Broken but better

My right hand has a slight deformity to it. When I was in the 4th grade I was on a softball team practicing for an upcoming tournament. I was a pitcher, but one warm summer evening we were using a pitching machine for batting practice and I stood in at shortstop. One of our best batters came up to the plate and hit a grounder that ricocheted off my glove and went straight through my right hand, simultaneously dislocating and breaking my little finger. When our coach ran over and saw what had happened he yelled out to my dad who was watching from the bleachers, “We need you, Doc!”

My dad was never one to overreact. I can recall two times that I saw him respond to something hastily or dramatically. Once was when my mom slipped and fell on the ice in a parking lot and the other time was that warm summer day when he jumped the ballpark fence and ran out to inspect my injury. To this day when I study my right hand or when it rains and I feel a subtle arthritic ache in it, I can close my eyes and see my dad jumping a chainlink fence.

When I look at the picture from that career-ending season I see someone with big bangs, buck teeth, and bags under her eyes. I see someone who is unsure of herself and soon to be afraid of a softball. I see a girl who wants to do everything well but who lets her guard down and her mouth run at home. I see someone who is still learning what it looks like to be a big sister, a loyal friend, and a teammate… let alone a Christ-follower.

If I look closely I also see a chainlink fence that reminds me how Dad came to my rescue one day. There is other evidence, of course, but the fence in the background of a grainy old picture reminds me that I was loved even when I wasn’t the most lovable. It reminds me what a parent’s love looks like in action. But at first glance I just see a picture I don’t really like.

My girls seem to be in a season of intense curiosity about mine and their dad’s childhood and adolescence. They want to know who we were and what our families and lives were like when we were their ages. They pore over their own school yearbooks and then ask if they can see our old ones to compare. Maybe because I feel like I had what can only be described as the most awkward adolescent school years one can have {particularly in the hairstyle and eyewear departments}, I am not eager to show them any photographic evidence of that time in my life.

As much as there are a few seasons I would like to erase and many hairstyles I would prefer to scratch from the record books, I still believe it is true when Beth Moore says in one of her studies: “We cannot extricate our history from our destiny.”

We are wholly complex people with wins and losses, stories and scars. Bad hair and braces in one season, acne and anxiety in another. In one way or another, we’ve all had our share of broken bones and broken spirits. And I have to wonder if kids benefit from knowing and seeing something of our histories—even the less attractive parts— because it shows them what it looks like to grow and change and mature. It gives them a literal picture of hope. They can see how different “what was then” is from “what is now.” And they can feel a connection to places and people they wouldn’t otherwise know or experience.

Maybe we, too, sometimes benefit from fumbling through old pictures and intentionally remembering our histories—our strides and setbacks, our glory days, bad days, and best days. We can see how far we’ve come, where we never want to go again, and where we can yet go.

Tomorrow marks fourteen years since we lost my dad. I can look at old pictures or I can just look at my right hand on October 25th and remember someone important from my past. I can also be reminded how important it is to be fully here in the present. Tomorrow I’ll clap for my oldest in her school’s musical theatre production, practice some piano with my middle one, and write out math homework with my youngest—all with a hand that is increasingly veiny and forever imperfect with a once broken, slightly misaligned little finger.

It’s a right hand with a history and a story I need to share with the girls and wouldn’t trade for the world.