Can You Mend It, Carpenter?

A Story of Faith Written by Meredith Hayes

If Christ can mend a heart as scared, indignant, tired and hurt as mine was,

He will surely do it for you. 

In January 2015, my siblings, mom and I sought professional help from therapists about the conundrum of many years: “What are we going to do about dad?” My siblings and I had all long since left the nest and had families of our own, but after the recent Christmas holidays spent together at home in Irvine, California, we realized how bad things had become. Dad was spiraling like never before. 

It was both liberating and crushing that therapists so quickly identified him as someone with textbook narcissistic personality disorder. Until then I had not known much about narcissism, in fact I thought it was like a strong adjective for selfishness, and had heard it applied casually and colloquially a handful of times. The more we learned about narcissism, the better we understood why our attempts at helping him over the years had been utterly futile. Dad had started out as such a great guy -- he was charismatic, smart, bold, and handsome. When I was little he would sing Goodnight by The Beatles to my older sister and I as we fell asleep. He’d surprise me and check me out of elementary school for lunch at Bee-Bop Burger “just for fun”. But then over the years he just started decaying from the inside out, it was always increasing in momentum, and we were powerless to stop it. I grew up and had the freedom to keep the distance I wanted. But my mom’s circumstances were different, and I knew that marriage to someone like my dad would be hellish.

We got to work. An intervention of sorts happened in our home; he needed to make some changes if he did not want to lose his wife. We knew too much now, and we were setting a boundary, but we loved him and wanted him to stay and thrive as part of the family. We were shocked that after extending this olive branch, not only was there no remorse, there was no acknowledgement or acceptance of the feelings we expressed. According to dad, he had nothing to apologize for, if anything he was the victim. After the intervention he dropped any remaining pretense of regulating his behavior, and his toxicity was fully unveiled. His behavior reminded me of my son after learning he couldn’t have a lollipop right before dinner. Yikes.

There was another surprise twist waiting: after all this, you’d think a household name like Meri (mom) would take care of business and get cracking on her next act in the Broadway musical of her life. But mom didn’t leave the marriage. She just...froze. Mom had apparently earned a secret honorary doctorate, probably sometime in the 90’s, and her dissertation was on How to Live with a Narcissist and be a Sophisticated Pillar of the Community While Doing It. I knew she had always operated with her family’s well-being at the top of her wish list, but she was desensitized over decades with dad. Even when she was paying therapists for their expertise, and they repeatedly promised, “He will not get better, he will not change. Look at how far he’s fallen in almost 40 years -- he won’t stop falling. Your best option is divorce” she just wouldn’t hear them. No amount of reasoning or pleading from her four children could reach her. She gave flimsy, nonsensical excuses why staying with my dad was the "right thing" to do, and quite frankly, these things were horrifying for me to hear. In time, I felt I’d lost her too. For someone whose parents had never so much as inched toward St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, I felt orphaned. 

So what now? I thought back to a friend whose father had rented a U-Haul and driven up to San Francisco to help her pack her bags and brought her and her infant son home to safety, away from her odious marriage. My grandfather, reminiscent of Gregory Peck, would have made an obvious hero in this situation, but he had passed away over a decade earlier. I wished I could show up at my childhood home, chuck my dad’s crap into boxes and leave it all on the curb, maybe high-five the locksmith as I made my way out. I knew it was just a depressing daydream and not a viable option for a few reasons. The main reason was, as the two different therapists I saw over this time told me on more than one occasion, Mom needed to come to this decision on her own. If anyone pushed her out the door, even if it was the best door around, she would not be happy in her new life. The choice belonged to her and nobody else. I felt so much despair over this weird stalemate. Despite the grief my dad had dished out through the years, or perhaps in part because of it, I was always so tightly bonded to my siblings and mom. How could he spoil her for us? It felt like a dirty, tragic trick he’d saved for last.

When I was a teenager I had a poster on my bedroom wall. It was of a painting of Jesus Christ, and at the bottom, a quoted scripture: 

“I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” (John 14:18) 

I loved that promise and had always kept it with me. I still loved it, but I didn’t want the comfort and peace to heal the pain of my unchanged circumstances. I just wanted the changed circumstances -- I wanted my dad to see his way to the exit so the rest of us could thrive and continue in our happy, rarely cohesive relationships. There was an obvious solution, completely within reach. On some cellular level I felt that to accept things as they were, and to let Christ heal me, was nice in theory and all, but how about this instead: mom just snaps out of it, does right by herself, spares us all the agony, case closed! And hey, I will be happy to take my Savior up on his benevolent offer of comfort and peace another time. Some version of this plea was my earnest prayer every night for months. And for months, things remained the same: wobbly and with a grim outlook.

I don’t remember when I realized that I had exhausted every single option, but one day I paused to take a look around at what I did have in front of me besides my open wound. I had a husband, Jeff, who is good and kind, brilliant and funny with the most amazing white blond hair. There were our two charming and relentless boys, Jude and Graham, who loved and needed me so much. There was the little baby I was gestating throughout this, who turned out to be my vibrant, incomparable daughter Ruthie. I was regretful that for months they’d had to share so much of me with this little disaster. How much longer would I ask them to do it? Until my mom made the choice I wanted her to? There was no guarantee that would ever happen, and in the meantime my holding pattern seemed a steep price for my own burgeoning family to pay.

I changed my prayers. I pleaded for Heavenly Father to help me accept this loss and not be afraid anymore of the future as I saw it laid out before me. I asked Heavenly Father to help me somehow feel joy and peace in my life. Although I had always enjoyed the blessing of seemingly bullet-proof faith, I now noticed a weak spot in my belief. Somewhere inside I doubted that what Christ could do to heal me would give me the brand of happiness I wanted. I was not convinced that pain this great could be eclipsed by anything -- anything -- but a resolution to my family’s problem. A poem by George Blair that I had heard many times years before came to mind: 

In Nazareth, the narrow road,
That tires the feet and steals the breath,
Passes the place where once abode
The Carpenter of Nazareth.

And up and down the dusty way
The village folk would often wend;
And on the bench, beside Him, lay
Their broken things for Him to mend.

The maiden with the doll she broke,
The woman with the broken chair,
The man with broken plough, or yoke,
Said, “Can you mend it, Carpenter?”

And each received the thing he sought,
In yoke, or plough, or chair, or doll;
The broken thing which each had brought
Returned again a perfect whole.

So, up the hill the long years through,
With heavy step and wistful eye,
The burdened souls their way pursue,
Uttering each the plaintive cry:

“O Carpenter of Nazareth,
This heart, that’s broken past repair,
This life, that’s shattered nigh to death,
Oh, can You mend them, Carpenter?”

And by His kind and ready hand,
His own sweet life is woven through
Our broken lives, until they stand
A New Creation–“all things new.”

“The shattered [substance] of [the] heart,
Desire, ambition, hope, and faith,
Mould Thou into the perfect part,
O, Carpenter of Nazareth!”

Christ could heal anything, even this, if I would let Him. I worked to pray with humility and openness. That was hard at first, but misery was slowly traded for optimism, ashes for beauty. I didn’t know what the future looked like with my parents, but that was ok. I was learning to let go of the list of imperatives I’d been clutching. Looking back I know that my trial was extended long enough so I could resign myself and seek Him for this miracle. If Christ can mend a heart as scared, indignant, tired and hurt as mine was, He will surely do it for you. 

In time, my mom came to the decision to end her marriage. She’s shared with me that following the divorce she woke up each morning awash with peace and gratitude. She has since married a good man who is her personal version of Jake Ryan from 16 Candles. I had no expectation of him other than being a good companion for my mother, but he has outdone himself, becoming a loving grandfather for my children and nieces and nephews. We love and adore him. I could never have imagined the ocean of blessings our family would receive.

There was a time early on we’d talk about “what might’ve been.” What would it have been like if mom had sought professional advice earlier, or how would it be if she had left my dad earlier, and so on. I don’t ask those questions anymore. My dad couldn’t finish alongside us, but I forgive him freely. I don’t worry about what I have lost, I know what I have won. I have my family, I have my faith, I have a pound of See’s chocolate hidden in a drawer. Whenever I reflect back on all that happened, I see that everything was and is as it should be.