I declare this to you as I'm cuddled under my favorite pink blanket--that I so maturely named "fuzzy" at the age of 22--on this said couch.
I eat my meals here. I watch my favorite television shows here (well, when I'm not watching Burn Notice and Graceland at the Downs' that is...). I have my quiet times here. I even send all of my InterVarsity emails and write my talks here.
These patterns of browns, yellows, reds, and greens make up the fabric that screams of the redemption of my life.
In high school, I never really liked this couch because I never really liked this living room. I didn't want to be in any common space in my house because I very much enjoyed staying in my room with the door shut. My wardrobe and attitude announced to the world, "I have teen angst. And I don't want you to talk to me."
It was on this couch that I sat one horrible night during my senior year of high school. I hid my face under a blanket while my swim coach sat across the room, telling my parents that I was suicidal and that I needed to go to counseling. This was the night that I thought my life was ending, when in reality, it was only just beginning. A year and a half later, what I found was that conversation led me to a Christian counselor who led me to InterVarsity, which eventually led me into a relationship with Jesus.
But even though the Lord worked that dreadful conversation for my good and used it as the catalyst to bring me into a relationship with Him, this couch was always the place where I hid in shame under a blanket, too afraid to look into any of their eyes.
And then this was the couch that I laid on (I won't say slept, because sleeping wasn't in the agenda that week) during the last few days of my mother's life. My sister was on the chair, my dad on the bigger couch, and my mom on the hospital bed in the center of the room. Dad and I took turns doing round-the-clock care for my mom at night and half-heartedly smiling at visitors during the day. I remember jumping up from this couch in cold sweats and fear in the middle of those nights, checking to make sure she was still breathing. The tears and words and feelings and images from that week are burned into my memory. Forever.
And as those scenes were etched into my memory, these were the cushions that offered me comfort.
It was the death couch to me, the place where my suicidal thoughts and habits were made public and the place where I helplessly watched as my mom died. It was the place that birthed shame and anger and fear and sadness. It was the place that ripped life from me.
During breaks from college, I would come home and sit in this family room, remembering how my mom used to always hang out in here and how I would avoid joining her at all costs. I'm not sure why, but I started reading and watching TV in here more often, maybe in some lame attempt to get back what was so abruptly taken from me, maybe in some lame attempt to apologize to someone who was no longer here.
So by the time I graduated from college, the room no longer held it's death-stigma in my mind. Those haunting images never went away, but I began to forget about the significance in the fabric of that couch.
And one day, as if a wave of clarity hit me, my friend turned to me with laughter in her heart (trying to prove to me that there was no question that I was an extrovert) and shouted, "YOU SIT ON THE CROWDED COUCH!"
The crowded couch.
I looked around the room and realized there were 30 women packed in here, women who entered through that doorway every Friday morning, women who knew and loved the Lord. On this couch, I was right in the center of the thickest sense of agape you'll ever experience, snuggled in between five other sisters in Christ.
This room went from a place of darkness to light. This couch had somehow been transformed into a place where I met with the Lord quietly in the mornings and loudly with my women's bible study on Fridays. This couch went from the place where death loomed and shame burdened and became a place where I did my missionary work, where I wrote curriculums and talks to share Jesus with my students. It went from being a place of me sitting alone under a blanket, hearing someone tell my parents that I wanted to die to being a place where I encountered Jesus. It went from being a place of me sitting alone, watching helplessly as my mother died, to being a place where I sat piled with friends and love and the Word of God.
It went from a place where I was alone and in darkness to a place where I was in community and in light.
And oh isn't that what He always does? He turns our mourning into dancing. He replaces our sackcloth with garments of joy.
On this couch I once sat broken, and now I sit whole. On this couch, I thought my life was ending, and now I write talks to invite students into the Life that He offers.
This couch represents me. This couch speaks of my healing. This couch proclaims the mighty work that Jesus has done in my heart.
By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see. [Acts 3:16]
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