What to do when everything breaks?

Last October, I took a time out from my marriage.

Now close to a year later, I'm still in time out.

I've enjoyed being by myself, purchasing little doo-dads for my tiny house I'm renting, waking in the middle of the night (like now) to only me and the hum of the refrigerator, the occasional Sleepless-in-Powder-Springs-Georgia bird chirping outside my window, the lone car's roar as it drives by at this crazy hour. Well, make that two cars. Another one just drove by.

Everything has been good.

My husband has been a wonderful partner to me for over 28 years. I love him still in many ways. Ways that won't change even though we are probably getting a divorce.

I don't regret our years together but know in my heart our journeys are turning away from one another. I know in my heart that sometimes we have to honor the turns those journeys take even when we don't understand them.

One new phenomena I've noticed the past few weeks is things are breaking everywhere in my house--not appliances thank goodness, but precious items I've bought for my place or people have purchased for me.

My mom bought me Garden Angel statuette for Christmas. The angel lost her head as she toppled from the top tier of a bookshelf. I had to glue her back together.

I purchased some light green Jadeite China at an antique store called The Classy Flea, and one of my favorite pieces, a sugar bowl with a lid, had a great fall like Humpty Dumpty and crashed into the sink from a nearby shelf. I couldn't save the lid.

I checked out prices for this item on eBay, which ranged from $63.00 to $82.00. I didn't realize what a great deal I had gotten on my sugar bowl until the lid broke.

Other things have chipped and cracked. My youngest daughter bought me a set of plates from Pier One that I love. Each time I pull something out of the dishwasher I find another white exposed part appears where brownish-gold ceramic glaze is supposed to be.

I'm thinking I may need to retrieve the dishwasher manual and take a quick read on how to properly load this appliance.

It's funny how quickly one gets attached to things--new things--how quickly they take bearing on one's heart--even if they are only lids and dishes. I find myself frustrated about the breakages.

Somehow I thought since I was starting a new life that nothing should break--that I should be given some moratorium on breaking for about a year or two.

Alas, breaks happen. Breaks happen in marriages that were by and large pretty solid. Breaks happen in hearts you thought would hold together forever without needing any kind of glue--Elmer's Glue, Gorilla Glue, spit.

Breaks creep into the exposed places in your mind, body, spirit and cause soul collapse where you just can't keep on living the way you once did--so you have to break-up instead.

I think of all the pieces of things I've tried to rescue recently, and I wonder if they represent pieces of myself that had fallen in ill repair before I said, "Hey, has anybody noticed I'm losing it here?"

No one notices the soul's call for salvation except the soul itself.

We could be sweeping pieces of our soul off the floor along with dust bunnies and never know the difference if we fail to look at what shows up in the dust pan--look how much of us has broken into shards on the floor of our own lives.

So things break. I get it.

Times may come around where I search back through my marriage, like I searched on eBay for a sugar bowl with lid to see the value of trying to replace it, and then find out how much it was worth--how much I gave up to get myself back.

Nothing is easy. Even Humpty Dumpty couldn't be put back together and he had King's horses and men. I've just got me and my resolve to piece myself back together again.

When sugar bowl lids crash into 54 green glass pieces, one grieves a bit, wishes it hadn't happened, has a brief sugar bowl pity party, and then gets used to the sugar bowl on the shelf without the lid.

The same process goes for all things that break in our lives whether they are sugar bowl lids, Garden Angels, Pier One dishes, 28-year marriages, or human hearts.


Shelnutt Copyright 2008

WAYS OF KNOWING 2008

As the new year offers us the opportunity to turn ever more toward our true selves, I wish for each of you a 2008 that will offer you time to honor your own "ways of knowing."

We have ways of knowing inside. We question them--wonder if these ways are right, if they work in the boxed-in-tight world we live in. But what I've found with my own path, my own ways of knowing, is I must honor them--the wild call in my heart to live fully and the hushed whisper to draw into silence to find more truth. I must honor all I know. I must not give in to anyone else's ways of knowing. Finally I'm realizing that listening to others' calls instead of one's own only leads to someone else being fulfilled.

I think this may sound a bit abstract. I can't find the fingerprint for what I want to say. I want to say this moment 11:06 p.m. on January 2, 2008, is what I've been given--it is my gift. I've given so many of these gift moments to others thinking they could do so much more with them than I ever could.

From now on, I'm going to call my moments, my ways of knowing, my own. I'm going to put name tags on those moments that say "Karen." I'm going to invite the moments to explode into firecrackered wonder across the sky of myself. I'm going to bow in humble gratitude to the richness the moment offers and to the many ways of knowing a simple breath contains.