whoa vs. woe

Someone left me a nice little note on the keyboard I play at church today.

Someone else made me a purse. Like that’s normal. Like everybody goes around making things that most of us only buy.

Someone made me cookies a few weeks ago.

Someone(s) sent me flowers on Valentine’s Day.

Someone else gave me some homemade rolls yesterday. Homemade potato rolls. Once again something that most people only ever buy.

Many a different someone has been available to talk to me–whenever; to frame my feelings in words that do make a difference.

Someone else gave me a shirt. A sweet little shirt that says peace. And at first when she simply told me what she was giving me, and I had yet to see it, I thought she said that the shirt said peas. Like the vegetable. And believe me, I was still excited about that because I am an avid fan of peas. Once I ate a whole dinner that consisted of peas. And before you are super impressed–conjuring up all the different dishes I must have cooked while using peas as my main ingredient–let me explain a little further and say that my dinner was a huge bowl of peas. And not a cereal bowl, either: a mixing bowl. But, still, that’s it.

So yes, I’d be proud to wear a shirt that said peas. That’s a cause I can support wholeheartedly.

But when I unfolded the shirt and saw it actually said peace–well, even better. Because if I were to choose which of the two would better help me through this particular season of my life, I’d have to say peace.

Though another large mixing bowl’s worth of peas could be a very close second.

Which makes me think of the shirt Drew bought me right before I left for Japan. It’s all about peace. In fact, it suggests you go about the business of peace every way possible. That you meditate for it, pray for it, be for it, bring it, and make it. The shirt says all that. In a sparkly silver. Like it is written in angel dust.

And I wore that shirt to warm up before the show every night. It was another way to stay close to home, to stay close to him.

Which is just ridiculous.

I mean, peace.

How ironic that I wore that idea so faithfully. How ironic that, like the shirt, what it stood for was only skin deep anyway. How terribly ironic that the shirt he bought me talked about the opposite of everything that would happen. That I came home to chaos, though as of yet thinly disguised; that I wore my peace shirt, still,  like it could help at all.

There are words for that, I guess. Pitiful. Stupid. Though a friend told me he would replace those words with something more along the lines of trusting. Even innocent. Which is a kind way to put it. And I like the kind way; I try to follow that way.

But my point in all this is that I am the child who woke up on Christmas morning to a house that had been visited by some kind of terrible Grinch. And he had taken seemingly everything–well, everything except “a crumb that was even too small for a mouse.”

So yeah, I shouldn’t be so upset.

But then, something marvelous happened.

It seems people noticed the bleakness of my situation and I am left a girl marked by kindness. A girl marked by love. A girl marked by a community that will not leave her alone.

And I am humbled when I would otherwise be self-pitying, another kind of low that doesn’t end so well.

And I am buoyed when I would otherwise drown.

And I am indisputably loved.

Whoa.

Which is so beautifully different from woe.