Trappings and charm wear off…Let people see you. It’s called having friends, choosing each other, getting found, being fished out of the rubble. It blows you away, how this wonderful event ever happened–me in your life, you in mine.        Anne Lamott

You know I’m a fraud, right?

I’m sitting here in the room The Husband painted red because I asked him to, a few feet from the child I prayed for, looking at the framed picture of TH and me that our wedding guests signed. Yesterday, I stared at that picture and wondered what happened to that couple–would they ever be happy like that again? Are two kids, a lovely home, a few years of marriage–are those really the things that knock you down until you’re staring at each other exhaustedly over the breakfast table, running out of (nice) things to say? Their prayers answered, they quickly fell apart.

And yesterday, the baby would. not. stop. crying. And the things I thought–you do not want to know. I considered writing a stream of consciousness blog, but feared it would read like a suicide note. The baby she waited a year for rendered her ungrateful and insane.

Sometimes I feel like the yoga pants in which I currently live: worn out, and a blatant misrepresentation. I get it together enough to approach the computer, type out words from a raw but calm place, and I wonder if TH ever reads it and wonders who that woman is, because the one he dealt with last night? Well, she was bat-shit crazy. You know, the one who wrote a piece called “I Want to Kill My Best Friend“? The one who said at 3 am that she couldn’t take it anymore (again)? The one who dissolved into tears of misery over cereal? Yeah, that one. That’s the real me, right?

We had our yearly pictures made this year, the four of us and The Sis, Bro-in-Law, and Niece, and Little Brother was probably the best-behaved. The Kid ran back and forth over our neighborhood park’s bridge, crying out in rebellion when we suggested he, I don’t know, be still and smile, and The Niece almost dropped LB on his head, and I felt all my body parts clenching as usual. I remembered last year, when we gathered at a park near the river, and the possibility of TK’s surgery loomed over us and I watched his tilting head and observed his lack of cooperation and wished for a different scenario: one where everything was just fixed and his head was straight and he was the kid who quietly fell in line. And here we are now, with a slightly tilted but recovering head/neck situation, and no cooperation, and I think back to six months ago on this same playground when we could only stay for ten minutes before the spasms started.

For all the sleepless nights, and toddler rebellion, I’d rather be here. Maybe here isn’t so bad–bleary-eyed, short-tempered, messy and imperfect here. Which makes me think that  it could be time to give thanks.

The search for the perfect picture is a pipe dream at this point, and when that ghost is given up it makes room for the real. For the toddler who screams on Santa’s lap, for the nearly-three-year-old who sobs when forced to stand still beside his cousin and brother. I will order that shot, please. Because it is him. Because it is us. Not some presentable, polished version, but the real thing.

And the real me? I am messy and imperfect too. I lose my temper and am forgiven. I long for a dinner out with TH even on the days when we might choose to have that dinner at separate restaurants, because I know we’ll end up at the same one eventually, that we’ll wake up in the same bed tomorrow and the day after, that we’ll get past the crying and trashcan-kicking and harsh tones. I don’t give in to the darker thoughts but, instead, walk away for a minute. Re-suction a pacifier into a tiny mouth. Replace a battery in TK’s guitar and watch him play it, then cast it aside to arrange blocks into an order only he sees. Is this daily monotony, or is it an act of rebellion against the darkness? Is it a way to live messy but brave? I think about the way I like things in a certain order too, and that life has been teaching me–will keep teaching us both–that sometimes there is beauty in that order, and sometimes there is beauty in its upheaval. And we rarely get to pick.

But I’ve learned that when it all feels like it’s falling apart is when it might actually be coming together. And that there are quiet moments in the storms, when you look around and see the people who are still there as if you’re seeing them for the first time, or with new eyes at least. That often there is no way to find your own way out of the storm or will your own way out of the hole because you have to be led, or lifted. The prayer help is my most frequent but hopefully the other one–thanks–is gaining on it, because that one may not lift me out of the mess but it will get my eyes pointed up where they should be. And like the toddler on the bridge, that thanks can be an act of rebellion against the world’s demands for perfection, can be my white flag, my vote for now, my act of worship. The thanks can be the acceptance of the picture we get rather than the one we envisioned, the potential in the worn yoga pants. The recognition of the divine spark in all the moments, all the messes, each shot and every bridge.