Falling Forward - Women of Faith Book Club

Falling Forward . . . into His arms of grace

It felt so right, this moment my daughter had been dreaming about since childhood. Wasn’t it yesterday she was playing princess in my white satin slip, her tiny feet precariously planted in my sparkly “stage” heels as she shuffled down the hall, an old swatch of nylon net bobby-pinned to her dark brown curls? Along with thousands of little girls throughout the ages, Anna had anticipated her wedding day, practiced it over and over in her head, and longed for it to be absolutely perfect. She’d be the perfect bride; her sweetheart, the perfect groom; both surrounded by their perfect family as they headed off into a blissfully perfect future.

The day was turning out just as she’d hoped: absolutely, positively perfect—as long as your definition of “perfect” is as broad as ours has come to be. My understanding of “perfection” has certainly changed over the last eleven years of adjusting to and enjoying a second marriage, along with our beloved blended (and sometimes, chopped and pureed) family.

As I sat in the front pew, it was such an honor, privilege, and yes, relief, to be the one sitting below the stage with my daughter as the center of attention. All eyes were on Anna, resplendent in her elegant off-white mermaid gown. The siblings and stepsiblings were lined up as attendants, the girls looking magnificent in pale sage gowns. Anna and her handsome groom, Collin, had just knelt face-to-face at the little altar to begin taking communion. Then, something happened (doesn’t something always happen at weddings?) that became a perfect metaphor for our family. Even now, the retelling leaves me alternating between laughter and tears. No matter the outward expression, my internal emotions are joy mingled with gratitude and love, plus a generous dash of sheer astonishment at this perfectly beautiful, crazy life God wrought from the ashes I laid at his feet more than a decade ago.

What happened was that my stepdaughter, Mollie, a bridesmaid and the most sensitive of our blended brood, began to get “a little green around the gills” as they say in my home state of Oklahoma and—with another nod to an Okieism—was about to go down like the Titanic on an ocean of sea-foam chiffon.

Like a well-trained rescue squad, we automatically flew into action to help the downed family member. Don (my husband) immediately stood up to retrieve his daughter and help her down to the front pew of the church, where he knelt and fanned her with a wedding program. I positioned myself near Mollie’s head, where I went into nurturing mode, whispering comfort and stroking her hair. Mollie’s mother, Michelle, took a place at her daughter’s feet where she massaged her legs, directing the blood toward her heart. John Helvering, my ex-husband, sent someone to get orange juice to help stabilize Mollie’s blood sugar. Anna and Collin were frozen in their places, looking for all the world like wedding-cake toppers with twin deer-in-the-headlight expressions, both of them caught off guard by the family sideshow unfolding in Pew #1.

The various sibs and stepsibs watched the action, waiting for a thumbs-up that Mollie was okay. It turned out Mollie had forgotten to eat that afternoon in all the excitement, and between the heat and the adrenaline, the low blood sugar just got the best of her. Eventually she felt better and decided to remain on the front pew. Anna and Collin were not about to go on until they knew Mollie was okay, but then, seasoned recoverers that we are, everyone took their places and our daughter resumed getting hitched without, well, a hitch.

Later my friend Shari would remark, “Sandi, only God could have brought about the perfect coordination of a family that had once been so fractured.” She was right. Though the picture that will go in our family album will be the one where we all looked perfectly poised, coiffed, and oh-so-together, the more precious “family photo” will be the one that the camera missed but is captured for all time in my mind. It will be a picture of the whole family, extended and intimate, working as one to help a daughter and sister in need.

Families may have their squabbles but when one of their own goes down, most of us let the small stuff go and immediately band together to retrieve and revive the fallen. A family isn’t unlike the units of firefighters who went in to rescue their perishing brothers when the twin towers were hit on 9–11 or the World War II soldiers from the miniseries, Band of Brothers. They may have their disputes, but when it counts—when someone is wounded (either by enemy fire or by his or her own carelessness)—families, firefighters, and soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder together in their efforts to restore the wounded one.

Now freeze-frame these pictures in your mind for a moment. A daughter faints, and a family—odd though its makeup may be—moves to help her. A team of rescue workers walk into a burning, melting hell with only one thing on their mind: to save their fallen comrades. It occurs to me that perhaps this is part of the picture Jesus had in mind for his family—his church. “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

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