In the past few years, some of my worst fears have come true.  Death came around and set up camp.  When Daddy was dying he tried to prepare me.  He could always see through to the truth.  He said “I know you are trying to make everything nice.  But your daddy will be gone soon.”  Trying to make everything nice.  That’s me.  Staring into the face of death, celebrating what I know will be a last holiday with my father, in the middle of an antiseptic perfumed hospital room still trying to make everything nice.

One of the last things he would teach me, my father revealed something raw in me that I couldn’t even name or describe.  But he named it.  He saw it.  Years of people pleasing, overachieving, perfectionism, codependency all boiled down.  Trying to make everything nice.  

 And if death in its long and shattering visit in my life has taught me anything its that I don’t have to make things nice anymore and that they’re already nicer than I could ever make them anyway.  When tears are a constant companion, sleep is elusive, darkness is heavy in your heart, and everything… absolutely everything is undeniably, irrevocably torn to pieces, it becomes apparent that you are finally and utterly unable to make everything nice. 

You see, what I thought was “nice” is no longer possible for me.  Those goals of a good life I set out to attain?  Blown to smithereens.  Build a faithful life of service to God in a faith community: fail.  Protect my children from abuse: fail.  Have a long and healthy marriage: fail.  Achieve a reasonable work/life balance: fail.  Share the joy with my Daddy that I made it to being the boss:  too late, he’s gone.  And those frightening tragedies I prayed so hard to be protected from and spoke innumerable “be careful’s” and “call me when you get home safe’s” trying to avoid?  They happened.  When you hold your daughter as she describes her abuse to a detective, or when you kiss your nephew’s broken face and whisper a goodbye you know he already hears from heaven, when you cry while you strip your sister’s surgery drains because it hurts her but you have to do it,  when you tell your husband you can’t live this way anymore, when you hug your brother tight, not knowing it’s the last time… all hope of anything ever being nice simply leaves your soul.  

I suppose I never really quit on my own, trying to make things nice.  I suppose the habit was wrested from me, pried from my anxious hands by sorrow after sorrow that flooded my life.  With every death and loss and failure, my idea of a nice life died, too.  I ceased trying to make things nice because that kind of nice was lost to me.  And yet, the death of my nice life is giving birth to a new realization:  the “nice” life I thought I wanted and tried so hard to get, is nowhere near as nice as the life God has actually given me.

While I’ve been scrambling around trying to MAKE things nice, He has been handing me grace after grace and miracle after miracle.  Out of the grave where I buried my idea of “nice” keep coming these realizations that a life of true love, real friendship, depth of meaning is already mine and was given to me while I strived in vain for an amateur level of “nice.”  

I’ve stood behind my dear friends widow as she lovingly cared for him and never flinched away until she knew he was safely home in heaven.  I’ve held hands with my brother and sister and father while our Daddy prayed over us in a rare moment “just us” before he died.  I’ve left my childhood home, with the knowledge that I was seeing my father for the last time and had no words left unsaid and no doubt that he knew how much I loved him and I knew how much he loved me.  I’ve watched my shy, soft spoken daughter stand up for herself in a way most women far older and more mature could not.  I’ve seen her stare down challenge after challenge, some put in her way by my own bumbling mistakes, and seen her become an adult that doesn’t run from hard things.  I’ve experienced a whole community of law enforcement officers forming an honor guard for my nephew in the middle of the night as they escorted him to the room where his organs would be taken to save other lives.  I’ve seen my mother start singing as she walked as far as she could go with the body of her first grandson.  I’ve watched my brother and sister in law hold hands and love each other and demonstrate the truest of loves even as their world came crashing down.  I’ve sat in my living room while my dear friends cried with me and fed me and took care of me so that I could get enough strength together to help my family.  I’ve slept beside my sister, just like when we were kids, only with better secrets.  I’ve had a VIP pass to the fight of a lifetime as cancer sucker punched my sister and she took it to the mat.  I’ve walked hand in hand with my husband into an office where we mapped out a way to move forward together and I’ve let go when that way didn’t work and divorce was, once again, my way forward alone.  I’ve sat through sessions where strangers change each other’s lives and mine by telling their stories.  I’ve fallen to my knees with a phone to my ear as the sound of my sister telling me she’d found our brother dead, shattered me once again.  I’ve stared undying love in the face so often it’s commonplace in my life.  I’ve had songs come out of me when I couldn’t even understand how to sing anymore. I’ve experienced the morphing of two poorly thought out marriages into life alone, left with three beautiful humans as a sparkling gift out of my mistakes.

Who gets that kind of life?  Who could even orchestrate that if they tried?  Who cares about “nice” when there is healing after brokenness, forgiveness after betrayal, bravery in times of danger, rescue when we are drowning?  Nope, my life isn’t nice. Not nice at all.  It’s full of loud, anguished cries, soaking wet hankies, death defying love, stupid mistakes, careful repairs, scars that still hurt and wounds that won’t heal, laughter until I wet my pants, breathless attraction, nervous energy, and shocking affection.  It features people who ignore my attempts to hide my imperfections and love me anyway.  It contains huge mistakes and mercy, oh the mercy!  The grace is matchless and the stains are permanent!  All beautifully ripped apart and sewn back together and mismatched pieces and frayed edges and one-of-a-kind priceless and handed to me while I was looking around for “nice.”  

Daddy’s words rang in my head over and over.  “I know you’re trying to make things nice.”  It would be a long time before I really understood what he was trying to get me to see.  I know it now, Daddy.  I know that I can’t keep trying to make things nice because I’ll miss all kinds of lovely life that way.  I don’t need to ignore what’s really in front of my face, or keep trying to alter it just because it’s imperfect.  I know that I can abide with the broken and that I’m stronger when I let things be ripped and mended than I am when I insist on keeping the fabric intact.  

My china cabinet life has been traded for a set of cracked up, second hand, mismatched dishes.  It’s nowhere near nice.  But even with cracked vessels, the meals are delicious, the table is set and surrounded by love and I’m saying grace over it all.  Nice no longer measures up to real.  And I’ll take the gorgeous, excruciating real because it’s so much more than that sought after counterfeit nice.