If you happen to be unfamiliar with the term “to winge”, let me please explain. To winge is to whine excessively, to become so frustrated with one’s circumstances that one is paralysed from the top lip up and the bottom lip down. To winge is to make a thorough annoyance of oneself based on consistent and usually ridiculous complaints issuing forth from one’s mouth, preferably with an alternating, but always very high, pitch. To winge is to take a long hard look at the cruel world you live in, stick out your tongue, and call it a meanie face. To plant your feet firmly on the ground, cross your arms, and pout like a three year old.
It is this practice that I would like to demonstrate for you now.
So here I am, just coming out of the wilderness in a lot of ways (or maybe still in it sometimes, I don’t know) and being led about by God (or at least trying as much I can to follow His leading) and having difficulty recognizing that everything I say doesn’t need to have a qualifier (though I really think it helps sometimes). And I’m looking around, right? I’m looking outward because I feel like I need some . . . help or brotherhood or some kind of human support and I’m writing, writing, writing, all these people that I haven’t communicated with in like a year or something because I felt like my soul was on the rack and being stretched in ways that were breathlessly painful and I wanted to listen and be still and maybe just lick my wounds a little. I’m writing and I’m saying I’m hurting and I want you to be there with me, I want to walk with you for a little while and put it down and just try to imitate normal life until life can start feeling normal again. I’m sending out a call and in it I’m telling these people that I was bonded with before about the fact that I miss my little girl and I’m aching because I will never have a mother again, not for the rest of my life, the whole fifty or so years that are left of my life, and I just wanted you to know that I loved you and I want to love you and I want to love someone that I can really have because I can’t have these two people that I really love and . . . ?
And???
Crickets. Tumbleweeds blow by. Nothing. Nothing is returned to me.
And I know I’m winge-ing right now because I’m lucky to have my sister and brother. I’m lucky to have my Lord who walks with me through everything. I’m lucky to be alive and know that my mother is in a place of perfect peace and my daughter is warm and safe and beautiful. I know I’m lucky. I know I’m blessed. I just . . . wish . . . I wish I felt . . . I wish I was important to these people. I wish my struggles mattered. I wish that I was understood and forgiven and held up. And I guess that’s too much to ask for.
Doesn’t anybody care? And what does this teach me about the importance of caring?
Tags: Barbara Sue, grief, lessons, loss, Natalie Grace, transparency, winge-ing
