and I see you, doing your best to balance relationships and responsibilities,
and you hide your face when attempts fall short.
Sometimes you feel you've succeeded with it all,
and sometimes, you just want to quit.
I see you, there, oh busy one.
But at the end of the day, come home to Me. Find your way back to My presence, rest your head against my chest, and breathe deep the rest I alone can give.
Psalm 131
1 My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. 2 But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.
3 Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.
We quietly walked into the store, could be we made up half its occupants. We browsed the CDs, recognizing none of the artists, and then we headed to the back where a greying man with a scruff that begged scratchy grandpa kisses recommended we pick up David Grey's White Ladder album if we were wanting something distinct and upandcoming and native to this land.
It was just barely 2000, fog rolling over the grey dates of March, and we were in Ireland.
So HighSchoolFriend and I purchased the CD, boarded the tour bus that held the rest of our chorus group, that held too many freshmen boys who cared nothing of this emerald country, her history and sounds, her people nervous about transitioning to the Euro, her smog-filled streets of Dublin,
her enchantment.
We finished our sight seeing that day, exchanged full rolls of film for fresh ones, hoping for pictures in focus, pictures that captured Tim singing Oh Danny Boy with 90 year old native on the side of the road, pictures of sheep spray-painted fluorescent colors demarcating ownership, pictures of the brown lamb scooped up in my arms, coastal cliffs in blurry background, and we then piled into our modern hotel that promised the next century would be oh-so-cool.
And the reason we bought a CD that day was to use the trendy CD player installed in our hotel room.
The rest of the stay, those next four days, David Grey sang to us, morning and night, while rising and makeuping, while choosing whattowear, and then while peeling the day's adventure away for a night's rest.
Ireland now had her soundtrack, a musical accoutrement to her sights and impressions, to her faces and foods, to the adventures she'd lend me. And beyond those literal moments, these songs created memory space around the girl I was, the woman I was becoming.
The soul searches for continuity, for something that can tie the stories of a bright-eyed seventeen year old to the stories of a (happily) tired mother of two.
And I see some constants, some, against the glaring changes of eleven years. The heart is more weathered, pangs of disillusionment have replaced naivete. The heart is more full, loneliness and longing replaced by the friendship and love of one breathtaking man. And the heart is the same, still breaking away from common paths to discover hidden ones, still getting lost along the way, still craving silence and nature and horse rides over shopping, early morning runs to castles over sleeping in.
But the most constant thing between my present and my Ireland is not David Grey, is not my stories, is not the aspects of my personality unchanged.
The tie between then and now is Jesus.
He was there with me on that tallest mountain, fog rolled in, whispering through wisps of hair the glory of risk as we scaled the cliff, trail long lost. He was as oxygen as we traveled through humble villages, infusing me with an excitement to breathe it all in, with an invitation to revel in the majesty of rolling hills, of freckled faces, of the diversity of creation. He was with me when I shared my story with my hotel roommate, making for a total of five who knew then, inviting me to ministry, to love, to scrape away false strength in exchange for vulnerability, even when healing's not complete, and only just begun.
And Jesus, the same Jesus who met me on the mountain, who met me in the streets and in the pub, whose presence held me tight even on that hormone-filled, obnoxiously immature tour bus, is the Jesus of Here and Now.
The adventure is not as sensational, no one begs to see the scrapbook of a stay-at-home-mom whose days are filled with cooking and playing and reading and nursing, but the risk, the love of life, and the ministry are all open invitations still standing, still calling me to answer.
It's different now, it sure is different.
But He's not.
God of Ireland, God of now, you are my constant,
you are the continuity of my story.
You are Jesus, the same yesterday, today and forever.
He was slathered with sunscreen, but there was less than precedent called for; he wore a hat but it didn't match; he had no special sticker indicating the amount of UV exposure on his chubby left arm;
this is the blessing of Second Time Around--a little more relaxed we've become...
We took pictures, but he won't remember.
He couldn't know that the ocean is where his mother meets her God.
That she grew up close to the sea, brought home from the hospital to a tiny apartment on 16th Street, right off of Balboa Boulevard in Newport Beach. That her headbands were used for structural support in castles made of sand. That her pale skin was once bronzed; that she rocked the hottest diaper tan.
He couldn't know that later, her mother and brothers would have to wind through the Santa Monica mountains, breaths held as they passed over the mountain's crest, first view of the ocean falling on excited eyes trying to discern whether the fog would lift, whether the sun would come out to play.
He wouldn't know that she was the one who persuaded her camping friends to leave their tents on the beach for a dew-soaked night sleeping under the stars, sea spray matting down 12-year-old hair, smearing mascara that shouldn't have been there.
He won't be able to picture the iridescent blue-green glow, radiating from broken waves that night. He won't hear their crash and the lightening-like charges of light that flew across the foam for one joyous invitation to listen in on God laughing.
He couldn't know that nine years ago his father took an ocean-sick girlfriend away from Tallahassee's hills to the Gulf to invite her to join him as lover and friend for the rest of their lives. Or, that their honeymoon would be had overlooking the ocean in Barbados; or that three years later her Grief-Consummate would manifest on a hilltop overlooking the Pacific, where her uncle would breathe his last as she stood at his bedside.
He will hear about it, but won't be able to fathom the very experience that ushered him into this world. That God would whisper to his mother the morning before his birth,
I will be with you in deep waters.
That she would find each contraction present like the commanding waves of Zuma. That she would take a deep breath, dive into its power and then emerge, tired and weary and grasping for rest before the next wave. That fear would never own her, that she would let herself go to the ancient rhythms of childbirth, promise in hand, God standing by.
Death and life and promise and grief, have all been met by the sea.
God speaks of his majesty, of his forever-ness through the endless horizons. He says,
"you are but dust"
with the sand that creeps between the toes. He says,
"I am Big"
with the stretch of water from the shore to where it meets the sky. He says,
"I know you"
when happenstance finds me, again, at the shore, for a time of celebration or mourning. He knows I meet him there, he knows I worship at the water. And he keeps bringing me back.
Walker met the sea last week, for which I am glad.
But my heart's cry is that he meet its Maker, the Grand Designer of it all. The call may not come through the roar of a breaking wave, but may it come, loud and strong, until my son is brought to the feet of the One who knows him best.
For the past two weeks, we've had a little bird come and knock at our door.
She perches on the step, as close to the brass kick plate as she can get and she pecks away.
Carter has taken up his father's response. Throws his arms up in the air and runs toward the door to shoo the bird away.
She doesn't bother me.
Silly is all she is. Pecking away at her own reflection. Not knowing that there is nothing on the other side, just an image of one pecking back. Some kind of illusion of company, I guess. The kick plate is strong--aged and brassy, came with the door, with the house. The only damage I fear is that of her own brain stuff.
So I shoo her away too.
I think of the times I perched in front of my own mirror and all I could do was peck. I saw this flaw and this didn't measure up and this certainly didn't look like the girls in the magazines. Jesus stood in the window, curtain pulled back, head shaking at the sight of my silliness. He, too, feared for my brain stuff and tried to shoo me away from my mirrors, from the condemning voices inside.
Together, Jesus and I unsubscribed to Delia's (a superskinny tween catalog I got back in the 90's) and we talked of real beauty. I read a [Christian] book or two that told me I Was Really Beautiful and used scripture to prove it. I stopped pretending to be a vegetarian for the socially acceptable excuse it lent me to eat only a bowl of rice for dinner. I started eating red meat. I asked Jesus to make me feel beautiful.
And I think he appreciated those efforts, just as I'm relieved when my silly bird flies away.
But then she comes back. And I would come back, too. To the image, to the question of beauty, to the insatiable longing to know if I had measured up.
I think the cause of my insanity is the mirror I have been choosing. I've continued to place myself at the threshold of Me, to test whether I measure up to Me and My Standards. I've used Jesus and his merciful healing, my husband's adoration, the warmth of community and the value gained from blessing others all to serve as answers to My Own Selfish Quest.
I was never meant to stand before myself. I was not given the capacity to contain the answers to my own questions of identity. The first and only place for me is before a Broken King.
When I stand before Jesus, my ugliness is apparent. Concerns over acne or weight or fashionable clothes fade to gray when my self centeredness and rebellious pride present themselves.
Before Jesus, I fail miserably. No amount of pity or worldly rationale can remove the deficit.
And before Jesus, I'm declared loved and worthy and highly esteemed. No amount of good makeup or expensive jeans or worldly praise can contribute to this revelation.
So the answer, then, is not to stand before my own mirror and chant, "I'm beautiful. I'm beautiful." There has to be a fundamental change. There has to be more of him and less of me, an exchange of standards and value systems and definitions. Jesus needs to be my Mirror.
I want to look upon him and love him. I want to look upon him and be changed. I want to look upon him and lose myself in him, no longer condemning myself but also not trusting in my own esteem.
This silly girl needs to fly away home. The kick plate has lost its luster and the heart aches for something more secure, more complete.
Jesus, you and you alone are Beauty. Let me lose myself in you.
You should know that I still go to the bathroom in front of my three-year old. Well, it's not really like, "let's-all-go-to-the-bathroom-together" kind of business; I just haven't gotten into the habit of closing the door.
Yet.
(It sounds very wonderful, this idea of having one room to myself for a few minutes. Alone.)
A few days ago, I sat down to commence my bathroom-business and Carter said, oh-so-bossily,
"Mommy, that's my toilet. You have to use yours. Go use your bathroom,
not mine!!"
And we began a debate that went something like this:
"It's not really your bathroom, Carter. It belongs to Daddy and me."
"No, it's really mine! Look, there's my toothbrush and my shampoo and my stool (pronounced "stew-loo"). It's my stuff in my bathroom."
"Actually, it really isn't yours. Daddy and I bought this house. And we bought you the stuff here in your bathroom. We just share it with you because we love you. We lived in this house, using this bathroom long before you were ever here...
(And no, I don't expect a barely-three-year old to understand that whole concept.)
So, Carter, I'm going to use this toilet."
I wondered, then, how many times God has tried to have that conversation with me. When he's tried to say, April, I want to use this thing and then I pout and tell the God who has existed before time, who gives me the very breath I breathe, who made the cotton grow that would become my clothes, who designed the cow whose cream would make for glorious creme brulee, who had the audacity to grant me free-will so I could one day mimic the reasoning of a selfish three-year old,
that it really. all. belongs. to. me.
I heard God laugh while I sat on that toilet.
He didn't have to convict me. I needed no scripture to be brought to memory. It was one of those wait-till-you're-a-parent-and-you-get-a-glimpse-of-what-you've-put-me-through kind of moments come full circle. The truth is, it all belongs to him. The truth is, it's ridiculous for me to have the kind of grip I do on my money, on my free time, on my decisions, on my prerogative. The truth is, the God-head has been doing this Life thing way before I came into the picture. He's been exerting his will, accomplishing his holy plans long before my stubborn will was ever given the opportunity to participate.
So, yes, God, you may have my money, my priorities, my stubbornness, my talent, my influence and my life, and if need be,
They were all lined up on her bookcase. Dozens and dozens of them, their pudgy little bodies forever solidifying Sarah's stance in my eyes as cool. Each one of them boasted of its own experience--a meal of coveted chicken nuggets, or a plastiky cheeseburger, with fries and maybe even a Coke.
Sarah's mom is so cool, my five-year-old mind thought.
She's got 34 McNugget Buddies to prove it.
Here began my relationship with Envy, a friend with something to say about everything.
Fourth grade lunches were had under a pathetic sapling, striving to be something greater, where Kelly, Nicole, Dana and I circled and sat. As we unpacked our statements of status, my familiar friend Envy polarized my thoughts. I glanced at Dana's fruit snacks, those rubbery, sweet things that were supposed to taste like the flavors their fruit shapes held.
Poor you, Envy whispered, you just have real fruit. And my apple slices were browning.
Envy pointed out Nicole's white bread and then my oatmeal-dusted wheat bread. There were Juicy Juice boxes, compared to my water bottle, and Lunchables compared to my peanut butter and honey sandwich.
Envy continued her parade in my thoughts, usually unchecked.
In fifth grade, I noticed how Marisa's clothes were store-bought, and mine were sewn by Mom. Yes, we had fun going to JoAnn's, thumbing through giant books of patterns, choosing the fabrics and prints, and then watching the clothes come together, piece by piece, over days of cutting and pinning and sewing. But those tags on Marisa's clothes.
Those tags were cool.
I'm a mom now. And I'm starting to prepare lunches and clothe my children and choose which experiences we'll share and those we won't.
And I'm just a little angry with my friend Envy because the things she whispered, the feelings she imparted, weren't based in truth. Envy did not have my best interest in mind.
But Mom did.
While Sarah was busy collecting her McNugget Buddies, my mom was at home, making home-made cheese sauce for her version of mac n' cheese, sparing us kids the TBHQ and dimethylpolysiloxane.
While Dana's mom was buying her Lunchables and fruit snacks, mine was preparing sandwiches with real protein and fiber, believing that fruit should taste like fruit and not reconstituted corn syrup.
And while Marisa’s mom took her on shopping trips, trips that Mom and I would eventually have, my mom and I spent hours and hours creating those tagless clothes together, memories I wouldn’t trade even now for a pair of Seven jeans.
Envy tries to whisper to me now, even though I should be way past this childish covetousness and pettiness. She points out brands and status symbols and LeCruset cookingware. I’m trying to recognize her voice a little bit faster, and dismantle her influence a little more frequently. She’s never loved me, like my mom and my husband and my God. Why I’ve given her this power over my thoughts, I’m not sure; it’s probably just the way of human nature.
I’m happy to say, though, that she looks different. She’s no longer a welcomed presence in my life, holding my trust in hand because she lets me know what’s cool, sparing me rejection. Envy represents the ugly parts of me and I want nothing to do with her now.
I’d like to be the kind of mom that packs less-than-cool lunches, with snacks that don't have their own commercials, and that probably won't get traded, because I care for my kids.
And I’d like to be the kind of daughter who can receive the goodness of life that her Father God gives, from whole wheat bread to off-brand sneakers, from authentic friendships to security in a husband's love, without leaning in to listen when Envy comes around and whispers.
From the moment I pulled our nativity scene from its box three weeks ago, I was struck by the seeming absurdity of it all.
Those little figurines representing the ones present for the birth of Emmanuel seemed so ridiculous standing next to the glitter and gold and the sparkle and shine of my other Christmas decorations.
They were plain.
Poor.
Unimpressive and unsexy.
Mary especially caught my attention.
As a woman who recently gave birth the old-fashioned way, I'm shocked at her birth experience. The whole scene, made too familiar and taken for granted by our traditions and art, is actually quite scandalous. I find myself thinking about details that never occurred to me before. I wonder why Joseph didn't knock down the doors of that inn--surely my husband would have. I wonder if some compassionate woman heard Mary's cry and helped her labor--I cannot imagine giving birth (without epidural) without the mothering and comfort of another woman, much less my mother or best friend. I wonder if they had enough clean linens and fresh water to cleanse the wounds of baby and mother.
This birth experience, far from the comfort, predictability and safety that I counted on last October, is how Jesus chose to enter our world. It wasn't sterile. It wasn't measured and planned and calculated. It wasn't even average, by that day's standards.
The only glory displayed was intangible. The only glitter came from a beaming mass of gas and rock millions of miles away. The only fanfare, the songs of a thousand angels, was received by an audience of dirty, homeless shepherds.
Long before his infant lungs fought for their first breath, Jesus intended to announce to us what we should and should not expect, simply by choosing this birth story. A King had arrived, yes. The angels and astronomers concurred. But, were we tempted to expect a typical king with a typical kingdom, this birth story allows us no justification.
The humility and offensiveness of Jesus, lying in a donkey's feeding trough, born to a teenage girl with a blue-collar husband who couldn't even secure a motel room, screams to us that
this.
is.
Different.
That should we want to appease our superficial natures in the quest for a Beautiful King, a Handsome-Brad-Pitt-Celebrity of sorts, or a Military Leader whose power would defy Rome, or a Religious Leader draped in robes of pomp and circumstance,
we would not find Him.
We would not find a King made of the trappings of this world, because that is not what we needed. We needed a God who would dare to take on our stench, become familiar with our sufferings and weaknesses, who would know our pain and yet, in his God-ness, transcend the ugly human-ness of it all.
The Nativity scene, the real one, the unvarnished, dirt-under-your-fingernails-scene announces that this God has a Great Agenda, one that won't flirt around with the fleeting comforts of fame, popularity and wealth. This birth scene sets up the ultimate scene--baby is grown, revealed to us as God-Man, and is bleeding out on a tree, receiving into his spirit the rebellion of humanity and all of its darkness--
that to all who look to him,
they might know light. and life. and true-Jesus-breathed-redemption.
It was 6:12 a.m. and I was already 12 minutes late for my meeting with God. Instead of my usual routine of opening my Beth Moore study to where I had left off the previous day, I felt a quietness,
a sort of hushing of my soul.
Isaiah 6 was the whisper I received.
I knew this passage--this story of a prophet whose beloved king dies. This prophet, whose heart still grieving, lifts his eyes and has one of the most mystic visions recorded of God on his throne. This prophet, who gets to eavesdrop on the melodies of heaven.
For me, I cannot read
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.
and not be raptured into scenes of my past, into moments of corporate worship in a small church-on-a-mountainside, jubilant praise vibrating from the crumbling bricks. Our biggest, blackest mamas would step up, led by the Spirit, and lead us in the chorus that comes directly from this scripture. Our singing of the refrain,
"holy, holy, holy is the Lord"
would build and build with each word, each syllable, until the very frame of our building seemed to beg for mercy under the weight of such expressed glory. I was only 7, maybe 8, but moments like those were the cracks under the door of worship through which I would peer, intrigued by the promise of more, the promise of Something Bigger, Someone Bigger, to know someday.
So I spent the next ten minutes singing that song, trying to lift my eyes a bit higher that morning. I wanted to let God be God and not just my means to a prayer-request-fulfilled, which is far too often all that he is to me.
I thought about death. How, for Isaiah, it took the physical death of a hero in order for him to receive the fullness of God's holy nature. How, for me, it has taken the death of dreams, the death of ambitions and false-identities to truly lift up my eyes and see Him.
God knew that "on the day my Grandma would die" I would lift my eyes and think about heaven more than I had in a long time. He knew I would imagine myself at the threshold of the throne room, the place Isaiah envisioned, the place my Grandma freely crosses.
He knew I would like an invitation to join the angels singing the refrain of heaven,
to join my grandma as she sang,
perhaps for the first time, fully-present,
along with the holy ones, an eternal chorus.
---
God blows my mind.
Only he, in his compassionate wisdom, could take something as sad as my precious grandma's death and infuse the grief with one more moment with her, with one more promise of the fellowship to come.
I am reduced to the state of a little girl, only 7, maybe 8, whose belly rubs the floor, eyes straining to see through the cracks of a door. The melodies and lights and promise of heaven are bleeding through, under the threshold, faint silhouettes of those loved and lost, the glory of a King who will reign forever.
For now, that's all we get. Brief moments of revelation, of Reality-to-Come breaking through to our muddled existences.
For my grief, for my perspective, for the attempt to live on purpose with my days left from Here to There,
I mean, I had the swim diaper, the change of clothes, the towel and the after-your-first-swim-lesson-treat all ready to go.
But, emotionally, I was ignorant to the experience that was about to strike me.
You see, mine is the son who's never cried for me when I've dropped him off at childcare for church. Mine is the son who politely (because his butt's whooped if he's not) asks me to "Leave me alone. Daddy and I are playing right now."
That same independent son cried
the
entire
thirty
minutes
of his first swim lesson last week.
When Carter's name was called, along with Sid, Ella and Cameron, he wasn't sure what to think. Once his teacher dunked his head under the water, though, he knew exactly how he felt.
Abandonded.
"Mommy!!" he screamed in panic when he could catch his breath, "Come swim with me!!"
I could barely hear him. We mommies were seated behind a thick plexi-glass wall, with a red stop sign posted on the door that stood between Comfort and Fear. At one point, I asked the other moms if the kids could even see us--is this some kind of CIA interrogation glass? They assured me the kids could.
Which is why, 5 minutes into the hysterics (both mine and his), these other mommies told me I should hide myself. From his sight. The reasoning was that if he stopped looking back for me, he might forget his fears and focus on his lesson.
So there I stood, hiding behind a tall sticker rack, crying as my son frantically searched the scene of Watching Mommies for his, wondering why I would
leave him with a stranger,
leave him to his fears,
leave him to choke on chlorinated water because he's still not able to hold his breath.
The reason I chose to subject him to such fear, loneliness and seemingly abandonment is that I believed his temporary pain paled in comparison to the unalterable pain that could come from a drowning accident.
The promise of my son's independence and freedom in the water was worth far more than the tears we both cried that day.
I wondered if this was a fraction of what God has felt with his children;
if there was some Celestial Sticker Rack that God hid behind while he watched me walk through my darkest days, the moments comprised of tragedy and brokenness, the moments about which I would later swear,
You broke my heart when you let that happen.
I'm led to believe he cried then. I'm led to believe he was surprised by the pain he experienced. I'm led to believe he was whispering, the entire time I searched the sky for his face,
I'm right here. I haven't left you. I'm so sorry. It's going to be okay.
I have learned, in my short journey so far, that there is a Promise that far outweighs the pain, the brokenness and the tragedy of this life. Intimacy with God, fellowship with the sufferings of Christ, genuine ministry to broken women and a dependency on God are all parts of the Promise I've already known.
For the unanswerable questions, for the sufferings that seem to have no possible value in this life, the ultimate Promise of life and healing await his children. I imagine God standing there, at the door of eternity, with a warm towel in his hands, ready to embrace the shivering sojourner.
For now, though, we just have to believe He was there. He is there. And that his purposes are wiser and better than a mom trying to teach her son how to swim.
Where do you have to trust God still has a purpose for you?
