letting go

On Sam’s first day of kindergarten, I joined the throng of parents trudging down the hall to the room where our babies would spend roughly 1,200 hours over the next ten months.

When the children stood for the pledge of allegiance, the teacher shooed the parents from the room. As you can imagine, I was the last parent out of the room. Literally walking backwards, I observed Sam standing at attention, hand over heart just like I taught him. One red-nosed little girl snuffed out large sobs. Some children just sat at their tables staring into oblivion. Some still worked on the sticker game the teacher had put out. The teacher held a small American flag in one hand and patted the sniffling girl with the other.

I’ll never forget the sea of faces as I turned around my back towards the kindergarteners. With a smorgasbord of expressions, parents gathered around the open door stuck to the floor looking for one last glimpse of their babies. Sadness. Horror. Triumph. Fear. Anticipation. Brows furrowed, eyes spilling over each parent gazed back at the blur of the past and into a future of unknown.

Because I have a 20 year old, I know a little about what this future holds: losing teeth, bad haircuts, break-outs and break-ups, first dates, proms, senior trips, college visits, career choices. This moment frozen in time held both the past and the future.

My friend, Hillary, hugged me and my tears spilled over.

I had cried off and on all morning. Earlier as I sat on the patio with Bible and coffee, Sam found me just like he always does. He came over with sleep still on his breath and the lovee still right up at his nose. He climbed up on my lap and said, “Mommy, I’m scared.” 

“What are you afraid of?” I asked.

“I am scared to go to kindergarten,” he said with the sage wisdom of an 80 year old.

“I know,” I said as I cuddled him up as close as I could. “Let’s get some chocolate milk.” 

I settled him in on the sofa and headed to the kitchen. As I stirred the chocolate into the milk, I let the sobs come. Soft. Quiet. Aware that I needed to show Sam a strong front, I cried quickly in the other room. 

Last year we launched Matthew, my oldest son, to college. Now this launching of a different variety continues the stretching of my mother-womb. For nine months, mothers nourish and shelter their babies. Then, starting with birth, we have to let them go. 

So much of parenting is negotiating endings, the unceasing process of disconnecting the strings that tie our children to us, preparing them for a life on their own. That has always been the ache and beauty of it for me – taking the deep breath and trusting somehow in the goodness of life, in God, in something beyond myself. – Sue Monk Kidd

inner peace

My eyes flew open at 5:00 a.m. and my heart pounded in my chest from the nightmare. Matthew was alone, sick and desperate in the horrible scenario in the dream. This is a recurrent nightmare - one of my children is separated from me and in need. I cannot get to him. I had this nightmare many times in Honduras until it became REAL and I had to leave four of my sons there. That is another story. But the lesson is the same. 

A partial truth is the calling card of the Enemy. Matthew is sick. He has mono; we got the test results yesterday. He is not alone. He is not desperate. Nonetheless, I got up at 5:00 a.m. and began a battle to release my worries and fears to the Lord.

After making some Cuban petrol, aka strong Cuban coffee; I took up my post on the patio in the cool of the morning. Did you hear me? I said cool. What a change! Wrapped in a fuzzy brown blanket full of holes (Skip chews holes in every blanket we have), I opened my Battle Plan. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young lead me to Psalm 27. Verse 4 is my verse for 2011. One thing is the theme of this blog... I will seek ONE THING. 

One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. 

And so I began to realize the two scenarios in Psalm 27. There is an internal truth: David says, “The Lord is the stronghold of my life.” Then there is the external truth: a day of trouble. Evil men are advancing to devour his flesh. He has oppressors, false witnesses breathing violence, an army besieging him. 

While all this swirls about David, his private world is at peace because the Lord is his stronghold. Inside there is light. He is safe. He is sacrificing with shouts of joy. He is confident and singing. He calls out to the Lord. He asks to learn His ways. Both of his eyes are gazing upon the beauty of the Lord. His soul says to seek the face of the Lord. He is hidden in the shelter of the Lord’s tabernacle.

The concluding verse says:

Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.

Yes, Lord, I will wait. Meanwhile, I will trust and give thanks and gaze.

open hands

This thought floated through my mind as I reached for a pecan I had toasted. Really, the only manner to overcome addiction is moment by moment.

The irony was not lost on me.

I was not hungry at the moment. The pecan was just there at the wrong place and the wrong time. Well, that is my excuse.

A lot of things are up in the air for me right now. As both children enter school in a few days, I am faced with a lot of space and a number of choices. Space is what I have longed for and wanted. When facing space dead on, one can become paralyzed by fear. I’ll never forget snorkeling and swimming suddenly over an area where the ocean floor literally dropped off into eternity. The space massive space threatened to envelop me. It was a moment of terror looking into that deepest blue and realizing how small I was/am.

Gerald May, in Addiction and Grace, talks about the space left behind when one curtails an addictive behavior. “Although this emptiness is really freedom, it is so unconditioned that it feels strange, sometimes even horrible. If we were willing for a deeper transformation of desire, we would have to try to make friends with the spaciousness; we would need to appreciate it as openness to God.”

Living with that space is difficult and exciting. There is no other way to do it than moment by moment.

May goes on: 

The purest acts of faith always feel like risks. Instead of leading to absolute quietude and serenity, true spiritual growth is characterized by increasingly deep risk taking. Growth in faith means willingness to trust God more and more, not only in those areas of our lives where we are most successful, but also, and most significantly, at those levels where we are most vulnerable, wounded, and weak. It is where our personal power seems most defeated that we are given the most profound opportunities to act in true faith. The purest faith is enacted when all we can choose is to relax our hands or clench them, to turn wordlessly toward or away from God. This tiny option, the faith Jesus measured as the size of a mustard seed, is where grace and the human spirit embrace in absolute perfection and explode in world-changing power. Gerald May, Addiction and Grace, p. 128

Will I clench my hands around the pecan (the idol) or will I relax them and let God fill the emptiness? Will I turn wordlessly toward Him?

11 years ago today

Joshua means Jesus saves. My Joshua turns 11 today. He lives life 110 miles per hour and gives 110% to everything he does. The last eleven years have been far richer with him in my life! 

Eleven years ago today, I slept in an uncomfortable bed at Baptist Hospital. Matt had missed the Brickyard, some NASCAR race, so that he wouldn’t miss the birth of his son. He was a little mopey about it and I did not understand that altogether. But boy I bet he was glad when little Joshua decided a little past midnight to make his way into the world. 

Joshua sat breach in my womb so a C-section had to be performed. Dr. Growden, a seasoned surgeon and OB/GYN, lifted Joshua out of me at about 3:00 in the morning. As he lifted the baby up, Joshua grabbed a hold of a blue surgical rag. All the way, up up up, he grasped it. Dr. Growden proclaimed, “I have never seen anything like that in all my years!” 

That dogged determination still marks Joshua on the soccer field, in the swimming pool, at Scrabble. He is a competitor. Yet, he is tender. Because he is eleven, I can still say this. He still gives me hugs and while he is beginning to prefer not to give a lot of public affection, he is a snuggle bug in private. 

God uses my children to wrap my story in on itself and to bring healing to parts I did not even know were broken. Recently while I spoke with a friend of a de-railing life event, I asked her what she wanted for her daughter in the area she was struggling. Sometimes, I said, we know better what we hope for for our children than for ourselves. 

In my life, God has used my hopes for Joshua to remind me what I myself need. As I have boldly hoped, in the face of odds hoped, God has shown me that to hope for him is to hope for myself. If I cannot trust that God can heal, lead me, how can I hope that He can heal, lead Joshua?

On this, the hallmark of the birth of my son Joshua, I give thanks to the Lord. The following verse was on his baby announcement.

the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

PSALM 118:23

convergence

Matt found this little nest in a fern hanging on our front porch. He said he went to water it and two eyes looked back at him. We actually discerned two little birds in the nest. They flew away but left one egg.con-verg-ence: noun \kən-ˈvər-jən(t)s\
: the act of converging and especially moving toward union or uniformity; especially : coordinated movement of the two eyes so that the image of a single point is formed on corresponding retinal areas

The reason I want convergence in my life is my desire for my life to point to ONE THING. The one egg in the little nest on the masthead of this blog is symbolic of that ONE THING. It is captured in the psalmist’s heart in Psalm 27:

One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple. verse 4

One way I seek this one thing is to bring all the parts of me to the bountiful table of grace. Early on in my life and walk with Christ, I only allowed the parts of myself that were “together” to come feast hiding those more unattractive, needy parts. The Pharisee in me ruled this table. Through pain and suffering, God has allowed me to become more grace-filled to invite all of me there. Sometimes when I see a particular area of sin or a “me” that I don’t much like, I visually invite that version of me to the table of grace. 

Before you freak out, this is not a Sybil-like experience, but the realization that I am made up of various parts. There is the part of me that is so terrified of snakes that I left a toddler (safe in a pack n play, ok) and ran for my life when one flopped out in front of me.  Matthew (now 20) played while I cleaned up the yard. About 15 yards away, I unwrapped the spigot that had been covered tightly for winter so that it did not freeze. As I unwound the wrapping, a snake fell out of it. No conscious decisions were made, I just fled. I looked back after about 30 seconds and saw my toddler in the pack n play and ran back and grabbed him. Screaming. Flailing. Crying. In that moment, I had to face the facts that given life-threatening situations, I may or may not protect my children first. Scary. True.

So that scared mother who had failed her baby... she has to come to the table of grace. The ugly parts of me that love to gossip. The liar. The manipulator. The smart aleck. The cynic. These parts must partake. In fact, the pharisee must come and eat. 

As these parts converge at the table of grace, I experience wholeness in Christ.