Strange, where you can find inspiration.
Where you find a kindred spirit whose emotional experiences mimc your
own. Odd, shadowy corners that move you down to the very fiber of your
existence.
A simple book. Taken from my local library
for a vacation week's idle reading. Viewing it as a fun puff-piece, I
clutched this humble book to myself.
Side note: this whole library thing is new-ish.
For the first time in over 25 years - I have a library card. I'm a
voracious reader and our budget in the coming year just doesn't have room for
the quantity of e-books or real books that I typically purchase. And I
can't shut off my desire to read so - hello little library card. I was so
excited to get the card, much to the amusement of the library employees.
And even funnier, when asked if we had just moved to town, we had to
confess we have lived here for 26 years. All in all, it was a fun
encounter and now I have a limitless supply of books to read that won't cost me
anything more than a 1/2 mile round-trip detour on the way home from work.
Anyway, back to my first library book borrowing
experience.
I chose "Wildflower", the new memoir of
short stories from Drew Barrymore.
I know - the original wild child, she of the rehab
at age 13, emancipation as a minor child at 14 and countless fun & sweet
movies since E.T. in 1982. Total puff piece...right?
Wrong.
A book of short stories of her life, Ms. Barrymore has delivered a
confection of gentleness and of a spirit that will not be silenced even
under the harshest of growing conditions.
So much of the emotions she experienced in her troubled childhood are
very similar to mine. Oh, not in any
specific, real way to be sure. But
rather in the aftermath, the impact of those experiences.
The lack of personal confidence.
Poor self-esteem that is often-times more than crippling. Emotional abuse and abandonment at the hands
of people, who should at the very least, know better. Unseen scars that could (and many times have)
render a person nearly catatonic with pain and confusion.
And yet here Ms. Barrymore is – thriving, a brilliantly quirky mother to
two gorgeous children, blissfully & happily married. An enormously successful adult career in
Hollywood; which God knows is a rare occurrence for anyone let alone a once-washed-up
child star. A career she has built on
her own terms, taking advice and guidance from those who have gone before her,
never once thinking she is above it all.
Allowing herself to be humbled and to learn from that experience.
Sounds like a pretty decent outcome for just about anyone. And the best part is – Ms. Barrymore knows
it. She is utterly aware of her good
fortune to have come out of such a troubled childhood relatively unscathed
(though I would like the name of her therapist - J). She
has put in the hard work, asked the difficult questions, accepted things that
just “are” and moved on.
Which is, in fact, my primary theme for this new year. To move forward – acknowledge the pain and
brokenness AND to no longer allow it to darken my life for one more second.
It’s a funny thing, this supposed puff-piece of a book. I have devoured it’s every word since I
brought it home last Wednesday. And on page 258 of 276 pages, I encountered the
gem that will help me remain in the light and refuse the darkness.
In all that has happened in my life – both in childhood and far more
recent history – I have often wondered about the idea that all of it had to
happen just as it did for me to come into the light.
The Light – at first being God’s call to me to come out of the spiritual
wilderness I had created for myself some 20 years ago. Then becoming a way of life – walking in
God’s light, following that narrow path that leads to him.
Did I need to go thru all that pain and anguish to find my place in
God’s light? To become connected to a
world of faith. To find a family of my
choosing that loves me without condition, in the spirit of Jesus Christ. Did it have to happen that way? Did I need to suffer so much, to come to the
precipice of my own existence, in order to come to God?
Perhaps. Certainly as a devout
Catholic I see the parallels of suffering and I know that God did bring me thru
it all; He did pull me back from the abyss.
Yet…
On page 258 of “Wildflower”, Ms. Barrymore says this about an experience
she had that changed her life: “If I
hadn’t read that article that day in the diner, my whole life might be
different. Or, are we set on paths we
must go on, and there are little bread crumbs out there to lure us in?”
Did my experience need to be fraught with such turmoil to be brought to
God? Or was it all part of His plan to
begin with…God’s Bread Crumbs.
Oh, and The Light? Well, that now
means so much more to me; it’s not just a place to be, a resting point on the
path of life. It is now who I wish to
be, where I wish to be, how I wish to be.
