i don't speak french, but...

...somehow she knew i'd understand anyway.

my sweet, beautiful and first bosom-friend i ever had was met in college. i can barely remember that first meeting, but i knew that we would be fast friends. she was a missionary's child, having grown up in morocco, and i couldn't imagine anything more exotic in the world. she spoke several languages, including french, and i could have just died from vicarious experiences. she was the first to marry and move away, and we have written love letters of the kind Anne Shirley would have been proud, and we've been able to share glimpses of those broken places in our faiths, our marriages, our motherjourneys. she wrote of her struggle for Intimacy with the Father and we both mused in our emails, "why? why us? why is it so hard for us to believe?"

she wrote a different time, encouraged. she lives in switzerland now and has had to remember speaking in a tongue left dormant for years, and forge friendships after years of easy entry to community; it's been hard. yet, she met with her new pastor's wife and asked those Whys, and the graceful woman answered, "because we are the weaker vessel. take strength from your husband and lean on his faith and in Him who gives faith. be strengthened because you are weak." and so she shared with me, too, that it is okay to be "un vase plus fragile" stating it that way because she knew i'd prefer the poetry of those foreign syllables.

but it's not just about a phrase that rolls off my tongue; it's about a hurt that rolls off my heart, a finally-understanding-why i am who i am. because He made me to break, to crack, to shatter all my earthly expectations and lean on Him for strength, especially in the moments of fissure, in those, the weakest moments, the 4 o'clock meltdowns, the day looming long with a husband gone, the dishes undone and the long hair tangled and unbrushed. He asks so little...and so much. so much He died to accomplish it, and so little that i can do on my own. that is love, and i pray that as i'm un vase plus fragile to my children, i shower them with a love unnatural, broken and shattered to pieces He picks up and makes perfect.