Page 31 of We Wish You a Messy Christmas

“Oh, Jane,” Rob said with a choked voice. “We don’t want to hurt you, we want to help you. But if it hurts now and helps later, it’ll be worth it. Can’t you consider what you’ve heard? All that we’ve just confessed to you? Don’t you realize we’re only speaking the truth? Hoping that it’ll help you to change?”

“OCD is a real condition,” Olivia said. “Obsessive compulsion is very serious, Mom. And I feel pretty sure that you have it. But from what I’ve read, it’s treatable. But you have to agree to it.”

“You need professional help,” Justin said in a firm but gentle tone. “I have several contacts I can share with you.”

Jane locked eyes with him. “What makes you think this is my problem? What if you are all wrong? What if I’m the one who is normal and the rest of you have problems?” She pointed at Cindy. “For instance, you are a mess. Your house is a mess. For Pete’s sake, you have an outhouse in your front yard! Is that normal?” She turned to Lulu. “And what about you? You bring all your trashy Christmas decorations and spread them all over my house, and I’m supposed to act like that’s okay? And you, Olivia, my own daughter. You come home with Malcolm McEntire and his dog in tow—parking them in my house, and acting like that’s a good idea?”

“I just wanted to be a good neighbor,” Olivia said quietly.

“I think you all have been trying to drive me nutty,” Jane retorted. “And you’re almost succeeding.”

“They just want to show you that you need help, Jane.” Justin knelt down in front of her, looking her in the eye. “Everyone in this room loves you, Jane. They have all put up with your compulsions and your harsh criticisms, and they still love you. The choice will be yours, Jane. You can continue on your road to perfection, but you need to understand that your concept of perfection is very flawed. You think perfection is having the best of everything, and everyone and everything in its perfect place. But that is not God’s kind of perfection. Can’t you see that he made us to be flawed, he made life to have bumps and lumps, he allows hard stuff into our lives? And he does so for a reason.”

“Really?” Jane challenged him. “Tell me why that is. Why would a perfect God allow so much imperfection? Why would he put up with it?”

“I believe he allows it in order to remind us that in our weakness, our brokenness, our faultiness, we need to call on him. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. And we all have a lot of weaknesses, which gives him a lot of room to show his perfection. But it’s his brand of perfection—not ours. Can you see that?”

Jane realized that she wanted to see it, wanted to understand it, but felt like she was in a thick fog. “I . . . don’t know.”

“Do you want to see it? Do you want to understand how God’s perfection is vastly different from ours? Do you want to learn to give up your standards of perfection and replace them with God’s?”

She closed her eyes and considered his words, then slowly nodded. “I do want that. But to be honest, it sounds impossible. It sounds too hard.” When she opened her eyes, more tears were flowing.

“But can you see that you’re living in a kind of bondage, trying to create a perfect world that only hurts you and others and will eventually separate you from God and the ones you love?”

“I can sort of see that . . . through the fog,” she conceded, wiping at her tears with a tissue Cindy handed to her. “But I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Do you trust the people in this room?” Jason asked.

She looked around, unsure that she really did trust everyone. Oh, sure, they looked sincere enough, but did they really care about her the way they claimed?

“Do you trust your husband? Your daughter? Your mother?” he persisted.

“I guess so.”

“And your neighbors, who’ve put up with you all these years?”

She wanted to question who put up with who, but knew she was outnumbered, and so her answer was another shrug.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

She just nodded.

“Well, right after Christmas, I want you to meet with a licensed therapist who’s a close friend of me and my wife and a real expert on OCD, since she wrote her thesis on it. I already asked her to save you an appointment slot, just in case. Anyway, I’ll have her give you a call to set it up.”

Jane agreed to this but wondered if she would really go see this woman. Still, she felt her best chance of escaping this well-meaning albeit intrusive crowd was to agree and comply—if only for the moment. But now everyone in the room was patting her on the back, hugging her, congratulating her, and making her feel like she had just made a commitment at some evangelical rally . . . when she still questioned her sincerity and was already feeling guilty for being disingenuous.

“I’m very tired and my hip is aching,” she told them, which was partly true. “I think I need a pain pill and a nap. Thank you all for coming. I’m going to be giving this a lot of thought.”

Her mother began to sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” but instead of merry Lulu substituted the word messy, and the others, who seemed to love it, chimed right in. As Jane wheeled herself toward the bedroom, they boisterously serenaded her, and all she could think was Get me outta here.

In the silent security of her bedroom, with the door safely locked, she allowed herself to ponder the things that had just been said. On some level they made sense and almost rang true, but on many other levels their interference felt highly intrusive, not to mention impossible. The mere idea that she could change her ways and accept anything less than perfection when she still believed it was not only attainable but preferable . . . well, it just sounded too hard. She looked up at the framed print hanging above her cherry dresser. It was an attractive landscape of a Tuscan vineyard estate, the sort of place she’d been dreaming of visiting after Rob retired.

The bucolic scene of rich, verdant green was washed in golden sunshine—a dreamy sort of place one might see in a beautiful movie. But as lovely as the painting was, she couldn’t enjoy it because it was hanging crooked on the wall. So aggravating, and it was impossible for her to reach in her current condition. And so she just sat there staring, feeling tears trickling down her cheeks and wondering if she would be stuck like this forever. “Dear God, help me,” she prayed, “please, please, help me.”

seventeen

Despite the fact that Malcolm was sleeping in their guest room, Olivia had barely seen him. Oh, she knew he’d been busy helping his dad and then working at the clinic. But she also knew that couldn’t take all of his time. She tried not to resent how quickly he’d swooped into the house the last couple days. After returning from the clinic, he’d go upstairs and shower, then gather Sadie up and disappear. She knew he was at his parents’ home, probably enjoying good food and happy company, but she still wondered if there was more going on. Was this a hint that having a relationship with her was pointless?