Rainy season arrived in Georgia, like a guest who knows her way around your home and comes without a call or invitation. She's started pulling golden-freckled buckeye and sunburned dogwood leaves down, arranging them like a patchwork quilt along the roadside. We decide to take a walk--my suggestion--with March, the blonde service-dog that belongs to her son. The driveway's slick--I wasn't expecting that, and I watched her struggle to balance while March eagerly pulls on the leash.
I'll take him, I offer. She doesn't hesitate to pass me the leash. She's a carrier. Her muscles don't always want to do the things she'd like them to.
And she's talking--not coming up for air. Telling me her story. Their story. The story that demands to be told because it frames their life.
Once they were two teens in love. Once they were just a couple who attended church and oversaw the nursery ministry and had four kids. 2 beautiful girls. 2 handsome boys. Once.
And she knew things weren't right with the 3rd. Not right away, but soon. He didn't go to the bathroom like the others. And she's a mom. A seasoned mom by the time he came along. So she knew.
And no doctor should ever question a mother who just knows.
No matter how much or how little education she has.
No matter where she's from.
No matter what she looks like.
No matter how she dresses.
If a momma knows, then she knows.
But he did question. He did ignore. He did pass off as insignificant that thing she knew was important.
Time snuck by. They were busy, schooling, and raising, and churching. And when he played basketball, he didn't run as fast or throw as high.
But it was the stairs of all places where they finally realized, where they fully saw. The stairs in our church.
Stairs I've climbed hundreds and hundreds of times.
Stairs my children--my two boys--have skipped up and hopped down.
Stairs with carpet worn from strong, healthy limbs trodding and tromping over them.
He was so slow that the senior ladies were passing him.
That's when they knew.
That's when light bulbs flashed and their souls insisted on having some answers.
There was blood-work. There were tests. An orthopedist, a neurologist. There were words sent out into the air like tiny grey helium balloons left to float in their minds until labs came back and doctors were sure.
Reckless phrases were let to fly too. Hopeful things like, "He'll be fine." Giant yellow-balloons that they reached for, wanted to cling to. Because who wouldn't cling to the happy-yellow balloons that promised sunshine and resolution over the silent, slippery grey balloons floating like grenades threatening to engulf life as you know it.
And 8 months after the quest for answers began in earnest, a phone call came from the city with 3 words that would change their lives.
3 words that would turn everything upside down.
Everything inside out.
3 words that would peel the skin from their bodies and leave them naked, raw and bleeding if you really want to know. And even that doesn't express what those 3 words really did to them.
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
She says it rocked her and ravaged her husband.
She says before her son had been born she'd been prompted to pray more fervently for him than the first two. Compelled to pray for him, even before conception. And now she understands why.
We're walking. March is pulling. Leaves are floating graceful and quiet to the earth because time refuses to be still. She continues to tell me the story, recalls the details.
Details of heartbreak.
You don't forget those kinds of details. They're invisible tattoos over your eyeballs that color everything you see, over eardrums that muffle everything you hear, over lips that filter your phrases, and sometimes suck the very oxygen from your lungs.
And she tells me the date. I'm ashamed because even now, a few days later, I can't remember it. But she does. She knows them all. When he was diagnosed. When he went on prednisone. When he began to need the cane for walking. When he got his first chair. The day they got March, the service dog. She remembers it all.
She uses words that I don't understand even after going home and looking them up on Google.
Distrophen Gene
Exons.
Gene mapping for diagnostics.
And while I listen I'm thinking,
She's an expert.
She's an expert in the disease that will slowly and systematically attack her son's muscles.
And the heart? It's a muscle.
And you don't live without a heart.
And while I was becoming an expert in gardening for the backyard novice, she was becoming an expert in the disease that will demand her son.
And I want to cuss.
Every profane, hateful word I can muster I want to fling at that disease that mars a child's future with a best-by date.
There
aren't
words.
No word is strong enough.
March pulls at the leash; he's strong-willed and determined. A good match for her son.
Her son who is weak of muscle but Hercules of spirit.
There are twice weekly therapy appointments. I knew about them for a long time. She'd mentioned them before.
But on this day she'd come to my house--a rarity for her son--and I saw what was involved in just getting inside the therapy building.
There are two ramps involved. One that allows him to exit the van and another that allows him to enter my home. A strip of plywood in between because even in his high-tech chair, the pea-gravel walk-way sucks his wheels down like quick-sand.
And for those few moments when his wheels are swallowed by a few inches of decorative pebbles, I think how his life,
their life, the entire family--all 6 of them--has been sucked into this disease.
Every therapy appointment means dragging out ramps, rain or shine.
Every church visit means the ramps.
His younger brother slings them around like they're rag dolls because he helps.
They all help.
Life doesn't stop. You just find ways to move along with it.
They move along.
An addition to their home, a bathroom that allows him to get in and out with his chair. A bedroom to suit his needs. A ramp that stretches across the front of their home like a banner announcing, Someone with DMD lives here.
They have birthdays--yearly markers that for them, don't so much indicate how old their child has become, but how much time they may have left.
They celebrate holidays knowing with each one that passes, they are closer to their last with him.
They take turns attending church.
She can't get to the gym anymore. She can't leave the house to get there. Even though she's a carrier, and her blood-pressure's high and the doctors want her to go for stress, for health.
As if a gym membership could ever erase the strain of DMD.
She walks on a tread mill at home.
She'd walk a million miles if he could just take a few more steps.
By now we're walking up a hill, and she's still talking, but her breathing's heavy with exertion.
Still, she's walking. I'm walking. Her son isn't.
She hasn't slept through the night in years.
Literally years.
Because someone has to help him turn over. Someone has to help him to the bathroom. Someone has to listen for him.
People give them a gift certificate to a restaurant, and it's nice to go out. We want you to have a break, people insist.
But you don't take a break from this.
It sits, like an unwelcome intruder, at the table with them through the meal.
And it screams the entire time.
Because it can, and they're powerless to stop it.
And no one else can fully hear the scream that echoes inside their head.
Not one single other soul on the planet knows the horrific hollering of DMD but the families that live with it.
And there are no fancy headphones, or spiritual phrases, or brilliant blogs that can silence it.
And God forbid you offer a well-meaning platitude or suggest they pray for healing. As if they haven't? As if they haven't pleaded and begged the God--who they still hope in and cling to--of the universe to just
take.
this.
cup.
from.
them.
They're a mother and a father. Of course they have.
And yet, she says to me, We wouldn't have gotten through this if it hadn't of been for the promises of God.
When there are no human words, His Words, His promises still their souls.
I'm humbled because I've said Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him, but she lives the words.
Every moment of every day.
While I'm deciding if my son will play soccer in the fall, they're deciding if they'll take theirs off one drug or keep him on it. It could lengthen his life. But it might not.
Life and death choices sit squarely on their shoulders like iron yoke on a pair of oxen.
While my boys haven't been sick in two years, and I can't remember their doctor's name, her son has a team of doctors and a point man. She says these people become their family, the doctors and therapists. The therapist who notices when her son can no longer pull the trigger on a Nerf gun, so he purchases her son a battery operated one that weak fingers can manage.
And thank God for health care professionals who get it. Who care. Who genuinely want to help.
I feel so dumb. I tell her so. I understand so little. I grapple with understanding how it is passed down, try to grasp how it happened.
She's so kind, tells me I'm not dumb. It's complicated, she says.
That's putting it mildly.
It's hell on earth.
It's the realization of the curse that began with Adam, and they are the unlucky recipients.
We reach the top of the hill, and she's panting, but undaunted.
That's not surprising. She is always climbing now. Her life is a hill.
Her husband and other children? They climb right along with her.
He posts real and raw glimpses on facebook, and I sit at home, read them, and pray.
Because what else can I really do? What else can be said?
They're all painted in various shades of DMD.
The younger brother tells my son that he is his best friend.
His best friend.
It takes the wind out of me because my son has hung out with him three times.
Because who has time for sleepovers and parties when you're going to therapy or home recovering from therapy or you've been running him to and from the bathroom all day because it's one of those days?
And when is the laundry gonna get washed?
Who's going out and buying groceries?
Who's cooking?
Who has energy because who has slept?
Who is helping the other kids with their schooling?
Who is researching new treatments?
Who is maintaining their marriage?
Time's not their friend.
We're still walking and meet a neighbor, out with his dogs. She chats happily with him about March, the service dog that makes their family laugh. The neighbor admires March.
But I admire her.
Because she's still standing.
DMD has colored them, but it hasn't defined them.
She has this laugh that makes her eyes squint and her cheeks turn bubble-gum pink. And for the life of me, I'm amazed how she can laugh.
And he's a jokester--her husband. A dry sense of humor that will catch you off guard like a deer in the middle of the road and leave you feeling had in a good way.
He gave my husband a spare set of drill bits a year or so ago.
Because they still think about other people. Their lives go on.
One daughter's in college and loving it.
The other daughter is well too.
Wikipedia says this:
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a recessive X-linked form of muscular dystrophy, affecting around 1 in 3,600 boys, which results in muscle degeneration and eventual death.
That 1 in 3600?
That 1?
He has a name.
It is Brandon Smith.
He loves the Georgia Bulldogs, cars, video games, and Zaxby's chicken. He has a family who love him, who fight for him, and he's pretty darn good at Liar's Dice it turns out.
We finish our walk, and they stay 'til dark that day. It's the longest outing he's had in a while.
As they drive away, we're all waving--our hands raised up in the air, a luxury I've always taken for granted.
Once, during the game of Liar's dice, I stupidly offer her son my hand for a high five when he successfully bluffs. He doesn't respond.
DMD holds his hand in his lap.
But I'm raising his hand here.
And I'm raising mine too.
In honor of Brandon,
his mother, Melissa,
his Father, Jim,
his sisters, Kelley and Britney
and his brother, Nathan.
We can all raise our hands for them. Because isn't that what they did for Moses, and isn't that how these battles are truly fought?
Here's how.
Give to research.
Pray for a cure.
Give to this specific family. (Click HERE to donate RIGHT away!)
They need a reliable van that accommodates his chair and will get them back and forth to medical appointments. For it to offer everything they need, it will cost nearly $27,000, and they are around half-way there. You can simply mail a check to:
The Brandon Smith Van Fund
c/o United Community Bank
P.O. Box 398
Blairsville Ga 30514
Share this blog post in the hope that others will raise their hands with us.
Pretty please, won't you raise your hand with us?
Showing posts with label mothering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mothering. Show all posts
Monday, October 13, 2014
Saturday, April 26, 2014
The Mothering Chronicles 11: When Homeschooling Mommas (and all the other mommas too!) Hit a Wall
I homeschool my boys. Essentially what this means is I'm a lunatic. Who, might I ask, in their right mind would give up a paying career to teach children at home . . . unpaid? There are several obvious flaws with this choice. 1. No pay. 2. It's hard. (If I taught in regular school, I might get to teach the same subject to the same grade each year. In homeschool I have to learn new material every.single.flipping.year. And that was all well and good, pie-in-the-sky, happy-happy-joy-joy when we did faux-archeological digs and attempted to make hot air balloons. But Algebra? Really? Somebody stab me in the eyeballs with a thousand sewing needles and relieve me of my misery puleeeeze! ) 3. You have to fold laundry WHILE you teach. 4. I no longer have a justifiable reason to buy cute new clothes every fall because the official homeschool teacher's uniform is track pants, fuzzy socks and a sweater. 5. Did I mention the part about no pay? Yeah, okay, moving on then.
I also run. Years ago, when I first began running, I used to pray that God would send me a butterfly, a deer, a fuzzy caterpillar, ANYTHING to distract me from the jog. I'd go for about five minutes, then all of a sudden, my legs were cement. You could not have held a gun to my head and gotten me to jog one step further. I was lamenting this dilemma to a girl with uber cute running shoes and very tidy-hair who pertly replied, "You're just hitting your first runner's wall. It's normal. It happens to everyone . . . even me. You have to run longer than seven minutes." She said some kind of scientific-smart-runner stuff about how your mind doesn't tell your heart to adjust its pace until the seven minute mark. My eyes glazed over. All I heard was, "You can do this. Just run longer than seven minutes." Hope.
The other day, I was running with a friend. She's been wanting to learn to run (I know, right? How do you learn to run? I think it's just like walking except faster.) for like a year. She's doing way better than she even realizes, but she seems to hit a wall. So, I thought I'd go with her. Sure enough, we're jogging along (Did I mention when I jog it sometimes feels like there is someone riding piggy back on my waste? It's just my bootie bouncing, but I feel you should know it's the size of a small child.) and she says, "I can't do this. I'm gonna have to stop."
I'm like, "Oh no. You're not stopping. You've got this. Keep going."
She's all, "No, I can't keep going."
I'm, "Can you feel your pulse in your temples yet?"
She, (heaving) "No."
Me, "Then you're not stopping. You've got more in you. Keep going."
Eventually, she stops.
Just a millisecond because I turn her around and point her down hill and tell her, "NO! You are not stopping until time is up. You can do this. Keep going. Don't quit. Put one foot in front of the other. Slow your pace if you have to, but do not quit."
I feel you should also know she was packing heat, so I was very brave in pushing her so hard because at one point when I pointed out a very large bull-frog on the side of the road to her (What? I thought she would enjoy the distraction!) she said, "At this point, I. DO.NOT.CARE." I am like ninety-nine percent sure she had her hand on the trigger when she said that, but I could be mistaken. Maybe.
Anyway, she saw the wall coming. She kept telling me it was coming, and then boom! She.Hit.That.Wall.
And I've been homeschooling my sweet princes for six years now. And boom! This year, I hit the wall. We're talking full-on homeschool burnout. (Way worse than the garlic toast I burn in the broiler oven every single blasted time!) My eldest is headed into 9th/10th grade courses. (Yeah, I know, right? One of those moms whose kids don't know what grade they're in. So annoying.) The younger is headed into 6th. And I feel like I am headed into the grave.
And you're probably laughing, cause it's kinda funny that I say I feel like I'm headed into the grave, except I'm crying while I type those words because dadgum, friends, sometimes you just hit the wall so hard that you feel like you're gonna bleed to death. And it isn't just mommas who homeschool because I cannot even listen to my working-out-of-the-home sisters' schedules without having a panic attack.
I bet you are just as sure as me, like ten million percent sure that every official, politician, and school board person who ever put their little brains together and decided that Algebra was necessary for a kid who is clearly NOT going to be a math teacher could probably be certified as insane. That or incarcerated for acts of evil. Or both.
Can I also tell you that I rank listing last year's grammar and science books on www.homeschoolclassifieds.com or ebay and then praying they sell for a good price so I can buy more curriculum for next year higher on my list of torturous tasks then plucking nostril hairs out? I do. (A little education for those who don't have to sell their curriculum . . . it sits in a giant box waiting patiently for me to list it. Listing it involves meticulous explanation of what exactly the material is, the edition, the year, and what comes with it. Then you have to respond to annoying, perky first-year homeschoolers who want to know if there are any scratches on it and does it come from a pet-free home? Ummm. Hello? I homeschool boys. Two clues there: 1. Boys--Yes, there are scratches. 2. Homeschool--That's practically synonymous with pets. Sorry about your luck, little lady. You're going to find rabbit hair and probably boogers. I'm just saying.
Now some might question my decision to home educate or try to solve my "wall" by suggesting that I stop, put the kids in school, get a paying job, quit my whining and call it a day. Okay, thank you for that. But it's a bit like telling the person who wants to become a runner to quit running and start walking, isn't it? Here's the rub on that just so we're clear. I'll totally quit homeschooling as soon as God tells me to. Promise. He's the one who got us started on this journey that I swore I would NEVER take, and so I'll keep going until He says otherwise. And trust me, I check in with Him on that pretty regularly. Usually in those conversations He starts calling me Jonah, I immediately go grab Moby Dick and holler "literature lesson in the living room now!" and then I don't eat fish for a week. Good talk, God. Thanks.
But if you want the truth, the honest truth, home educating is just a lot of long, hard work. (Kind of like parenting, right?) And the weight of the responsibility of seeing these boys through their education is like an elephant riding on my shoulders. Not even just an elephant. A pregnant elephant. With twins. Dear God, it's heavy. I can't screw it up. It's all on me. I mean, if your kid is in public school at least you can point one or maybe two fingers at the government, the teachers, the school board . . . SOMEBODY . . . if they don't learn everything. With home education, every finger is pointing at me. And I'm such a wimp. I hate people pointing at me.
And the other thing is this, after you've done it a while, sometimes you just feel like you are over it. I'd like to read a book that doesn't have to do with Ancient Greece, please and thank you. And honestly, Shakespeare, I'll take a few of your quotes, but really? The rest? I used to love your clever words, but now I'm tired and I want Good Housekeeping recipes and time to try them out. (Also, I think that was a run-on sentence which makes me want to murder the person who invented grammar. Or maybe just maim them. That would be fine too.)
But this morning, I sat down to read my Bible in Mathew 4. Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James and John from their careers as fishermen to be his disciples. Then he takes them and goes out healing masses of people, tending to their needs. I'm picturing Him out there patiently touching scaly skin and glassy eyes, caressing crying babies and breathing new life into broken limbs. And these people? They come by the dozens because they heard he could heal. They heard he was healing people no one had ever been able to help before. They just keep coming and coming. You know he's got to be exhausted after a while. They all need him. They're counting on him. Every finger's pointing at him. The elephant's on his shoulders, and the Bible says they came in multitudes.
After a while, Jesus sees the multitudes, and he goes off to a mountain where he sits down with the disciples. Just the 12 of them.
And I fall in love with Jesus all over again when I notice that he took them off by themselves away from the crowds.
He's so perfect, isn't he?
He gives them this upside down sermon where he tells them, "Hey, remember the poor in spirit that we've been seeing in all these crowds? Yeah, well, they're gonna inherit the kingdom of heaven. Remember the mourners? The ones who were grieving the death of their spouses, their children? That doesn't annoy me. They'll be comforted. It's the merciful that will actually receive mercy. See, it's the meek, the ones who are laid out flat like a pancake, that will inherit the earth one day. . . ." And man, I feel like my life's been flattened like a pancake. Rolled out thinner than pie-crust. So thin, it's sheer and I feel it would shred were I to try to pick it up.
And I wonder if he told them that sermon cause they were fed up? Done. Tired of all those people grabbing at his attention, demanding his time. I wonder if at first they were flipping out excited about the miracles and the thrill of the journey, the thrill of following Christ in this new thing, but if, after a while, they were just a little over it all. So he righted things for them. He set them straight. Reminded them. Helped them to see the way of things. His way.
I love that sermon, I do. But it's the sitting with the disciples that just washes over me. After all those big miracles and crowds, when I know he had to be exhausted. He sat down and talked with his disciples . . . those he called.
He just sits with the ones he calls, you know?
You and me.
Because whether he's called us to be a momma, a home educator, a public educator or a doctor, we all hit walls sometimes, don't we? And it doesn't mean we quit. Doesn't mean we go back to fishing. It just means we need to sit a while.
Let him set things straight.
Mary knew that, didn't she? Martha's sister? Remember? She chose the one thing that was "needful" while Martha was encumbered and troubled over many things. Martha and I are actually twins separated at birth. Mary is definitely adopted.
Because she must have understood that Jesus is The Way through the wall.
Didn't he say, "Come to me ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest?"
And sometimes we say we believe Him, but our words and our lives don't always line up.
These aren't new things are they? There's nothing new under the sun. Mary and the weary and heavy laden verse . . . we've heard those sermons preached, haven' t we? It's not that we need a new book, a new preacher, a clever pinterest quote or better curriculum when we're burnt slap out, is it? We just need to do the simple thing that works.
Sit on a mountainside (or a sofa) with Jesus.
Be with the one who said, "Apart from me, you can do nothing."
Be with the one who said, "The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it."
Be with the one who said, "Lo, I am with you always . . ."
I don't think walls bother Jesus that much.
He made one come down just by having people march around it.
The Israelites just had to believe He'd do what He said He'd do.
So, I'm sitting before my own little wall.
Sitting here with the one who gave me my marching orders six years ago.
Sitting with the one who promised that he "will do it."
And I'm like, "Hey, God. I'm so out of breath.'
And he's all, "Keep going. I'm with you always."
And I'm heaving, "I think I feel my pulse in my temples and my head may explode."
He's, "My promises are true. Do you believe me?"
And I'm breathing a little easier, "Yes, but will you help my unbelief, God."
And those walls?
I think they're cracking, tumbling down a little. Maybe?
Because He's good. And He loves to sit with us a while.
I also run. Years ago, when I first began running, I used to pray that God would send me a butterfly, a deer, a fuzzy caterpillar, ANYTHING to distract me from the jog. I'd go for about five minutes, then all of a sudden, my legs were cement. You could not have held a gun to my head and gotten me to jog one step further. I was lamenting this dilemma to a girl with uber cute running shoes and very tidy-hair who pertly replied, "You're just hitting your first runner's wall. It's normal. It happens to everyone . . . even me. You have to run longer than seven minutes." She said some kind of scientific-smart-runner stuff about how your mind doesn't tell your heart to adjust its pace until the seven minute mark. My eyes glazed over. All I heard was, "You can do this. Just run longer than seven minutes." Hope.
The other day, I was running with a friend. She's been wanting to learn to run (I know, right? How do you learn to run? I think it's just like walking except faster.) for like a year. She's doing way better than she even realizes, but she seems to hit a wall. So, I thought I'd go with her. Sure enough, we're jogging along (Did I mention when I jog it sometimes feels like there is someone riding piggy back on my waste? It's just my bootie bouncing, but I feel you should know it's the size of a small child.) and she says, "I can't do this. I'm gonna have to stop."
I'm like, "Oh no. You're not stopping. You've got this. Keep going."
She's all, "No, I can't keep going."
I'm, "Can you feel your pulse in your temples yet?"
She, (heaving) "No."
Me, "Then you're not stopping. You've got more in you. Keep going."
Eventually, she stops.
Just a millisecond because I turn her around and point her down hill and tell her, "NO! You are not stopping until time is up. You can do this. Keep going. Don't quit. Put one foot in front of the other. Slow your pace if you have to, but do not quit."
I feel you should also know she was packing heat, so I was very brave in pushing her so hard because at one point when I pointed out a very large bull-frog on the side of the road to her (What? I thought she would enjoy the distraction!) she said, "At this point, I. DO.NOT.CARE." I am like ninety-nine percent sure she had her hand on the trigger when she said that, but I could be mistaken. Maybe.
Anyway, she saw the wall coming. She kept telling me it was coming, and then boom! She.Hit.That.Wall.
And I've been homeschooling my sweet princes for six years now. And boom! This year, I hit the wall. We're talking full-on homeschool burnout. (Way worse than the garlic toast I burn in the broiler oven every single blasted time!) My eldest is headed into 9th/10th grade courses. (Yeah, I know, right? One of those moms whose kids don't know what grade they're in. So annoying.) The younger is headed into 6th. And I feel like I am headed into the grave.
And you're probably laughing, cause it's kinda funny that I say I feel like I'm headed into the grave, except I'm crying while I type those words because dadgum, friends, sometimes you just hit the wall so hard that you feel like you're gonna bleed to death. And it isn't just mommas who homeschool because I cannot even listen to my working-out-of-the-home sisters' schedules without having a panic attack.
I bet you are just as sure as me, like ten million percent sure that every official, politician, and school board person who ever put their little brains together and decided that Algebra was necessary for a kid who is clearly NOT going to be a math teacher could probably be certified as insane. That or incarcerated for acts of evil. Or both.
Can I also tell you that I rank listing last year's grammar and science books on www.homeschoolclassifieds.com or ebay and then praying they sell for a good price so I can buy more curriculum for next year higher on my list of torturous tasks then plucking nostril hairs out? I do. (A little education for those who don't have to sell their curriculum . . . it sits in a giant box waiting patiently for me to list it. Listing it involves meticulous explanation of what exactly the material is, the edition, the year, and what comes with it. Then you have to respond to annoying, perky first-year homeschoolers who want to know if there are any scratches on it and does it come from a pet-free home? Ummm. Hello? I homeschool boys. Two clues there: 1. Boys--Yes, there are scratches. 2. Homeschool--That's practically synonymous with pets. Sorry about your luck, little lady. You're going to find rabbit hair and probably boogers. I'm just saying.
Now some might question my decision to home educate or try to solve my "wall" by suggesting that I stop, put the kids in school, get a paying job, quit my whining and call it a day. Okay, thank you for that. But it's a bit like telling the person who wants to become a runner to quit running and start walking, isn't it? Here's the rub on that just so we're clear. I'll totally quit homeschooling as soon as God tells me to. Promise. He's the one who got us started on this journey that I swore I would NEVER take, and so I'll keep going until He says otherwise. And trust me, I check in with Him on that pretty regularly. Usually in those conversations He starts calling me Jonah, I immediately go grab Moby Dick and holler "literature lesson in the living room now!" and then I don't eat fish for a week. Good talk, God. Thanks.
But if you want the truth, the honest truth, home educating is just a lot of long, hard work. (Kind of like parenting, right?) And the weight of the responsibility of seeing these boys through their education is like an elephant riding on my shoulders. Not even just an elephant. A pregnant elephant. With twins. Dear God, it's heavy. I can't screw it up. It's all on me. I mean, if your kid is in public school at least you can point one or maybe two fingers at the government, the teachers, the school board . . . SOMEBODY . . . if they don't learn everything. With home education, every finger is pointing at me. And I'm such a wimp. I hate people pointing at me.
And the other thing is this, after you've done it a while, sometimes you just feel like you are over it. I'd like to read a book that doesn't have to do with Ancient Greece, please and thank you. And honestly, Shakespeare, I'll take a few of your quotes, but really? The rest? I used to love your clever words, but now I'm tired and I want Good Housekeeping recipes and time to try them out. (Also, I think that was a run-on sentence which makes me want to murder the person who invented grammar. Or maybe just maim them. That would be fine too.)
But this morning, I sat down to read my Bible in Mathew 4. Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James and John from their careers as fishermen to be his disciples. Then he takes them and goes out healing masses of people, tending to their needs. I'm picturing Him out there patiently touching scaly skin and glassy eyes, caressing crying babies and breathing new life into broken limbs. And these people? They come by the dozens because they heard he could heal. They heard he was healing people no one had ever been able to help before. They just keep coming and coming. You know he's got to be exhausted after a while. They all need him. They're counting on him. Every finger's pointing at him. The elephant's on his shoulders, and the Bible says they came in multitudes.
After a while, Jesus sees the multitudes, and he goes off to a mountain where he sits down with the disciples. Just the 12 of them.
And I fall in love with Jesus all over again when I notice that he took them off by themselves away from the crowds.
He's so perfect, isn't he?
He gives them this upside down sermon where he tells them, "Hey, remember the poor in spirit that we've been seeing in all these crowds? Yeah, well, they're gonna inherit the kingdom of heaven. Remember the mourners? The ones who were grieving the death of their spouses, their children? That doesn't annoy me. They'll be comforted. It's the merciful that will actually receive mercy. See, it's the meek, the ones who are laid out flat like a pancake, that will inherit the earth one day. . . ." And man, I feel like my life's been flattened like a pancake. Rolled out thinner than pie-crust. So thin, it's sheer and I feel it would shred were I to try to pick it up.
And I wonder if he told them that sermon cause they were fed up? Done. Tired of all those people grabbing at his attention, demanding his time. I wonder if at first they were flipping out excited about the miracles and the thrill of the journey, the thrill of following Christ in this new thing, but if, after a while, they were just a little over it all. So he righted things for them. He set them straight. Reminded them. Helped them to see the way of things. His way.
I love that sermon, I do. But it's the sitting with the disciples that just washes over me. After all those big miracles and crowds, when I know he had to be exhausted. He sat down and talked with his disciples . . . those he called.
He just sits with the ones he calls, you know?
You and me.
Because whether he's called us to be a momma, a home educator, a public educator or a doctor, we all hit walls sometimes, don't we? And it doesn't mean we quit. Doesn't mean we go back to fishing. It just means we need to sit a while.
Let him set things straight.
Mary knew that, didn't she? Martha's sister? Remember? She chose the one thing that was "needful" while Martha was encumbered and troubled over many things. Martha and I are actually twins separated at birth. Mary is definitely adopted.
Because she must have understood that Jesus is The Way through the wall.
Didn't he say, "Come to me ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest?"
And sometimes we say we believe Him, but our words and our lives don't always line up.
These aren't new things are they? There's nothing new under the sun. Mary and the weary and heavy laden verse . . . we've heard those sermons preached, haven' t we? It's not that we need a new book, a new preacher, a clever pinterest quote or better curriculum when we're burnt slap out, is it? We just need to do the simple thing that works.
Sit on a mountainside (or a sofa) with Jesus.
Be with the one who said, "Apart from me, you can do nothing."
Be with the one who said, "The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it."
Be with the one who said, "Lo, I am with you always . . ."
I don't think walls bother Jesus that much.
He made one come down just by having people march around it.
The Israelites just had to believe He'd do what He said He'd do.
So, I'm sitting before my own little wall.
Sitting here with the one who gave me my marching orders six years ago.
Sitting with the one who promised that he "will do it."
And I'm like, "Hey, God. I'm so out of breath.'
And he's all, "Keep going. I'm with you always."
And I'm heaving, "I think I feel my pulse in my temples and my head may explode."
He's, "My promises are true. Do you believe me?"
And I'm breathing a little easier, "Yes, but will you help my unbelief, God."
And those walls?
I think they're cracking, tumbling down a little. Maybe?
Because He's good. And He loves to sit with us a while.
Monday, March 17, 2014
The Mothering Chronicles 10: NOT a Good Momma
I smelled it from the homeschool room where I was trying desperately to meet a writing deadline--scorched sauce. But how could that be? I had put the fancy heat-diffuser thingy-ma-jig under the heavy bottomed, iron pot. I had turned the heat down below low. And I NEEDED that sauce to be perfect. It was for someone else's dinner.
Telling myself not to micromanage myself, (who has time for that when you have two kids and a husband, right?) I kept working. Plunk, plunk, plunk. My fingers flew on the plastic keys at a frantic pace. I was making great progress, and with that sauce simmering, I hoped to finish the project just in time to make the ziti, go to the bank, race to soccer, fold the laundry, and contact the t-shirt company for camp. Perfect.
But the smell.
Why was I continually getting these heavy wafts of tomato and flame?
Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer. Scolding my nose for it's poor sense of smell, I headed into the kitchen to investigate.
It turns out my nose was right all along.
The flame, I discovered as I hung my head upside down, was no longer on low. It was on high.
The highest high.
The high past the word HIGH on the knob.
The high where the flames lick the side of the pot and you want to immediately commit a crime because you know it isn't good.
To confirm, I opened the lid. About two inches (I'm not even kidding) of tomato, meat, onion and basil were cemented to the bottom of the pan with the top six inches spastically spitting and bubbling almost ready to succumb to the pot of scorch.
Entirely ruined.
Outside, giggles erupted.
Two boys tossing a ball.
Now just follow my logic here. I've got ruined sauce. Clearly, it wasn't me who did it.
That could only mean one.blasted.thing.
One of them turned the heat on high. Since I don't think our house is haunted, it had to have been one of them.
Had to.
And this was my response:
I slammed the lid down.
I turned the flame off.
I opened the door.
Which one of you turned the pasta sauce on high?
The words were short, sharp blades. Each one meant to stab.
And they knew. Immediately they knew.
The guilty party, with shoulders tightened and voice timid said, "I did. I accidentally turned it off when I was making cocoa and figured it would be best to turn it on high."
I didn't reply. Not with words.
But I slammed the door. Harder than I have ever slammed a door in front of any human being in my entire life.
The house shook.
I think the neighbors may have heard it.
I think Africa heard it.
And I saw his shoulders slump.
Because that's the kind of mother I can be. The kind that gets so tightly wound up in a schedule that's stuffed like a Christmas stocking about to burst open that she cares more about some stupid marinara sauce than she does the precious soul of a prince her Lord entrusted her with for a short season.
And there are more things.
More times.
More moments.
Mad. Raging moments of reckless rants.
And they so rarely ever mean a smidgen of harm, these precious boys of mine. Truly, they are angels encased in human form with hearts that desperately desire to please.
And of course I'm ashamed.
Because no one else on the face of this planet would explode like a land-mine in the face of one of their children, would they?
Not the good moms, anyway, right?
But maybe there are a brave few who would just stand beside me for just two or three brief moments and raise their hands in solidarity? Maybe one or two of you out there have fallen so far short of the glory of God when it comes to this daunting task of mothering that you truly believe no one else could ever be as bad as you?
Because I have.
And there are other failures too.
I can't for the life of me get it together to pay my children the allowance I owe them for the past like FIVE years. (What type-A-organized-freak-thought of allowance anyway? Shouldn't my kids pay me for living in my house? I've finally told them, they'll get it in the form of one lump sum when they are ready to purchase their first car.) I'm pretty much convinced if they go bankrupt it will be because I failed to demonstrate responsible finances to them.
Good moms have jars labeled, "Saving, Offering, Spending."
Also, my 14 and 11 year olds put their own laundry away.
By themselves.
Once every season I go through their drawers in a tirade and demand to know why everything isn't perfectly folded and organized the way I showed them three months ago.
Good moms put their kids' laundry away in perfect piles until they graduate and go to college. Right?
I know they do because when I was growing up, I knew two perfect moms, and that's what they did.
They also did all . . . ALL . . . the housework.
One of them was so organized that when her daughter got up first thing in the morning, she was standing at the door with a vacuum. (I know, right? Who blasted vacuums at 6 AM?)
What-stinking-ever!
She also cleaned her daughter's bathroom everyday. And don't forget about the laundry. (That's where I learned closets could be neat. I hadn't known about color-coordinating. I just thought if stuff was on hangers and not on the floor you patted yourself on the shoulder and called it a day.
Good moms use Tide and fold laundry.
Also my kids eat Ramen noodles.
Processed. Evil. Unbalanced. And I don't even do the cooking of those curly cardboard noodles. THEY DO! By themselves.
Good moms cook biscuits for breakfast and make their kids wholesome, balanced lunches everyday. They also give them weird snacks like whole wheat crackers with smiley faces made out of raisins and cucumbers.
And good wives pack their husband's lunches for them, but that's another blog. I'll deal with my failure as a wife on another day.
And did I also tell you that I hate playing with blocks and Lego?
What? I do. I hate it. There is nothing fun about stacking little splintery slivers of spruce 2 x 2 squares into houses, farms and towers only to topple them over two seconds later. Please, kill me.
And Lego? Primary colored pieces of plastic meant to torture my very soul to the core of its being. They don't match my house! And my kids have bins and bins of this stuff. They love it. It's like a foreign language I never, ever in my worst nightmare wanted to learn to speak. Then I had boys.
What, God? Is that like a practical joke?
But don't good moms adore every little, annoying game their kids want to play?
While I'm at it, I'm just gonna go ahead and let you in on this little tidbit too.
My eldest son was truly a perfect human being until he went through puberty.
What in the world?
Puberty totally punked me.
That voice?
He sounds like an opera singer with a perpetual frog in the throat. That or a seal with laryngitis.
Good moms definitely don't tell their pubescent sons to . . . please not talk.
Never.
Also, in case you wondered, I rarely wake up ahead of my children.
I know. I know. Dirt on my casket, right here and now, folks.
I am a demon-mom.
My eldest is an early-bird kinda kid. (Another practical joke from God. Thanks for that.) Since the moment we took him home from the hospital in my 1987 grey Chevy cavalier, he has been the cherub that rises with the sun ready to chirp and chat long before my poor, heavy lids have lifted to greet the day.
Nowadays, my alarm goes. I turn it off. I wait.
When I hear the flapping of his feet (that somehow recently outgrew my own) on the oak floors, I quickly hop up, yank on my sweater, and act like I've been awake for hours.
Because don't the good moms get up early and pray for their children's spouses or some spiritual thing like that?
And speaking of praying for kids' spouses, I guess I'll have to apologize to my daughter-in-laws someday because I remember to do that like two times a year.
And when my boys went through their obsession with Star Wars phase, I almost died. They knew everything about Star Wars. I mean everything. We're talking they read some kind of Star Wars Encyclopedia that was longer than any text book we've ever studied. Do you know to this day I don't think I've stayed awake through one single one of those boring, life-stealing, brain-cell sucking movies?
Are you totally kidding me, God? Hello? Ann of Green Gables? Gilmore Girls? Anything but Star Wars. REALLY? Ugh. (Practical joke number 3)
Clearly, the verdict is in, and I am just not a good momma.
And if you are wondering if I might be completely screwing my kids up . . .wonder no more.
I can answer that question for you.
Most definitely, I am.
Some days I honestly think it will be a miracle if these boys survive me.
And if we're confessing, which apparently I am, I'll just go ahead and lay all the cards on the table for you.
I also broke my niece's wrist.
Playing a game where I catapult her across the room with my legs--that's how I did it.
Clearly I should have had the good sense to see her bones couldn't handle the likes of my thundering thighs as they threw her through the air across the basement family room. Clearly I should have considered a landing pad. Any self-respecting, responsible adult would have thought about that.
I didn't.
Horrible judgment. All mothering and Auntie privileges should be revoked. That poor sweet girl was so brave, and in that moment, I felt the full weight of my failure like a five million pound iron sign dangling from my neck that read:
NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
And goodness gracious it's a heavy weight to wear. And surely I'm not the only one who has ever felt like they couldn't breath under it's suffocating accusations. And it may seem like I'm only a little serious when it comes to Star Wars and Legos, but can I just be really, brutally honest?
There is rarely a day that goes by where I don't question my ability to parent.
But here's the truth about that kind of question:
Doubting our ability as parents is doubting the wisdom of the very God who granted them to us in the first place.
Was it not God himself who said, this:
Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me . . . saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.
(Isaiah 46:9,10)
My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My GOOD pleasure.
He gave us these sweet children. It is a part of his GOOD pleasure. It is a part of His purpose that we--floundering, failing, fumbling me and you--be their parents.
And don't we just need that balm for our weary souls?
And did He not also say,
For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph. 2:10)
Somehow, this sixty-seven inch, Star Wars loathing girl is God's handiwork created to do good works (And isn't mothering one of our greatest good works?) which God prepared in advance.
Me.
The one who hates getting up early.
The one who hates Legos. (Does anyone normal really like them?)
He picked my soul, designed me, knit me together in my mother's being, formed me, fashioned my personality and then sent me to earth KNOWING I'd get to be the mother of two young men one day.
And the last time I checked, this God that breathes and mountains sprout up like Jack's beanstalk, does not make mistakes.
Does
not
make
mistakes
He doesn't, because the scripture says, "The Lord is righteous in all His ways and holy in all His works. (Psalm 145:17)
I went ahead and double-checked with Webster (Well, in the interest of full-disclosure, I actually checked with dictionary.com because I can't even get my act together to buy a current dictionary and mine may or may not be dated like 1935. Whatever.) and righteous? It still means morally right or justifiable.
Translation? God's choice of me as these boys' momma is justified.
Am I really going to doubt a righteous God's decision? Really? I mean sometimes we screw up royally and slam doors and forget to wash our kids' soccer uniforms and maybe we yell sometimes or forget the school fundraiser, but here's the rub: God chose us.
God chose us, and we can spend our life trying to convince Him it was the greatest mistake of His reign as God of the universe, or we can pull up our britches and get a grip because our kids don't need good mommas, they need the right mommas. And that, my friends, means you, and it means me.
Because while we're running around doubting God, our kids are growing up, and we're missing it.
And I'm pretty sure God said doubters were like waves of the sea, blown and tossed about. And if that's the case, maybe all of our families are a little sea-sick. But it's not in you and me that sea-sickness comes to our family, it's in the doubting of us as God's choice.
Maybe, just maybe, I'm not the only mother who has ever felt so entirely inadequate, so completely and utterly a failure that it would have been better if anyone else on the entire planet raised her kids. Maybe some of you need a little reminder that we can in fact do this.
Sometimes I look up at God, hot, slick tears sliding down my face, and I say, "Lord, I am so messing this all up. Why did you give these poor boys me as their mom?"
His words flow, and His truth restores my soul.
The Mothering Chronicles
Telling myself not to micromanage myself, (who has time for that when you have two kids and a husband, right?) I kept working. Plunk, plunk, plunk. My fingers flew on the plastic keys at a frantic pace. I was making great progress, and with that sauce simmering, I hoped to finish the project just in time to make the ziti, go to the bank, race to soccer, fold the laundry, and contact the t-shirt company for camp. Perfect.
But the smell.
Why was I continually getting these heavy wafts of tomato and flame?
Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer. Scolding my nose for it's poor sense of smell, I headed into the kitchen to investigate.
It turns out my nose was right all along.
The flame, I discovered as I hung my head upside down, was no longer on low. It was on high.
The highest high.
The high past the word HIGH on the knob.
The high where the flames lick the side of the pot and you want to immediately commit a crime because you know it isn't good.
To confirm, I opened the lid. About two inches (I'm not even kidding) of tomato, meat, onion and basil were cemented to the bottom of the pan with the top six inches spastically spitting and bubbling almost ready to succumb to the pot of scorch.
Entirely ruined.
Outside, giggles erupted.
Two boys tossing a ball.
Now just follow my logic here. I've got ruined sauce. Clearly, it wasn't me who did it.
That could only mean one.blasted.thing.
One of them turned the heat on high. Since I don't think our house is haunted, it had to have been one of them.
Had to.
And this was my response:
I slammed the lid down.
I turned the flame off.
I opened the door.
Which one of you turned the pasta sauce on high?
The words were short, sharp blades. Each one meant to stab.
And they knew. Immediately they knew.
The guilty party, with shoulders tightened and voice timid said, "I did. I accidentally turned it off when I was making cocoa and figured it would be best to turn it on high."
I didn't reply. Not with words.
But I slammed the door. Harder than I have ever slammed a door in front of any human being in my entire life.
The house shook.
I think the neighbors may have heard it.
I think Africa heard it.
And I saw his shoulders slump.
Because that's the kind of mother I can be. The kind that gets so tightly wound up in a schedule that's stuffed like a Christmas stocking about to burst open that she cares more about some stupid marinara sauce than she does the precious soul of a prince her Lord entrusted her with for a short season.
And there are more things.
More times.
More moments.
Mad. Raging moments of reckless rants.
And they so rarely ever mean a smidgen of harm, these precious boys of mine. Truly, they are angels encased in human form with hearts that desperately desire to please.
And of course I'm ashamed.
Because no one else on the face of this planet would explode like a land-mine in the face of one of their children, would they?
Not the good moms, anyway, right?
But maybe there are a brave few who would just stand beside me for just two or three brief moments and raise their hands in solidarity? Maybe one or two of you out there have fallen so far short of the glory of God when it comes to this daunting task of mothering that you truly believe no one else could ever be as bad as you?
Because I have.
And there are other failures too.
I can't for the life of me get it together to pay my children the allowance I owe them for the past like FIVE years. (What type-A-organized-freak-thought of allowance anyway? Shouldn't my kids pay me for living in my house? I've finally told them, they'll get it in the form of one lump sum when they are ready to purchase their first car.) I'm pretty much convinced if they go bankrupt it will be because I failed to demonstrate responsible finances to them.
Good moms have jars labeled, "Saving, Offering, Spending."
Also, my 14 and 11 year olds put their own laundry away.
By themselves.
Once every season I go through their drawers in a tirade and demand to know why everything isn't perfectly folded and organized the way I showed them three months ago.
Good moms put their kids' laundry away in perfect piles until they graduate and go to college. Right?
I know they do because when I was growing up, I knew two perfect moms, and that's what they did.
They also did all . . . ALL . . . the housework.
One of them was so organized that when her daughter got up first thing in the morning, she was standing at the door with a vacuum. (I know, right? Who blasted vacuums at 6 AM?)
What-stinking-ever!
She also cleaned her daughter's bathroom everyday. And don't forget about the laundry. (That's where I learned closets could be neat. I hadn't known about color-coordinating. I just thought if stuff was on hangers and not on the floor you patted yourself on the shoulder and called it a day.
Good moms use Tide and fold laundry.
Also my kids eat Ramen noodles.
Processed. Evil. Unbalanced. And I don't even do the cooking of those curly cardboard noodles. THEY DO! By themselves.
Good moms cook biscuits for breakfast and make their kids wholesome, balanced lunches everyday. They also give them weird snacks like whole wheat crackers with smiley faces made out of raisins and cucumbers.
And good wives pack their husband's lunches for them, but that's another blog. I'll deal with my failure as a wife on another day.
And did I also tell you that I hate playing with blocks and Lego?
What? I do. I hate it. There is nothing fun about stacking little splintery slivers of spruce 2 x 2 squares into houses, farms and towers only to topple them over two seconds later. Please, kill me.
And Lego? Primary colored pieces of plastic meant to torture my very soul to the core of its being. They don't match my house! And my kids have bins and bins of this stuff. They love it. It's like a foreign language I never, ever in my worst nightmare wanted to learn to speak. Then I had boys.
What, God? Is that like a practical joke?
But don't good moms adore every little, annoying game their kids want to play?
While I'm at it, I'm just gonna go ahead and let you in on this little tidbit too.
My eldest son was truly a perfect human being until he went through puberty.
What in the world?
Puberty totally punked me.
That voice?
He sounds like an opera singer with a perpetual frog in the throat. That or a seal with laryngitis.
Good moms definitely don't tell their pubescent sons to . . . please not talk.
Never.
Also, in case you wondered, I rarely wake up ahead of my children.
I know. I know. Dirt on my casket, right here and now, folks.
I am a demon-mom.
My eldest is an early-bird kinda kid. (Another practical joke from God. Thanks for that.) Since the moment we took him home from the hospital in my 1987 grey Chevy cavalier, he has been the cherub that rises with the sun ready to chirp and chat long before my poor, heavy lids have lifted to greet the day.
Nowadays, my alarm goes. I turn it off. I wait.
When I hear the flapping of his feet (that somehow recently outgrew my own) on the oak floors, I quickly hop up, yank on my sweater, and act like I've been awake for hours.
Because don't the good moms get up early and pray for their children's spouses or some spiritual thing like that?
And speaking of praying for kids' spouses, I guess I'll have to apologize to my daughter-in-laws someday because I remember to do that like two times a year.
And when my boys went through their obsession with Star Wars phase, I almost died. They knew everything about Star Wars. I mean everything. We're talking they read some kind of Star Wars Encyclopedia that was longer than any text book we've ever studied. Do you know to this day I don't think I've stayed awake through one single one of those boring, life-stealing, brain-cell sucking movies?
Are you totally kidding me, God? Hello? Ann of Green Gables? Gilmore Girls? Anything but Star Wars. REALLY? Ugh. (Practical joke number 3)
Clearly, the verdict is in, and I am just not a good momma.
And if you are wondering if I might be completely screwing my kids up . . .wonder no more.
I can answer that question for you.
Most definitely, I am.
Some days I honestly think it will be a miracle if these boys survive me.
And if we're confessing, which apparently I am, I'll just go ahead and lay all the cards on the table for you.
I also broke my niece's wrist.
Playing a game where I catapult her across the room with my legs--that's how I did it.
Clearly I should have had the good sense to see her bones couldn't handle the likes of my thundering thighs as they threw her through the air across the basement family room. Clearly I should have considered a landing pad. Any self-respecting, responsible adult would have thought about that.
I didn't.
Horrible judgment. All mothering and Auntie privileges should be revoked. That poor sweet girl was so brave, and in that moment, I felt the full weight of my failure like a five million pound iron sign dangling from my neck that read:
NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
And goodness gracious it's a heavy weight to wear. And surely I'm not the only one who has ever felt like they couldn't breath under it's suffocating accusations. And it may seem like I'm only a little serious when it comes to Star Wars and Legos, but can I just be really, brutally honest?
There is rarely a day that goes by where I don't question my ability to parent.
But here's the truth about that kind of question:
Doubting our ability as parents is doubting the wisdom of the very God who granted them to us in the first place.
Was it not God himself who said, this:
Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me . . . saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.
(Isaiah 46:9,10)
My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My GOOD pleasure.
He gave us these sweet children. It is a part of his GOOD pleasure. It is a part of His purpose that we--floundering, failing, fumbling me and you--be their parents.
And don't we just need that balm for our weary souls?
And did He not also say,
For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph. 2:10)
Somehow, this sixty-seven inch, Star Wars loathing girl is God's handiwork created to do good works (And isn't mothering one of our greatest good works?) which God prepared in advance.
Me.
The one who hates getting up early.
The one who hates Legos. (Does anyone normal really like them?)
He picked my soul, designed me, knit me together in my mother's being, formed me, fashioned my personality and then sent me to earth KNOWING I'd get to be the mother of two young men one day.
And the last time I checked, this God that breathes and mountains sprout up like Jack's beanstalk, does not make mistakes.
Does
not
make
mistakes
He doesn't, because the scripture says, "The Lord is righteous in all His ways and holy in all His works. (Psalm 145:17)
I went ahead and double-checked with Webster (Well, in the interest of full-disclosure, I actually checked with dictionary.com because I can't even get my act together to buy a current dictionary and mine may or may not be dated like 1935. Whatever.) and righteous? It still means morally right or justifiable.
Translation? God's choice of me as these boys' momma is justified.
Am I really going to doubt a righteous God's decision? Really? I mean sometimes we screw up royally and slam doors and forget to wash our kids' soccer uniforms and maybe we yell sometimes or forget the school fundraiser, but here's the rub: God chose us.
God chose us, and we can spend our life trying to convince Him it was the greatest mistake of His reign as God of the universe, or we can pull up our britches and get a grip because our kids don't need good mommas, they need the right mommas. And that, my friends, means you, and it means me.
Because while we're running around doubting God, our kids are growing up, and we're missing it.
And I'm pretty sure God said doubters were like waves of the sea, blown and tossed about. And if that's the case, maybe all of our families are a little sea-sick. But it's not in you and me that sea-sickness comes to our family, it's in the doubting of us as God's choice.
Maybe, just maybe, I'm not the only mother who has ever felt so entirely inadequate, so completely and utterly a failure that it would have been better if anyone else on the entire planet raised her kids. Maybe some of you need a little reminder that we can in fact do this.
Sometimes I look up at God, hot, slick tears sliding down my face, and I say, "Lord, I am so messing this all up. Why did you give these poor boys me as their mom?"
His words flow, and His truth restores my soul.
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature . . . For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (I Peter 1: 3-8)
There's no book that can teach us how to be a mother better than The Book because it contains the truths of who He is. It is through our knowledge of Him--this God that chose to call us to be moms--that we are given everything we need for a godly life. Given everything. Every single thing we will ever need as a mother.
Isn't that my greatest hope as a mom? That I would be a godly mother?
I actually get to participate in His divine nature because of His precious promises. And if you and I get to participate in that divine nature, than surely, there is hope we can make the right choices as mothers, right?
I'm not crazy. It's all there in scripture.
Don't misunderstand me. I know Jesus promised where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. But I don't take that for granted. I don't assume that means I give myself a pass, a get-out-of-jail-free card. I assume that means His grace will sustain me as I make every effort to add to my faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control perseverance . . . By every effort, I assume God's Word literally means EVERY. EFFORT. Every book I can get my hands on. Every scripture passage I can learn on the subject of mothering. Every bit of godly, wise advice I can glean. Every ounce of energy and strength I have poured into this great privilege of mothering. Because these children deserve that.
I assume that means His grace will give me the strength to open the door I slammed, walk outside and take that young man's hand and tell him, it's just spaghetti sauce. Tell him I'm sorry I slammed the door. Tell him he's much more important to me that a good marinara sauce. Tell him its okay that he turned the heat up, and I am a dumb yutz sometimes. Ask him to forgive me. Ask him if he wants to throw the football because I may not like playing with blocks, but I love throwing the football. (And so does he.)
Because that's what we do. We fail sometimes, and we seek forgiveness.
Someday they'll fail. They need to know how to humble themselves and ask for forgiveness too because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Then we forgive ourselves for failing because why would we withhold forgiveness from ourselves when our Father isn't withholding it?
And we move on.
We make every effort to add to our faith in a sovereign, RIGHTeous God, goodness and self-control, and perseverance.
Because we may not be good mommas, but we are the RIGHT mommas.
And if God, who is always right, chose us, isn't that enough?
That sign around our neck? We've been lied to, friends. It doesn't say: Not Good Enough.
It reads:
Handcrafted by the King.
You are wonderful mothers. You are.
You are wonderful mothers. You are.
Sometimes we need to hear the truth, so have a listen.
Monday, August 20, 2012
The Mothering Chronicles 8: Sometimes Their Hearts Break
This morning my cat sat outside the french door, her eyes like peridot marbles following every step I made. She was hungry. Apparently mousing doesn't always fill her belly; she wanted real food. Just one problem. We ran out. (What? You never run out of cat food and have to scramble your precious feline an egg or crank open a can of tuna?) Now, the truth be told, said cat chose us as her family and refused to leave. We never--REPEAT NEVER--chose her. And frankly, I can't say I'm overly fond of her. She only shows up when mice are scarce or she wants to lay on Nate's fuzzy Georgia Bulldogs blanket. Usually this happens at 3AM, and she announces her presence with a feral meow that curdles milk. (And in case you were wondering . . . no, my husband doesn' t hear her.) So I can't say I jumped to open the door and let her in. But after ten minutes of this pathetic-starving-cat-stare-down, I finally called out to my eldest, "Nate, did you feed Lovely?" (Pass the buck, right?) And then came his reminder that we had been out of food since the night before. And no matter how annoying that cat may be, I couldn't watch her sit there hungry. Couldn't just watch her suffer.
Later, reading in Genesis--Hagar and Ishamael's story--it struck me how hopeless Hagar must have felt when she was cast out of her home by Sarah and Abraham. Hagar had to know Ishmael was Plan B all along, the-just-in-case-God-doesn't-come-through child. But God came through and Isaac's birth erased Sarah's use for Ishmael. In Genesis 21 we find them "wandering aimlessly through the wilderness" alone and in desperate need of water. Verse 15 says, " . . . the water in the skin was gone . . ."
No water.
A desert.
A single mom.
No man.
No money.
NO WATER.
Hopeless.
Life gets that way sometimes, doesn't it? Parenting, loving, caring for our children can be that way sometimes. Any mother knows that the only thing worse than feeling hopeless about her own life is watching when a child is broken and hopeless. And it happens.
When Cort was a toddler, he contracted a virus that caused little rice-like bumps all over his body. They were sprouting like grass in spring under his arms, on his chest, his back, everywhere. The doctor wasn't alarmed, gave us some ointment, and told me to administer it that evening. Careful not to miss a single bump, I followed his instructions putting the ointment all over Corton's back and stomach. After a short amount of time, Corton began to scream in pain. Uncontrollable pain. Slowly, the ointment began to burn his skin. He was severely allergic to the cream, and we rushed him to the Emergency Room. The doctors had no idea what was going on or how to alleviate this seemingly allergic/chemical reaction. Slowly the ointment continued to burn his skin, and layers began to peel off as it ate away at the surrounding areas. His face was desperate. His screams cut me. I thought I was going to die. They weren't working fast enough. They weren't making the pain go away. They weren't listening to me when I told them to do something. Do.Something.Now. I remember begging God, "Take this pain away. Make it stop, God, please."
Our children do suffer.
Sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally.
Hagar was so completely convinced this was the end of her son's life that she put him under a small shrub and wandered a bow-shot's distance away from him. She couldn't stand to sit and watch her son die of dehydration. Could not stand it. And I wonder is that how the mother of the Brazilian girl felt when she left her child in the streets because she couldn't afford to buy food. I wonder is it what the Ugandan father feels when his sons eyes are dark holes in a parched frame, and there is no clean water. Is this why they abandon their children? Is it a slow-motion torturing of the parental soul to watch the suffering of one's own flesh and blood?
In their book, Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys, Stephen James and David Thomas write, " . . . it seems that parents who don't let their kids struggle in life are more concerned about avoiding their own pain from watching their children suffer than they are concerned for the kids themselves."
And I want to hit those men and hug them for writing those words because of course the mother is concerned for the child. Do they not understand that a child's pain is the mother's pain? There is no human way for a mother to separate the two. But they are right. It is because we cannot separate the two that we don't want them ever to struggle.
Scripture says Hagar "wept uncontrollably." I get that.
Can you see her there, clay colored clothing, face leathered by relentless sun in a world that for her remained dark? She's weeping for the future her son will never see, for all that she hoped for, all that she wanted, all that could have been. No, a mother doesn't know the difference between her personal pain and that of her child. The two are linked and twisted and tied into one chain of emotion that no mother can untangle. She only knows when her child hurts, when they suffer, she is ripped open with them. This is the mother's lot.
Yet verse 17 of chapter 21 begins with the most beautiful two words maybe in all of scripture, "But God . . ."
BUT GOD
And isn't that it every single time?
Apart from God, it is hopeless. Yes. Yes, it is.
BUT GOD
Every single time, every single situation, every single child. Not one thing is exempt from this reality. God exists. He exists, and He loves, and therefore your situation is NOT HOPELESS.
Not hopeless.
BUT GOD.
Scripture says, "But God heard the boy's voice."
We hear our children's heartbreak, and we weep with them. When they were young, I couldn't bare to withhold food from my sweet babies. If they cried my entire body insisted they needed food. (Read: SERIOUS. MILK. LETDOWN.)
Imagine if a child's tears can wake a mother at night, what must they do to God--their Creator?
God hears your children.
He hears.
They need to know their heavenly father always hears. When they suffer and we offer comfort, we need to tell them the truth that not only do their earthly parents care desperately, their Father in heaven hears every single cry. Saves every single tear.
Then the Angel of God speaks to Hagar and asks her, "What's the matter, Hagar?" (Gen. 21:17)
Why did he have to ask? Sometimes I think we need to name our own emotions when it comes to our children. She was weeping uncontrollably, but what was the root of her tears? What was the emotion she ultimately felt?
"Don't be afraid, for God has heard . . ." (Gen. 21:17) Fear. Her emotion was fear. Perhaps it was fear she had not only been abandoned by the man who helped her bring this child into the world, but also his God. Perhaps it was fear not that she had been abandoned, but that her boy had been abandoned, that somehow God's love had missed her son. Don't we need to know that no matter how fiercely we love our children, their Heavenly Father's love is greater still?
And when our children hurt, when they are broken--because life will break our children at some point along the journey--we need to acknowledge not only their emotions, but ours too. Because the momma is bound to her child from soul to soul.
Then he said, "Get up!"
She had quit. She had thrown in the towel, and aren't we tempted to do the same sometimes?
When that child is thirty years old and still refuses to give up drugs.
When that boy is so angry and sullen he hasn't spoken a word to us in a month.
When that girl can't express why she thinks she may like other girls instead of boys.
When she's sixteen and pregnant.
When he's found smoking.
When that toddler has screamed for an hour straight and we don't.know.why.
Yes, we're tempted to sit down and quit.
I have sat down. I have quit. I've done that before.
But God said, "Get up!"
Get up my child and keep running this race. Keep fighting the good fight. Keep going.
BUT GOD.
Then He said to her, "Help the boy up and hold him by the hand."(Gen 21:18)
I love that part. Sometimes, no matter how young or how old, how stubborn or how heavy, our children need us to
help
them
up
Just help them up.
And hold them by the hand.
Sometimes there aren't words. There aren't verses. There just aren't.
But we still have our hands, and they need us to support them. Physically help them to get up. Hold them in our arms, if they'll allow it--just for a time. Emotionally help them to get up. Spiritually hold up their arms like the people did for Moses so many generations ago.
And moms, aren't we good at that? We may not be able to patch a flat tire or fold paper airplanes, but we know how to hold a wobbling hand until steadiness returns, don't we? We do.
Then God said, "I will make him into a great nation." (Gen. 21:8b)
Those words: I WILL.
They change everything.
Because when we can't,
HE WILL.
He is the God who is over all, above all, greater than all, He is the God who is FOR OUR CHILDREN.
I remember my first heartbreak. I was 15 years old and some red-headed boy had snatched my heart and held it long enough that when he let go, it stopped beating for a while. How often that happens to our precious, young girls and our tender young men. We say, "Be careful." We insist, "You are so young." We warn. We advise. We implore.
And.
They.
Fall.
In.
Love.
And when it ends, and it often does, they are--for a while--a shroud of who they used to be.
When that boy told me he didn't love me anymore, I dissolved into myself. Folded inside out. Couldn't talk. Couldn't think. Couldn't eat.
And the only words of comfort (and I'm sure there were many) that I remember were those of my mother, "I wish there was something I could do to take the hurt away." It was she who cried when she said those words. Her daughter was suffering beneath the surface and there were no bandages, no Tylenols that could heal that hurt.
But God.
But God WILL.
And He did. Only God could reach into the fibers of my heart and weave together a tapestry of His grace, His sovereignty, His peace, His joy, His HOPE. How much hope it will give us parents to remember that though we may have planned for our children, God Himself willed their presence on this earth. God Himself has a plan for their lives. God WILL make them into a "great nation" for His name's sake. It's His purpose and His plan on the line.
With God, it is NEVER hopeless.
And He will accomplish all His promises concerning our children. HE WILL. Mother, hold that truth. HE WILL.
Finally, God enabled Hagar to see a well of water.
I've wondered if, though she never saw it, the well was there all along, or if he miraculously made one just for them. I like to think God said, "Let there be an oasis." I like to think He did that just for them. But ultimately what matters is that He did indeed provide.
He did intervene.
He did make a way for hope's seed to take root in the souls of a teenage boy and his single mother.
And moms, when our children's pains are deeper than the booboos and ouchies of childhood, when they are farther than our hands can reach, when we ache in the corners of our souls for the hurt of our flesh and blood, we need to ask God to "enable us to see the well of water." (Gen. 21:19)
We need to remember that it is He who is LIVING WATER.
Isn't it perfect, certainly no coinsedence, that Ishmael was a young teen at this time. Likely he was physically stronger than his mother. We don't really know. But it was his mom who went to the well, filled the skin with water, and brought some back for her boy.
Sometimes bringing them water is just that, a cup of water. Sometimes it is a list of the scriptures that have carried us through difficult times. Sometimes it is the retelling of those times in our lives when we despaired . . . even of life. Sometimes it means getting a good counselor. Letting them talk to a trusted friend. But know this, mommas, there are times when we carry them. Even when they're grown. Not forever, but for a season. Not enabling, but empowering. I'm not talking about being the mom whose son is forty and lives at home on her couch. I'm talking--and I think your spirits will agree--about being the mom who knows when her child needs just a sip of water.
A sip of hope.
But God
God Will
"But now, O Lord, upon what am I relying? You are my only hope!" (Psalm 39:7)
Pray with me:
God who sees, God who hears, God who is hope, will you teach my mother's heart to rely on you? To expect you? To anticipate your intervention. To look for you in the horizon when the reality of my child is a deep pain? When my own reality is pain? Will you help me, Lord to cling to the truth that YOU WILL work, YOU WILL heal, YOU WILL men, YOU WILL cause hope to rise? Amen.
Later, reading in Genesis--Hagar and Ishamael's story--it struck me how hopeless Hagar must have felt when she was cast out of her home by Sarah and Abraham. Hagar had to know Ishmael was Plan B all along, the-just-in-case-God-doesn't-come-through child. But God came through and Isaac's birth erased Sarah's use for Ishmael. In Genesis 21 we find them "wandering aimlessly through the wilderness" alone and in desperate need of water. Verse 15 says, " . . . the water in the skin was gone . . ."
No water.
A desert.
A single mom.
No man.
No money.
NO WATER.
Hopeless.
Life gets that way sometimes, doesn't it? Parenting, loving, caring for our children can be that way sometimes. Any mother knows that the only thing worse than feeling hopeless about her own life is watching when a child is broken and hopeless. And it happens.
When Cort was a toddler, he contracted a virus that caused little rice-like bumps all over his body. They were sprouting like grass in spring under his arms, on his chest, his back, everywhere. The doctor wasn't alarmed, gave us some ointment, and told me to administer it that evening. Careful not to miss a single bump, I followed his instructions putting the ointment all over Corton's back and stomach. After a short amount of time, Corton began to scream in pain. Uncontrollable pain. Slowly, the ointment began to burn his skin. He was severely allergic to the cream, and we rushed him to the Emergency Room. The doctors had no idea what was going on or how to alleviate this seemingly allergic/chemical reaction. Slowly the ointment continued to burn his skin, and layers began to peel off as it ate away at the surrounding areas. His face was desperate. His screams cut me. I thought I was going to die. They weren't working fast enough. They weren't making the pain go away. They weren't listening to me when I told them to do something. Do.Something.Now. I remember begging God, "Take this pain away. Make it stop, God, please."
Our children do suffer.
Sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally.
Hagar was so completely convinced this was the end of her son's life that she put him under a small shrub and wandered a bow-shot's distance away from him. She couldn't stand to sit and watch her son die of dehydration. Could not stand it. And I wonder is that how the mother of the Brazilian girl felt when she left her child in the streets because she couldn't afford to buy food. I wonder is it what the Ugandan father feels when his sons eyes are dark holes in a parched frame, and there is no clean water. Is this why they abandon their children? Is it a slow-motion torturing of the parental soul to watch the suffering of one's own flesh and blood?
In their book, Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys, Stephen James and David Thomas write, " . . . it seems that parents who don't let their kids struggle in life are more concerned about avoiding their own pain from watching their children suffer than they are concerned for the kids themselves."
And I want to hit those men and hug them for writing those words because of course the mother is concerned for the child. Do they not understand that a child's pain is the mother's pain? There is no human way for a mother to separate the two. But they are right. It is because we cannot separate the two that we don't want them ever to struggle.
Scripture says Hagar "wept uncontrollably." I get that.
Can you see her there, clay colored clothing, face leathered by relentless sun in a world that for her remained dark? She's weeping for the future her son will never see, for all that she hoped for, all that she wanted, all that could have been. No, a mother doesn't know the difference between her personal pain and that of her child. The two are linked and twisted and tied into one chain of emotion that no mother can untangle. She only knows when her child hurts, when they suffer, she is ripped open with them. This is the mother's lot.
Yet verse 17 of chapter 21 begins with the most beautiful two words maybe in all of scripture, "But God . . ."
BUT GOD
And isn't that it every single time?
Apart from God, it is hopeless. Yes. Yes, it is.
BUT GOD
Every single time, every single situation, every single child. Not one thing is exempt from this reality. God exists. He exists, and He loves, and therefore your situation is NOT HOPELESS.
Not hopeless.
BUT GOD.
Scripture says, "But God heard the boy's voice."
We hear our children's heartbreak, and we weep with them. When they were young, I couldn't bare to withhold food from my sweet babies. If they cried my entire body insisted they needed food. (Read: SERIOUS. MILK. LETDOWN.)
Imagine if a child's tears can wake a mother at night, what must they do to God--their Creator?
God hears your children.
He hears.
They need to know their heavenly father always hears. When they suffer and we offer comfort, we need to tell them the truth that not only do their earthly parents care desperately, their Father in heaven hears every single cry. Saves every single tear.
Then the Angel of God speaks to Hagar and asks her, "What's the matter, Hagar?" (Gen. 21:17)
Why did he have to ask? Sometimes I think we need to name our own emotions when it comes to our children. She was weeping uncontrollably, but what was the root of her tears? What was the emotion she ultimately felt?
"Don't be afraid, for God has heard . . ." (Gen. 21:17) Fear. Her emotion was fear. Perhaps it was fear she had not only been abandoned by the man who helped her bring this child into the world, but also his God. Perhaps it was fear not that she had been abandoned, but that her boy had been abandoned, that somehow God's love had missed her son. Don't we need to know that no matter how fiercely we love our children, their Heavenly Father's love is greater still?
And when our children hurt, when they are broken--because life will break our children at some point along the journey--we need to acknowledge not only their emotions, but ours too. Because the momma is bound to her child from soul to soul.
Then he said, "Get up!"
She had quit. She had thrown in the towel, and aren't we tempted to do the same sometimes?
When that child is thirty years old and still refuses to give up drugs.
When that boy is so angry and sullen he hasn't spoken a word to us in a month.
When that girl can't express why she thinks she may like other girls instead of boys.
When she's sixteen and pregnant.
When he's found smoking.
When that toddler has screamed for an hour straight and we don't.know.why.
Yes, we're tempted to sit down and quit.
I have sat down. I have quit. I've done that before.
But God said, "Get up!"
Get up my child and keep running this race. Keep fighting the good fight. Keep going.
BUT GOD.
Then He said to her, "Help the boy up and hold him by the hand."(Gen 21:18)
I love that part. Sometimes, no matter how young or how old, how stubborn or how heavy, our children need us to
help
them
up
Just help them up.
And hold them by the hand.
Sometimes there aren't words. There aren't verses. There just aren't.
But we still have our hands, and they need us to support them. Physically help them to get up. Hold them in our arms, if they'll allow it--just for a time. Emotionally help them to get up. Spiritually hold up their arms like the people did for Moses so many generations ago.
And moms, aren't we good at that? We may not be able to patch a flat tire or fold paper airplanes, but we know how to hold a wobbling hand until steadiness returns, don't we? We do.
Then God said, "I will make him into a great nation." (Gen. 21:8b)
Those words: I WILL.
They change everything.
Because when we can't,
HE WILL.
He is the God who is over all, above all, greater than all, He is the God who is FOR OUR CHILDREN.
I remember my first heartbreak. I was 15 years old and some red-headed boy had snatched my heart and held it long enough that when he let go, it stopped beating for a while. How often that happens to our precious, young girls and our tender young men. We say, "Be careful." We insist, "You are so young." We warn. We advise. We implore.
And.
They.
Fall.
In.
Love.
And when it ends, and it often does, they are--for a while--a shroud of who they used to be.
When that boy told me he didn't love me anymore, I dissolved into myself. Folded inside out. Couldn't talk. Couldn't think. Couldn't eat.
And the only words of comfort (and I'm sure there were many) that I remember were those of my mother, "I wish there was something I could do to take the hurt away." It was she who cried when she said those words. Her daughter was suffering beneath the surface and there were no bandages, no Tylenols that could heal that hurt.
But God.
But God WILL.
And He did. Only God could reach into the fibers of my heart and weave together a tapestry of His grace, His sovereignty, His peace, His joy, His HOPE. How much hope it will give us parents to remember that though we may have planned for our children, God Himself willed their presence on this earth. God Himself has a plan for their lives. God WILL make them into a "great nation" for His name's sake. It's His purpose and His plan on the line.
With God, it is NEVER hopeless.
And He will accomplish all His promises concerning our children. HE WILL. Mother, hold that truth. HE WILL.
Finally, God enabled Hagar to see a well of water.
I've wondered if, though she never saw it, the well was there all along, or if he miraculously made one just for them. I like to think God said, "Let there be an oasis." I like to think He did that just for them. But ultimately what matters is that He did indeed provide.
He did intervene.
He did make a way for hope's seed to take root in the souls of a teenage boy and his single mother.
And moms, when our children's pains are deeper than the booboos and ouchies of childhood, when they are farther than our hands can reach, when we ache in the corners of our souls for the hurt of our flesh and blood, we need to ask God to "enable us to see the well of water." (Gen. 21:19)
We need to remember that it is He who is LIVING WATER.
Isn't it perfect, certainly no coinsedence, that Ishmael was a young teen at this time. Likely he was physically stronger than his mother. We don't really know. But it was his mom who went to the well, filled the skin with water, and brought some back for her boy.
Sometimes bringing them water is just that, a cup of water. Sometimes it is a list of the scriptures that have carried us through difficult times. Sometimes it is the retelling of those times in our lives when we despaired . . . even of life. Sometimes it means getting a good counselor. Letting them talk to a trusted friend. But know this, mommas, there are times when we carry them. Even when they're grown. Not forever, but for a season. Not enabling, but empowering. I'm not talking about being the mom whose son is forty and lives at home on her couch. I'm talking--and I think your spirits will agree--about being the mom who knows when her child needs just a sip of water.
A sip of hope.
But God
God Will
"But now, O Lord, upon what am I relying? You are my only hope!" (Psalm 39:7)
Pray with me:
God who sees, God who hears, God who is hope, will you teach my mother's heart to rely on you? To expect you? To anticipate your intervention. To look for you in the horizon when the reality of my child is a deep pain? When my own reality is pain? Will you help me, Lord to cling to the truth that YOU WILL work, YOU WILL heal, YOU WILL men, YOU WILL cause hope to rise? Amen.
Friday, May 11, 2012
The Mothering Chronices 7: Preparing the Way
People often think of my mom as a saint. Her smile is very big, and she rarely gets worked up. She has no idea how to cuss properly, how to get mad, or even how to think a mean thought let alone speak one. A single mom, she raised five precious-tender-hearted-never-get-into-a-fight-and-kick-the-door-in-or-come-home-smelling-of-Camels-or-listen-to-Bon-Jovi-way-too-loud girls. Our budget was tighter than my britches after Christmas, and she was lucky if at the end of the month she could afford to rent one VHS from Video Unlimited. Dresses she stitched while we toddled and tumbled over her treadle sewing machine hung for years on misshapen wire hangers because she couldn't afford to buy something new. She was and still is one of those people. (The kind I wish I could emulate, but somehow always come up short.) Now mind you, she's not perfect. If you wanna see her get worked up suggest a "bring your own picnic" day at Vogel for Mother's Day. Wrong words. Let.Me.Tell.You. She likes her food (Read: she eats a five course breakfast every single day, and don't you dare get in the way of her tea!) and she's sure not making her own picnic on Mother's Day.
A few weeks ago, when the air turned up its temperature and the flowers started stretching their necks above the ground, she danced for Palm Sunday at church. Something happens when Mom dances--everyone notices it. The men and the ladies, the dresses and the ties, the earrings and the perfume, they all disappear. She smiles this smile that you'll never see in any of her adult photographs. But if you dig out the old albums--the ones with cock-eyed black and white photos stuck on parched pages--you'll find the same smile. It's the one she used before life came and took, before life came and gave, before her father died too young and her mother lost to cancer, before a husband came and left, and five daughters pulled and took and pushed and needed, the smile she used when she was an innocent child. It's a girl dancing before her Father. And just seeing that, I know how she made it through. Because He loved her. HE.
And she drank from His Living Water.
Every.
Single.
Day.
I remember one line from the song she danced to--
Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
And there's this image etched like carvings in a piece of maple that marks my heart. It's of mom dancing on the Sunday we celebrate the people laying palm branches down for the coming Messiah, and I think how she would have been there with all those crowds of curious people on that day. She would have waved spring-green palms and placed them on the earth before he crossed her path.
And two-thousand years later, she did the same thing. Prepared the way. Prepared the way of the Lord. That was her crowning achievement as a mother. She prepared the way of the Lord for us girls. She is the one who did that for us. Did that by drinking from His Living Water. Did that by clinging to Him as her hope. Did that by depending on Him alone. Did that by never quitting God when by all physical evidence it would have seemed (if I'm being honest) like He might have quit her.
She couldn't come to every tennis match. She worked. Sometimes multiple jobs. She scrubbed other people's toilets so I could eat her homemade lentil soup, and she worked nights at the Golden Pantry when old stinky men with cigarettes lodged in their mouths would want to talk to the pretty raven haired single lady, so we could get a new outfit for back-to-school. She missed some things, it's true. But when I wanted to talk at three in the morning, and she hadn't slept, she talked. She propped herself up on pillows and prepared the way while I sat Indian style on the green afghan that footed her bed. And maybe it was an angel that held her eyelids open because now that I'm a mom, I know what it means to be dog-tired, and I am sure she was far beyond that kind of tired.
And isn't this the great crux of the mothering we do? That we would prepare the way of the Lord for our children? Isn't this the thing they most need? And when Mary chose the more excellent thing, the thing that was needful, was it not that she just made a way for Jesus in her life?
Because sometimes life--that old great giver and terrible taker--sometimes he just brings us to our knees. Sometimes he demands so much, and we are left dizzy and uncertain what to do next. Us moms. We get left that way sometimes, don't we? I remember once, when I was a senior in high school, we had a pep-rally game called Dizzy Bat. I was selected to represent my class. My instructions were simple, and honestly, I thought I was rocking them out.
Hold the bat touching the floor.
Put your head on the top of the bat.
Spin around.
Ten times.
Fast. (That's the part I was rocking out.)
Run.
In a straight line to the other side of the gym.
In front of the entire high school.
I ran.
One step.
Then I fell, flat on my back.
Entire high school.
Dizzy.
Life gets you the way, doesn' it?
And when you get done spinning and think you're ready to run, you have no clue which way you are going.
Mothers.
We have one direction with our kids.
One focal point.
One way to run.
Jesus.
Prepare the way for them to love Jesus, to know Him, to trust Him, to count on Him, to seek Him, to abide in Him.
In Him is fullness of life.
In Him.
And I get this backwards. I spin in circles chasing American Dreams because I have spent thirty-five years steeping, like dehydrated mint leaves in steaming water, in a culture that insists there is a right way to raise a child.
Educate them well.
So we do. We send them to pre-school and then relocate our family to a town with the best school systems. We spend hours making sure their third grade camouflage salt dough and vinegar volcano is The.Coolest.One.Ever.
Give them opportunities.
So we do. Piano. Soccer. Football. Art lessons. Gymnastics. Horse Camp.
And we work more jobs to afford more opportunities.
And we hire a house cleaner to clean our toilets because we aren't home and don't have time to do it ourselves. Since we aren't home, we probably haven't peed in them anyway, so it's kind of an exercise in futility, but we do it anyway.
Keep them entertained so they stay out of trouble.
So we do. Sleepovers every weekend. Trips to the movies. To the skating rink. To the park. More play dates. Big vacations.
Don't let them want for anything.
So we don't. (God knows this one taunts me.) Because I remember not having when others did. And please God, I don't ever want my children to know that ache. So we buy the name brand. We do. As if a name brand can save a soul, can heal a hurt, can carry a child into a lifetime of happiness.
Take them to church.
So we do. And to all the activities the church offers because surely they need to know about Jesus and the tired Sunday School teacher can reach them in ways we can't or don't know how to.
Or are too tired to even attempt because we've been busy.
Busy spinning.
And though there isn't anything wrong with any of these things, somehow we abdicate our one single shot to do the preparing. We divvy out our chance, our stewardship, our few, finite years with these beautiful beings to name brands and complete strangers when God hand picked us for the preparing.
And some of us do have to work, and some of us can't homeschool, and some of us don't work and do homeschool, and still we sacrifice this one precious act--the preparing act--because we're too busy on facebook and texting. And I'm talking to myself here, so just ignore my ranting.
This really is the question. What precious moments do we have, and what are we doing with them?
Because the needful thing is to prepare the way.
Not for a great college,
not for a great job,
not for success in this life.
The needful thing is to prepare their hearts for The Way,
for The Truth,
for The Life,
for His Kingdom,
for success in their eternal life,
for fullness of life.
For Jesus.
And if you are like me, and you get to spinning so fast that when you finally stop you have no idea which way is up or down or left or right, then perhaps you could sit with me and watch Mom dance.
Watch her move before the God that carried her through all the good--the births of beautiful brown eyed babies, the walks through fields of daisies in spring, and lazy summer days at the lake in the heat of summer. Watch her make famous the name of the God who gripped her with relentless strength when the angst of life swallowed her marriage, her parents, her siblings, her dreams. She's still just preparing the way for Him.
If we live to give things or opportunities to our children, we will miss it.
Miss the needful thing.
Miss the chance to prepare.
Our goal as parents, my goal as a momma of sweet, wild, wonderful boys is just this:
To make the name of my God so famous before my children that they know He is the source of life.
In Him is abundance.
In Him is fullness of joy.
In Him is hope.
In Him is peace.
In Him is healing.
In Him is satisfaction.
Mother's Day is declaring her arrival on a one inch square in my May Calendar. Every year she insists I stop and pause long enough to ask, Am I worthy of the spoiling I know I'll get? Do I deserve the honoring, the loving that my men will wash over me?
So often, I'm not.
I'm not a saint like my own momma.
I fall so short.
I fall.
Often.
Period.
And I question God.
Why, God, did you give them to me? There are a thousand better mommas. A thousand who never raise their voice, who never space out and fail to hear their son calling out, a thousand who smile more, who play more, who . . .
But He chose me.
He chose you.
"Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them." (Psalm 127:3-5)
And heritages and rewards and blessings are not randomly tossed from heaven to land like dandelion seeds where they may. They are selected sovereignly by God for specific recipients.
Recipients like you.
Recipients like me.
And isn't He able to keep us from falling?
And isn't preparing the way partly about teaching a child, modeling for a child the ability to humble oneself and admit we are sinners, admit we too mess up, admit we need Jesus, need His forgiveness. Isn't that the greatest ushering of a child into the presence of God that we could ever do?
It's never too late to begin afresh.
Never to late to begin the dance before our Father.
The dance that will mesmerize the minds of our children,
will captivate their attention,
will make God famous in their hearts.
May your Mother's Day be of the dancing kind.
With love,
S
And she drank from His Living Water.
Every.
Single.
Day.
I remember one line from the song she danced to--
Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
And there's this image etched like carvings in a piece of maple that marks my heart. It's of mom dancing on the Sunday we celebrate the people laying palm branches down for the coming Messiah, and I think how she would have been there with all those crowds of curious people on that day. She would have waved spring-green palms and placed them on the earth before he crossed her path.
And two-thousand years later, she did the same thing. Prepared the way. Prepared the way of the Lord. That was her crowning achievement as a mother. She prepared the way of the Lord for us girls. She is the one who did that for us. Did that by drinking from His Living Water. Did that by clinging to Him as her hope. Did that by depending on Him alone. Did that by never quitting God when by all physical evidence it would have seemed (if I'm being honest) like He might have quit her.
She couldn't come to every tennis match. She worked. Sometimes multiple jobs. She scrubbed other people's toilets so I could eat her homemade lentil soup, and she worked nights at the Golden Pantry when old stinky men with cigarettes lodged in their mouths would want to talk to the pretty raven haired single lady, so we could get a new outfit for back-to-school. She missed some things, it's true. But when I wanted to talk at three in the morning, and she hadn't slept, she talked. She propped herself up on pillows and prepared the way while I sat Indian style on the green afghan that footed her bed. And maybe it was an angel that held her eyelids open because now that I'm a mom, I know what it means to be dog-tired, and I am sure she was far beyond that kind of tired.
And isn't this the great crux of the mothering we do? That we would prepare the way of the Lord for our children? Isn't this the thing they most need? And when Mary chose the more excellent thing, the thing that was needful, was it not that she just made a way for Jesus in her life?
Because sometimes life--that old great giver and terrible taker--sometimes he just brings us to our knees. Sometimes he demands so much, and we are left dizzy and uncertain what to do next. Us moms. We get left that way sometimes, don't we? I remember once, when I was a senior in high school, we had a pep-rally game called Dizzy Bat. I was selected to represent my class. My instructions were simple, and honestly, I thought I was rocking them out.
Hold the bat touching the floor.
Put your head on the top of the bat.
Spin around.
Ten times.
Fast. (That's the part I was rocking out.)
Run.
In a straight line to the other side of the gym.
In front of the entire high school.
I ran.
One step.
Then I fell, flat on my back.
Entire high school.
Dizzy.
Life gets you the way, doesn' it?
And when you get done spinning and think you're ready to run, you have no clue which way you are going.
Mothers.
We have one direction with our kids.
One focal point.
One way to run.
Jesus.
Prepare the way for them to love Jesus, to know Him, to trust Him, to count on Him, to seek Him, to abide in Him.
In Him is fullness of life.
In Him.
And I get this backwards. I spin in circles chasing American Dreams because I have spent thirty-five years steeping, like dehydrated mint leaves in steaming water, in a culture that insists there is a right way to raise a child.
Educate them well.
So we do. We send them to pre-school and then relocate our family to a town with the best school systems. We spend hours making sure their third grade camouflage salt dough and vinegar volcano is The.Coolest.One.Ever.
Give them opportunities.
So we do. Piano. Soccer. Football. Art lessons. Gymnastics. Horse Camp.
And we work more jobs to afford more opportunities.
And we hire a house cleaner to clean our toilets because we aren't home and don't have time to do it ourselves. Since we aren't home, we probably haven't peed in them anyway, so it's kind of an exercise in futility, but we do it anyway.
Keep them entertained so they stay out of trouble.
So we do. Sleepovers every weekend. Trips to the movies. To the skating rink. To the park. More play dates. Big vacations.
Don't let them want for anything.
So we don't. (God knows this one taunts me.) Because I remember not having when others did. And please God, I don't ever want my children to know that ache. So we buy the name brand. We do. As if a name brand can save a soul, can heal a hurt, can carry a child into a lifetime of happiness.
Take them to church.
So we do. And to all the activities the church offers because surely they need to know about Jesus and the tired Sunday School teacher can reach them in ways we can't or don't know how to.
Or are too tired to even attempt because we've been busy.
Busy spinning.
And though there isn't anything wrong with any of these things, somehow we abdicate our one single shot to do the preparing. We divvy out our chance, our stewardship, our few, finite years with these beautiful beings to name brands and complete strangers when God hand picked us for the preparing.
And some of us do have to work, and some of us can't homeschool, and some of us don't work and do homeschool, and still we sacrifice this one precious act--the preparing act--because we're too busy on facebook and texting. And I'm talking to myself here, so just ignore my ranting.
This really is the question. What precious moments do we have, and what are we doing with them?
Because the needful thing is to prepare the way.
Not for a great college,
not for a great job,
not for success in this life.
The needful thing is to prepare their hearts for The Way,
for The Truth,
for The Life,
for His Kingdom,
for success in their eternal life,
for fullness of life.
For Jesus.
And if you are like me, and you get to spinning so fast that when you finally stop you have no idea which way is up or down or left or right, then perhaps you could sit with me and watch Mom dance.
Watch her move before the God that carried her through all the good--the births of beautiful brown eyed babies, the walks through fields of daisies in spring, and lazy summer days at the lake in the heat of summer. Watch her make famous the name of the God who gripped her with relentless strength when the angst of life swallowed her marriage, her parents, her siblings, her dreams. She's still just preparing the way for Him.
If we live to give things or opportunities to our children, we will miss it.
Miss the needful thing.
Miss the chance to prepare.
Our goal as parents, my goal as a momma of sweet, wild, wonderful boys is just this:
To make the name of my God so famous before my children that they know He is the source of life.
In Him is abundance.
In Him is fullness of joy.
In Him is hope.
In Him is peace.
In Him is healing.
In Him is satisfaction.
Mother's Day is declaring her arrival on a one inch square in my May Calendar. Every year she insists I stop and pause long enough to ask, Am I worthy of the spoiling I know I'll get? Do I deserve the honoring, the loving that my men will wash over me?
So often, I'm not.
I'm not a saint like my own momma.
I fall so short.
I fall.
Often.
Period.
And I question God.
Why, God, did you give them to me? There are a thousand better mommas. A thousand who never raise their voice, who never space out and fail to hear their son calling out, a thousand who smile more, who play more, who . . .
But He chose me.
He chose you.
"Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them." (Psalm 127:3-5)
And heritages and rewards and blessings are not randomly tossed from heaven to land like dandelion seeds where they may. They are selected sovereignly by God for specific recipients.
Recipients like you.
Recipients like me.
And isn't He able to keep us from falling?
And isn't preparing the way partly about teaching a child, modeling for a child the ability to humble oneself and admit we are sinners, admit we too mess up, admit we need Jesus, need His forgiveness. Isn't that the greatest ushering of a child into the presence of God that we could ever do?
It's never too late to begin afresh.
Never to late to begin the dance before our Father.
The dance that will mesmerize the minds of our children,
will captivate their attention,
will make God famous in their hearts.
May your Mother's Day be of the dancing kind.
With love,
S
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Easter All Year: The Yielded Journey
If we could have been there, sandaled toes sifting dusty paths, with Him that week, I wonder if we would have noticed. I wonder if we would have realized something was up, not right. I wonder if we could have sensed an intensity about Jesus in the days that preceded his arrest. Would his hair have shown a stray grey strand or two that certainly weren't there the week before? (Like the presidents who enter office auburn, black, and blond, shades, but leave dyed the same shade--stressed grey.) Would one eye have sagged slightly, like my grandfather's, under the emotional weight? Though the sky was blue, barometric pressure fine, and the pollen count low would he have complained just once of a headache--an ache only death would alleviate? And I wonder how it must have been for him in that hushed upper room as he sat side by side, surrounded by twelve and yet entirely, utterly alone?
Sometimes I suspect it wasn't the fear of physical pain that caused capillaries to burst, a face to sweat blood. Don't you think that just maybe it was the relational pain of knowing he would be betrayed by the very man he had poured years of ministry into? The only way I can relate to Christ this weekend is to imagine something similar. What if, when their bones have reached the extent of breadth and height and their shoulders are broad, one of my sweet boys-slivers of my heart, chose to walk from our family? Turn their back on me? Believe they could do better elsewhere? Sold out for some silver? What if it was my son? Because though Jesus bore none biological, weren't the disciples really like his children? He poured his life into them, teaching them, feeding them, guiding them, preparing them. Isn't it probable that he could bare the wicked strap he knew they'd use to punish Him for His deity, but what caused him to go back and pray three times in one night was the suffocating sadness of surrendering his relationships with those twelve who would scatter when soldiers came? Oh, Jesus, if my own children scattered at the moment I needed them, how I would crumble, disintegrate. Yet you stood.
"My Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me!"
That was his plea, and I'll never fully grasp its depth. As though he said, "God, I can't fathom baring this plan You have asked of me. I want to run in the other direction. I want to hide, go to another city, keep a low profile for a while. I want to live." What if he really did want to live? What if he knew that he would conquer death, conquer hell, conquer the grave, and get the prize of a return trip to the heavenly presence of God in the end, but somehow still . . . he wanted to live? Because it is hard to understand the reality that this temporary life is only the casing of eternal souls in mortals frames. The everlasting living? The real party? That begins when we shed these frames and enter the realm where moth and rust no longer destroy. But that's all heady knowledge--fills me with understanding. To live out that knowledge. That is hard. Was it hard for him too? He had a mother. A father. Twelve disciples. He had people he loved.
If those were his feelings--even a teensy weensy little bit--then I understand that God/Man. I do. Because I know the end of the story. I know in the end, I get the prize of the presence of God, the streets of gold, the gate of pearl, the face of Creator God. I mean can you even begin to fathom what the face of God will be like? He speaks and mountains literally melt. He utters words and birds of a thousand colors stretch wings, fill air. So I get it. I do. And yet I long to linger here a little while. Long to keep loving those I call mine--sweet, sweaty, summer-freckled boys with dirt glued beneath their fingernails and a man whose square jutted jaw still makes my tummy somersault.
He himself said these words: "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me . . ." (Matthew 10:37) And being God, he had to know when he spoke them it would be he that would have to walk away from his mother and father. It was him who would never have the chance for a son or a daughter. Surely when he "threw himself down with his face to the ground and prayed . . . " (Matthew 26:39) he recalled the very words he had uttered about loving fathers, loving mothers. Are we to assume that because he was a man filled with God-head deity, he was exempt from the very things culture dictates, temps us with throughout all time? Was he exempt from the longings of earthly things? Scripture tells us he was tempted in every way. Surely, he was tempted just to live an ordinary life, like all the other people. Just to live.
Father if it be possible, let this cup pass . . .
Yet not what I will, but what you will.
(Matthew26:39b)
And sometimes I wonder if, though he had no biological children of his own, Jesus isn't the best model of parenting we could follow. He lived with one singular purpose--to accomplish God's will. God's will. That was it. What if, as we coaxed the growing up in our children, we followed this singular mantra: You were made for God's purpose; yield to it.
alive, they were like helium balloons and time was the gas that filled them. Once time ceased, they would deflate and sink to the ground. They were not HIS LIFE. His life was a narrow path that carried him through the hungry, the thirsty, the diseased, the crippled, the destitute, the sinful tax collectors, the pharisees, the Sadducees, Pilate, Golgotha's hill, and a cross. All things that appeared like death but in the end meant life. He yielded every single time to God's will. And I wonder how often yielding might seem like death to us too; I wonder how often the very thing that would truly fill us, elevate us, is clothed in a road so narrow few will truly travel it.
Jesus himself said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me." (John 4:34) The very thing that sustained him was actually doing the very things God sent him to do. That sustained him like food. And I think of SEVEN, and how right in this moment, I'm hungry. Hungry because I've chosen to change a few things for just thirty days, an emptying of myself so that there is room to be fed by the purposes of God. And Jesus ate the will of His Father. Hungry and yet full. Full because when we live out God's purposes we enter the realm of spiritual food--a manna of the heart. When in John 10:10 Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full," did he mean this kind of eternal fullness of yielding?
Because knowing that we are made for a purpose isn't completely enough. Knowing is not a substitute for yielding. Jesus knew the cup--even wished it away--and yet he accepted that He must drink it. If my purpose is to glorify God (Is. 43:7) then am I yielding to His glory? Am I living to make him famous? Am I buying things that will reflect him? Am I treating my neighbors, my family, my children in such a way that they want that great God? Am I?
Gosh I get torn. Do you? I want so many things sometimes my life must resemble a refrigerator turned on it's side, rolled down a hill, and then opened. Pick up where I left off with piano lessons when I was ten years old. Mozart is still throbbing behind my finger tips, isn't he? (Okay, probably not.) And what about learning water color? And a bed and breakfast? What about an organic orchard? I drove by one--dilapidated, trees untended--and longed to make a career out of it. Apple Juice. Apple Pies. Apple turnovers. Apple Butter. And traveling to every continent? Where is the line, the boundary?
Sarah, I made you for my plans. Seek me. Yield.
But what about our goals? Our ambitions? What about finding more work to make more money to give my kids more opportunities? What about amassing more? Just yesterday I squawked to Jeff, with if-I-am-being-honest-tears-clogging-my-vision, "Do you know how long it has been since I got to spend an entire day in Atlanta shopping without interruption? I can't even remember!" Jeff is clothed. The boys are clothed. I am clothed. We need nothing. What in the world would I even spend an entire day in Atlanta shopping for? Yet I long for it because somehow it has become a Grizzly that growls in the face of my heart.
What about ME?
God, I want to have fun too. It can't all be serious and straight as an arrow, can it?
"He who loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matthew10:38)
Will find it?
Will find it.
And there, my friends is the crux of this thing. Somehow, we think if we choose a narrow path we will lose out, miss out, have no fun. There's no wrong in abundance of life here--in the thrill of new pursuits, new learning, new hobbies, new things. We are blessed with all things. But if we wish to find our life, then the choosing needs to be sifted through the purposes of God--the keeping of our eyes fixed on Jesus.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. (Matthew 6:22,23)
We are a nation of parents with unhealthy eyes, aren't we? We try to stuff the balloons of our children's lives with year round sports for our children, music lessons, gymnastics, art lessons, Iphones, pods, and pads, with bigger homes, summer camps, programs, opportunities, and . . . more opportunities. And in the end, they don't fly. They're not filled with life. They . . . WE . . .all sink under the weight of it. We don't keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.
We are a people with unhealthy eyes too. I am. I focus on the things and people in this world when Jesus whispers Seek me first. Nope. I don't always fix my eyes on him.
And if I did, would he remove all the things and people? I think that's what we're really afraid of, isn't it? Missing out? Losing relationships? Surely, it was this loss that caused Jesus to resist the cup His Father offered.
What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
What.Does.It.Profit?
And I came to give you life to the full. If you lose your life--what you see as life--you will gain the great Life, the abundant Life. Unless a kernel of wheat cracks open and dies, there is no fruit, no life.
Isn't this what Easter is really about? Whether or not you celebrate this holiday, isn't commemorating the resurrection--whenever it occurred--about gratitude for the Man who lost his life? Offering thanks for the man who cracked open?
On Good Friday, we circled around the restored elm table we rescued from an Ontario barn and shared the communion of Jesus' death together. In church, when we take communion, there are these little wafers (they taste like sawdust and wood glue) and we pick them out of a silver platter. We don't break them. But, as a family, we broke the bread we shared. It was significant to me. I broke Jesus. My choices. That was part of his purpose--paying once and for all time for every single one of the times I would choose not to yield.
We say we want to live life to the fullest, but how can it be full if it is apart from God's purposes? Apart from me, you can do nothing.
This narrow path, this keeping the eye healthy by fixing it on Jesus, this yielding to the Creator's way, it is life.
It.Is.Life.
It.Is.Abundant.
It.Is.Joy.
It.Is.Hope.
Taking the cup, the cup offered of God, and drinking it, slowly, one day at a time, one decision at a time, one moment at a time, is the way we celebrate Easter year round. Measuring my decisions based on their return value in eternity despite the roaring grizzly in front of me--it may in the end, make all the difference. It may.
It will.
May I yield to Life.
Pray with me:
Jesus, thank you for breaking open for me, for mankind. Thank you for showing me the way to parent. Thank you for yielding. Thank you for staying the course though the loss was great. Thank you for gaining LIFE for all mankind, for me, through your brokenness. Help me, Jesus, to yield. Amen.
Sometimes I suspect it wasn't the fear of physical pain that caused capillaries to burst, a face to sweat blood. Don't you think that just maybe it was the relational pain of knowing he would be betrayed by the very man he had poured years of ministry into? The only way I can relate to Christ this weekend is to imagine something similar. What if, when their bones have reached the extent of breadth and height and their shoulders are broad, one of my sweet boys-slivers of my heart, chose to walk from our family? Turn their back on me? Believe they could do better elsewhere? Sold out for some silver? What if it was my son? Because though Jesus bore none biological, weren't the disciples really like his children? He poured his life into them, teaching them, feeding them, guiding them, preparing them. Isn't it probable that he could bare the wicked strap he knew they'd use to punish Him for His deity, but what caused him to go back and pray three times in one night was the suffocating sadness of surrendering his relationships with those twelve who would scatter when soldiers came? Oh, Jesus, if my own children scattered at the moment I needed them, how I would crumble, disintegrate. Yet you stood.
"My Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me!"
That was his plea, and I'll never fully grasp its depth. As though he said, "God, I can't fathom baring this plan You have asked of me. I want to run in the other direction. I want to hide, go to another city, keep a low profile for a while. I want to live." What if he really did want to live? What if he knew that he would conquer death, conquer hell, conquer the grave, and get the prize of a return trip to the heavenly presence of God in the end, but somehow still . . . he wanted to live? Because it is hard to understand the reality that this temporary life is only the casing of eternal souls in mortals frames. The everlasting living? The real party? That begins when we shed these frames and enter the realm where moth and rust no longer destroy. But that's all heady knowledge--fills me with understanding. To live out that knowledge. That is hard. Was it hard for him too? He had a mother. A father. Twelve disciples. He had people he loved.
If those were his feelings--even a teensy weensy little bit--then I understand that God/Man. I do. Because I know the end of the story. I know in the end, I get the prize of the presence of God, the streets of gold, the gate of pearl, the face of Creator God. I mean can you even begin to fathom what the face of God will be like? He speaks and mountains literally melt. He utters words and birds of a thousand colors stretch wings, fill air. So I get it. I do. And yet I long to linger here a little while. Long to keep loving those I call mine--sweet, sweaty, summer-freckled boys with dirt glued beneath their fingernails and a man whose square jutted jaw still makes my tummy somersault.
He himself said these words: "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me . . ." (Matthew 10:37) And being God, he had to know when he spoke them it would be he that would have to walk away from his mother and father. It was him who would never have the chance for a son or a daughter. Surely when he "threw himself down with his face to the ground and prayed . . . " (Matthew 26:39) he recalled the very words he had uttered about loving fathers, loving mothers. Are we to assume that because he was a man filled with God-head deity, he was exempt from the very things culture dictates, temps us with throughout all time? Was he exempt from the longings of earthly things? Scripture tells us he was tempted in every way. Surely, he was tempted just to live an ordinary life, like all the other people. Just to live.
Father if it be possible, let this cup pass . . .
Yet not what I will, but what you will.
(Matthew26:39b)
And sometimes I wonder if, though he had no biological children of his own, Jesus isn't the best model of parenting we could follow. He lived with one singular purpose--to accomplish God's will. God's will. That was it. What if, as we coaxed the growing up in our children, we followed this singular mantra: You were made for God's purpose; yield to it.
alive, they were like helium balloons and time was the gas that filled them. Once time ceased, they would deflate and sink to the ground. They were not HIS LIFE. His life was a narrow path that carried him through the hungry, the thirsty, the diseased, the crippled, the destitute, the sinful tax collectors, the pharisees, the Sadducees, Pilate, Golgotha's hill, and a cross. All things that appeared like death but in the end meant life. He yielded every single time to God's will. And I wonder how often yielding might seem like death to us too; I wonder how often the very thing that would truly fill us, elevate us, is clothed in a road so narrow few will truly travel it.
Jesus himself said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me." (John 4:34) The very thing that sustained him was actually doing the very things God sent him to do. That sustained him like food. And I think of SEVEN, and how right in this moment, I'm hungry. Hungry because I've chosen to change a few things for just thirty days, an emptying of myself so that there is room to be fed by the purposes of God. And Jesus ate the will of His Father. Hungry and yet full. Full because when we live out God's purposes we enter the realm of spiritual food--a manna of the heart. When in John 10:10 Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full," did he mean this kind of eternal fullness of yielding?
Because knowing that we are made for a purpose isn't completely enough. Knowing is not a substitute for yielding. Jesus knew the cup--even wished it away--and yet he accepted that He must drink it. If my purpose is to glorify God (Is. 43:7) then am I yielding to His glory? Am I living to make him famous? Am I buying things that will reflect him? Am I treating my neighbors, my family, my children in such a way that they want that great God? Am I?
Gosh I get torn. Do you? I want so many things sometimes my life must resemble a refrigerator turned on it's side, rolled down a hill, and then opened. Pick up where I left off with piano lessons when I was ten years old. Mozart is still throbbing behind my finger tips, isn't he? (Okay, probably not.) And what about learning water color? And a bed and breakfast? What about an organic orchard? I drove by one--dilapidated, trees untended--and longed to make a career out of it. Apple Juice. Apple Pies. Apple turnovers. Apple Butter. And traveling to every continent? Where is the line, the boundary?
Sarah, I made you for my plans. Seek me. Yield.
But what about our goals? Our ambitions? What about finding more work to make more money to give my kids more opportunities? What about amassing more? Just yesterday I squawked to Jeff, with if-I-am-being-honest-tears-clogging-my-vision, "Do you know how long it has been since I got to spend an entire day in Atlanta shopping without interruption? I can't even remember!" Jeff is clothed. The boys are clothed. I am clothed. We need nothing. What in the world would I even spend an entire day in Atlanta shopping for? Yet I long for it because somehow it has become a Grizzly that growls in the face of my heart.
What about ME?
God, I want to have fun too. It can't all be serious and straight as an arrow, can it?
"He who loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matthew10:38)
Will find it?
Will find it.
And there, my friends is the crux of this thing. Somehow, we think if we choose a narrow path we will lose out, miss out, have no fun. There's no wrong in abundance of life here--in the thrill of new pursuits, new learning, new hobbies, new things. We are blessed with all things. But if we wish to find our life, then the choosing needs to be sifted through the purposes of God--the keeping of our eyes fixed on Jesus.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. (Matthew 6:22,23)
We are a nation of parents with unhealthy eyes, aren't we? We try to stuff the balloons of our children's lives with year round sports for our children, music lessons, gymnastics, art lessons, Iphones, pods, and pads, with bigger homes, summer camps, programs, opportunities, and . . . more opportunities. And in the end, they don't fly. They're not filled with life. They . . . WE . . .all sink under the weight of it. We don't keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.
We are a people with unhealthy eyes too. I am. I focus on the things and people in this world when Jesus whispers Seek me first. Nope. I don't always fix my eyes on him.
And if I did, would he remove all the things and people? I think that's what we're really afraid of, isn't it? Missing out? Losing relationships? Surely, it was this loss that caused Jesus to resist the cup His Father offered.
What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
What.Does.It.Profit?
And I came to give you life to the full. If you lose your life--what you see as life--you will gain the great Life, the abundant Life. Unless a kernel of wheat cracks open and dies, there is no fruit, no life.
Isn't this what Easter is really about? Whether or not you celebrate this holiday, isn't commemorating the resurrection--whenever it occurred--about gratitude for the Man who lost his life? Offering thanks for the man who cracked open?
On Good Friday, we circled around the restored elm table we rescued from an Ontario barn and shared the communion of Jesus' death together. In church, when we take communion, there are these little wafers (they taste like sawdust and wood glue) and we pick them out of a silver platter. We don't break them. But, as a family, we broke the bread we shared. It was significant to me. I broke Jesus. My choices. That was part of his purpose--paying once and for all time for every single one of the times I would choose not to yield.
We say we want to live life to the fullest, but how can it be full if it is apart from God's purposes? Apart from me, you can do nothing.
This narrow path, this keeping the eye healthy by fixing it on Jesus, this yielding to the Creator's way, it is life.
It.Is.Life.
It.Is.Abundant.
It.Is.Joy.
It.Is.Hope.
Taking the cup, the cup offered of God, and drinking it, slowly, one day at a time, one decision at a time, one moment at a time, is the way we celebrate Easter year round. Measuring my decisions based on their return value in eternity despite the roaring grizzly in front of me--it may in the end, make all the difference. It may.
It will.
May I yield to Life.
Pray with me:
Jesus, thank you for breaking open for me, for mankind. Thank you for showing me the way to parent. Thank you for yielding. Thank you for staying the course though the loss was great. Thank you for gaining LIFE for all mankind, for me, through your brokenness. Help me, Jesus, to yield. Amen.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
So I'm not serving Blackberry, Cranberry Compote This Year
This is what I hate about the Christmas season. Every year I try. Really. REALLY try to simplify. To plan well. To do in advance. To remember it isn't about presents but about presence--that of our family and that of JESUS. Try to keep Christ central. But then comes the crescendo of last minute items unchecked from the lists of labors loudly lamenting my inefficiency. That crescendo that crowds out the spirit singing Silent Night, Holy Night. That crescendo that blows to smitherines all my careful, meticulous planning.
And tension mounts.
Grows like snow falling in Ontario winters.
Soft and slow at first, a blanket that wraps me, but it becomes heavier, weightier. And it isn't long before I am suffocating, snowed in by it all, my shovel is still in Ontario, and I'm in Georgia and I can't get out.
Blinded by the blizzard.
Blinded to the light.
That's where I was when Jeff was playing airsoft, and I was transferring my blackberry, cranberry compote from stove to fridge. Blinded and singing myself a pity song. That's where I was when the Pyrex pranced out of my hands and like Santa and his reindeer, pirouetted across the kitchen plopping herself onto planked-floor slinging her fruity purple slop on every surface within a twelve mile radius. And I saw stars. (Not the one on my tree or the one from Bethlehem.) A bull chasing red, air coursed my from nostrils, and I'm sure my ears were chimneys and smoke billowed from them.
Thirty minutes I spent cleaning that mess. Wiping doors, table legs-chair legs-stool legs, pantry cupboards, under the refrigerator. How is it possible for compote to centripetally sail in every direction when I had only been traveling in one? I know it multiplied as it flew. Thirty minutes I didn't have. Not in my schedule.
Third batch of short breads waiting to be whipped, and two chickens chanting to be roasted. Counters littered with baking debris and my heart hurting.
"Lord, I know this is a season of joy, but I hate this. I can't see you in this. And how ridiculous is it that I, one so blessed, am seething when I should be singing?"
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In Him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. And the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it." (John :1-5)
The darkness has not mastered it.
The darkness of life--of the moments when gooey, glorified fruit relish slink down our walls--can overwhelm. Can blind. Can snow a soul in.
And I am ashamed when that is my darkness. Want to deny it. Pretend it isn't dark. Pretend the picket fence isn't stained, and the world is perfect because how dare I consider my world dark when there is a deeper shade of black than I have ever known? Children hunger. Children thirst, cry for a mother who is gone, a father who never cared in the first place. Men and women in parks huddle hoping to stay warm on their bench-beds. How can I, fortunate daughter of North America, claim darkness?
Darkness dawns many shades and she is all humanity's beast of the soul.
Christian. Not Christian. Child. Adult. Homebound or homeless. Prince or Pauper. We all know her shadow. She has dressed as serpent tricking Eve to taste, she has heaved her heavy blanket on hunched shoulders and stayed until the doctors give pills, she has clinched fists and coerced them into slinging, she has blinded the rich man to the homeless man, and she has tempted the weary mother to wallow in the mire of miscellaneous mountains that demand her attention. I know because I am that mother, and I have seen darkness dance. I've taken her dangling arm and waltzed a round or two.
But the darkness has not mastered the light.
That word mastered means to overcome it, to overtake it. The darkness has never overtaken the light. Never. No matter the shade, she cannot conquer The Light of the World. I recall the words of Peter, the young boy in Elizabeth Yates' classic, Once in the Year when he asks Benj to further explain what happened when the angels appeared to the shepherds, "What had happened, Benj? What made the night turn to light?"
What indeed makes the night turn to light?
I sat on the floor, eyes giving way to waterfalls of emotion--a mother tired of mothering, and I whispered, "Immanuel--LIGHT with me."
"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us." (Matthew 1:23)
These dark moments. They're why He came. To redeem them. To cast light when we can't see beyond ourselves.
These moments when celebrating Christmas is a serrated knife to our gut because we're saying goodbye to the family member we loved, when children still thirst in countries an airplane ride away, when teenage children are parents too early, and even the moments when we can't find a justifiable reason. These are the moments Immanuel--God with us--came for. They are the moments that make us eligble for His grace.
The moments when we say,
"Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me..."
But the darkness will not master light.
"...even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you."
(Psalm 139:11,12)
And that night was a mess, but it was indeed a holy night in my kitchen.
Oh, holy night, the stars were brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior's birth.
It was holy not because I felt like the serene images of Mary--hair long, clothed in pallid blue, halo over head--but because Immanuel is brighter than the darkness that overwhelms.
And the wise men followed a star that moved as they moved, guiding them to Ultimate Light.
And I too can follow The Light of Men, follow Him from darkness into light.
I cleaned in silence, wiping away the mess of my own making--my haste, my rushing. It isn't the repercussions, the ramifications, the ripple effects that are altered by the light. It is in the heart that walks through the ramifications--the valleys of the shadows of death, the cleaning of compote, the closing of caskets, the calling out to God for wayward children--that Light makes a difference. Immanuel, God with us, God in us who follow Him, is the meaning of hope, the meaning of Joy To The World.
There is not just light at the end of the tunnel, there is light through the tunnel, within us as we pass her cavernous way.
And Christmas is about that light.
It is the slowing time.
The time when we light up a thousand trees and top them with glowing stars. Just the other day I laughed in wonder at God's own light display dripping in my front yard. Not long after dawn He had ladled the dew so heavy on lanky limbs of maple trees that tiny one centimeter balls of liquid luminated the morning while blue birds made their nests nearby. God's own Christmas tree.
And those bulbs would reflect the sun.
Too, I am a reflection of His Light. The reflection of Son light in my home, my neighborhood, my little world. Sometimes a poor one, it is true.
When the floors and walls were cleaned, I stood, still steaming slightly. Emotions don't always dissolve, but they are like the shadow of a monstrous cat that nested in the folds of insulation between the ceiling joists of my unfinished childhood ceiling, that dawn slowly erased.
And when, moments later, mom came I took shelter in the human arms that God sent, the mother's arms who never stops mothering. Because we are human, after all. We need the touching, the telling that all is well.
But my spirit already knew. Immanuel was there.
And this is the hope of Christmas, that darkness will never master light.
There will be no cranberry, blackberry froo froo on my Christmas table this year, but lighted candles there will be.
To remind me.
He is here.
Here.
With Us.
Through it all.
Amen.
Pray with me:
Immanuel, God come down into my messy kitchen, stepping with me across sticky floors. Immanuel. Teach me to see the holiness in every moment. Teach me to see the burning of your Light when darkness shrouds my soul. Let me be a display of Your Light to those with greater darkness than my own. Help me to fix my gaze on You that my eyes will be good and my soul will be so full that a shivering world is wormed by your reflection in me. Amen
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