook, my Jack felt the losses of too many broken promises. Too young to understand the whys and hows of his losses, he only knew he felt a deep and unyielding pain.

  He stormed upstairs, spreading his fury to every corner of the house. Troy waited in the kitchen, giving me space to work an intervention, knowing a two-against-one approach would only make things worse. The girls, anxious to escape the sounds of conflict, rushed out the back door to bubble themselves with play. My older boys hid in their rooms. No one wanted to deal with yet another meltdown.

  I climbed the stairs, took a breath, and tried to steady my shaking hands.

  I found him in his room. “You’re okay, buddy. I’m here.” I reached for him, to pull him close. “I’m not going anywhere. I love you.” Seldom did this work; I knew this. I tried anyway. Maybe I could love him to wholeness.

  Instead.

  “I don’t love you!” He pulled away from me, hard. Threw his pillows and toys on the floor. Kicked a bedroom door and moved to do the same to our beloved dog, Nika. She hid behind my legs, trying to find safety.

  That did it. This time he’d gone too far.

  “Stop it!”

  My heart pounded a percussion in my chest. Only a thin thread of control kept me from unleashing on this forty-pound child I no longer recognized.

  God, help me!

  “You need to stop. Now.” I tried to bring my voice down but wasn’t having much luck. I wanted to scream. “I don’t care how angry you are, you aren’t allowed to hurt people. Or dogs. Period.”

  Surprised by my outburst, he hesitated for a moment. This was my chance. I picked him up, his size no match for my own. Sat us both down on his bed.

  The feel of him in my arms softened me, just enough.

  “I love you, Jack.”

  My touch did not have the same effect on him. Defiant, he struggled against me, thrashed like a child possessed.

  “You’re hurting me! You’re hurting me!” Of course, I wasn’t hurting him. I was holding him, hugging him, rocking him like the baby I imagined him to be before that day we met in a Walmart parking lot.

  “I love you. I love you.” Back and forth I rocked, repeating the words, murmuring in the soft voice of a mother soothing her newborn son.

  In response, he grabbed my arm, dug fingernails in flesh until I could feel my skin give way. Then he moved to my neck, scratching deep lines in the soft tissue.

  For once, compassion trumped my anger. A miracle, a pouring out of mercy for both him and me. As he screamed, I prayed.

  God, help! I don’t know what to do!

  I pulled his hands away and kept rocking, offering “I love you’s” like gifts, swallowing my anger and pain in an attempt to soothe his.

  Then, just as fast as his tempest began, he calmed. Out of control one moment, calm the next. An entirely different child, my little boy started to cry.

  “I want Biscuit,” he whimpered, asking for his favorite stuffed animal.

  I found the treasured toy in a corner of his bed and handed it to him. “Here you go, buddy. Biscuit.”

  Pulling his puppy close, he nestled his head in between my shoulder and chin, melted against me. No longer pushing me away. No longer running and fighting. Again I started to rock. Back and forth, back and forth.

  He’d come back. My boy had come back to me. Wherever he went during those moments of screaming and ranting, he’d returned. I could see it in his eyes, the way he now looked into mine, appearing so very lost and small and unsure.

  “I love you, Jack. You know that, don’t you?” I brushed his hair with my hand, his head hot and damp.

  He nodded, sniffled. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my chest, his heart pounding as fast as mine.

  “How much do I love you?”

  “A wot.” He answered without hesitation, a boy who’d heard the question enough times in the past weeks to know the answer.

  “And will I ever stop?”

  “No.” He nestled deeper underneath my chin, his arms and Biscuit tucked between the warmth of our bodies. Back and forth, back and forth.

  In all, his rage lasted about an hour. Not a record, but intense. A few minutes later, he’d put away the socks that had triggered his outburst, a task that would’ve taken him seconds but instead cost us far more.

  For the rest of the day, we limped along like an ordinary family, pretended we didn’t have monsters lurking in our closets. But underneath our charade, I agonized over a truth I could no longer ignore.

  What if he wasn’t fixable? What if the love of our family wasn’t enough to heal his wounds and undo the damage that had already been done? What would we do then?

  I didn’t know. I just didn’t know.

  When we brought our children home, we had no clue about the baggage that came home along with their single suitcase.

  Our nearly two decades of parenting had fooled us into believing we were prepared for this new adventure. We knew how to teach little ones to read, say please and thank you, and use forks and napkins (albeit marginally). We could run carpool, help with homework, and say bedtime prayers. We’d even endured the tumultuous teen years, with crises far more complicated than manners and prayers. But we did it, made it to the other side. Mostly unscathed.

  Three more children? We could totally do this. High fives all around.

  Or not.

  Parenting the second time would have little in common with the first. There’s a difference between the children born to stable, functioning adults and those who, instead, find their entrance into the world to be far less welcoming.

  Six weeks ago, a friend of mine had a baby. Recently, we were at the same conference, and during a break I asked to hold her little one.

  “I need a baby fix.” I opened my arms and batted my best puppy dog eyes. As much as I didn’t want to return to diapers and bottles, I also missed it something fierce.

  And so, standing in an ordinary hotel hallway, I held ten pounds of new life. Even after mothering six children, I’ve yet to get over the miracle of it. Her downy head nuzzled in th
e elbow of my left arm while my right arm cradled her length. I wrapped myself around her, and although time had slipped me into new seasons of parenting, my body moved just as it’d done years before. Leaning from one leg to the other, I swayed back and forth, back and forth.

  The rocking brought revelation: this is what my Jack had missed.

  Something so simple, the cradling of a child in a mama’s arms. This is what every newborn needs, as much as milk and sleep and dry diapers. Security and warmth. A belonging place.

  As I held my friend’s newborn, I remembered holding my own. When Jacob, my biological son, was born, I spent countless hours losing myself in those beautiful round eyes so like mine. I talked in a special voice saved only for him, made faces and shared secrets and worked oh-so-hard to solicit the smallest grin or giggle. Time stood still. To-do lists and schedules disappeared. He was all that mattered.

  As a new mother, I’d rocked and talked baby-speak without understanding the long-term implications. I did it because that’s what you do when your baby cries or wakes up from a nap or needs dinner. You touch and hold, comfort and nourish, whisper and sing. Even when you’re tired. Even when you’d rather hang out with friends or collapse on the couch and watch TV.

  I’d had no idea how important my touch was to the children and adults my littles would one day become. Now, as mama to three littles who carry a suitcase packed with fear and anxiety everywhere they go, I know better.

  Moments between mother and child aren’t ordinary. They’re sacred.

  What happens between mother and child, father and child, gives an infant, a child, a sense of who they are in connection to someone else. Although individual and unique, a child can grow into that individuality only through the security of connection. Psychologists call it “attachment,” the necessary bonding of individuals in relationship to others. It is in relationship with significant others that a child gains a sense of who he is apart.