Way, way back

Do you ever wonder why some of us have really clear memories of our pasts and others don't? Similarly I wonder how some people can read a fact and it just sticks with them; seemingly forever. I'm the one with the elephant's memory of times and events. I'm not, however, the one who reads a book and retains all of the information. 

If we were all wired the same, we'd be a boring species. Instead, we all learn and experience life differently. I do love learning under someone who can rattle off details and facts at an impressive rate. I envy that type of brain capacity. My dad had a brain for history - so do one of my nephews and my oldest daughter. They soak up information about events, timelines, in history, and they can tell you the same information years later.

Quiz me about my life, not about things I've read.

My gift to the world is my memory in words. Or at least that's what I'll tell myself. My life has had all of the seasons yours has likely had. I was just, for some reason, wired to talk about my experiences. And for a lot of people, it's really therapeutic to read or hear someone else's stories. Misery doesn't love company. Misery loves to be affirmed. Because pain in life is hard, and everyone deserves to know that they aren't alone.

I was recently told that my life was one of the most complicated cases they knew of. Oh how I thought of Jesus in that moment. The whisper in my spirit was: say nothing. don't defend yourself.

What I wanted to retort was: MY LIFE IS NOT A SNOWFLAKE.

And the person who spoke that to me is either an actual living sinless being, or they live in a hole and I'm the first person who they've ever met to be a child of an alcoholic, to have an ex-husband, to have remarried and to have a complicated blended family experience. "So let me introduce myself to you sir," I wish I'd said, "my name is Ashley, loved, adored, cared about and for, bold, courageous, and bruised from life, but my life is not the most complicated."

In truth, my life is far from a walk in the park. But what about yours?

When people offer up their words of compassion, they often come out like that. A lot of us get uncomfortable with other people's complicated lives. It would just be easier to do something like offer up a little: hey, might you just put your complicatedness and hold it in your pockets until you're not here? we don't like complicated here. complicated is messy, and well, let's just settle that down shall we?

A parent's words are prophetic over their children. My dad would tell me often, "Ashley Mac, you're not going to take anyone's shit in life..." He'd end it with a chuckle. I grew up knowing I was meant to use my words. It has been a lifetime of me finding ways to use them so that they're received and not tossed back at me. And it's taken me equal amounts of time to realize that no matter what I say, the words will be tossed back. So, say them anyway. 

But here is the thing. My life has been different than yours, but probably not really. I lost my first friend to cancer when I was 9. Cancer has touched my family's life so many times. Suicide and depression have also. Alcoholism, abuse, we know it. Fear and restraining orders, been there. Porn addiction, saw that ship sail. Anger and rage, holes punched and patched; I passed the plaster tray as he put it back together. I chose Jesus when I was 12; the same year I called 911 for the first time. I worked hard in school just to make B's; A's were a gift. My best grades were on tests I could write to fill in the answer, or I could verbally answer questions to. I played softball 9 months out of the year for a good portion of my childhood, and when I went to college and didn't make the team, I felt lost. I was lost. I have floundered and flailed. My first pregnancy was riddled with the most bizarre symptoms - and giving birth equated me losing half my body's blood. But there she was. She lived and so did I. She thrives and so do I. And then my blue eyed girl came 2 years later. And dad watched from heaven as my life unfolded and blossomed and seemingly crashed again. And it still ebbs and flows, because life is like that. 

My garden sometimes does beautifully, and sometimes it doesn't. I've learned more than I could possibly imagine as I live my own life. And I gladly sit with those in pain, because they aren't snowflakes. 

My Grandad told me: nothing good or bad lasts forever. He was right. On earth, it's just like that. It's good and bad. Neither last forever. One just stands out more than the other. 

I prefer the good. I carve out life to try to live in the good - the mountain top, as a lot of us call it. But the truth is, life is a lot of valley walking. It just is. 

I will remember this season, the ones before, and the ones to come, as clearly as I remember this moment. That's just how God made me. I love people and I love remembering where I was, who I was with and what it was like. 

I am no snowflake. Neither are you. We are valley walking regular people, moving towards the edge of greatness, sometimes slipping, holding onto the sides of the hill, and climbing back up again.

So if you have had a hard time, or life has been easy for you, either way, you are no snowflake. You are human. 

What a gift our stories are to the world.