Hands with Holes

Learning to Live as only part of a person

Welcome to Growing Home.

Hi. I’m Christianna. I’ve almost died twice, lost a child, lived in hell. (Bet you didn’t know it has an earthly address. Your GPS will take you to a beige basement suite 2,000 miles from home.)

I’m trying, maybe too hard, to find healing and wholeness on the Other Side of life.

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Jay and I went on an extended date this week.

Mom and Dad kept the kids overnight. With time to ourselves, I dared to ask “Do you think we’ll ever have another baby?”

We both agreed we can’t see it. Jay admitted he’s scared of losing me. But I admitted I want redemption—healing and wholeness in the holes of my finger- and toe tips. To mean, these holes look baby-shaped.

Of course a child will not fill the ripped seams of our life; “We have two children,” Jay said, “and they never filled the hole the first one left.”

You’re right, you’re right…

What then?

I wonder. Is there healing? Is wholeness possible? Or am I to watch myself crumble a little more each day into the nothingness of my fingers numb from the trauma?

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Try as I might to hold myself in the place that is my body, I crumble. At every joint, energy escapes me like the heat which seeps through the paneled seams of our little farmhouse. I do not have the capacity to live like everyone else because carrying myself through each day requires substantial energy. This is why I sing, “I don’t want to fight no more,” with Alabama Shakes. It’s exhausting to fight to keep myself from slipping through the holes of trauma, every day.

I lose energy and time just trying to describe it.

And no one—not even Jay—actually gets it. Because his response is Think of how far you’ve come and If you lost an arm, you wouldn’t say you weren’t healed or whole unless you got that limb back. No. No, I wouldn’t; I’d spend all day wondering where my arm went, wondering how to live without it, wondering how to live as only part of a person.

Yet I know no other way.

Or, this way, this route I’m tracing back to the self that is whole, is long. Two and a half years after coming back to Ohio, I’m finally practicing yin yoga every day. On the mat before bed, I command my body to locate the weight of living. I’ve stuffed it into every ligament and tendon, and yin is teaching me I cannot hold myself together.

Or, I will not fall into Nothing if I do.

Or, perhaps, there is not Nothing on the Other Side.

Maybe, on the Other Side, Someone stands at the breech with open hands. There is a hole in each palm. Those hands are more capable holed than whole of catching my broken bits.

One day, all broken pieces—of creation, of me, of you, of history—will be gathered in those holed hands. Those hands will remake us—new and healed. Whole.

Maybe that’s Heaven, at least to the traumatized. Eternally, completely held in holy hands—holy because of the holes.

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And in the meantime?

In the meantime, Jesus is near.

Sometimes, I feel him. Sometimes, I feel him reaching across the breech at my fingers.

Sometimes, the glory of God streams through the limbs of my children running and dancing and singing.

Sometimes, my children hold my hands. When they let go, their fingertips brush mine. And they enliven me.

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Date night made me happy, as does bringing my kids to school, and watching them grow like the carrots we harvested this fall.

Thanks for being here.

Take care,

—CJS