August 21, 2008
The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.
Psalm 24:1
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
Prov. 3:5
We received a picture of Siddhi last night. And there was nothing to do but cry. How is it possible that she is even smaller than before? Sicker? Her arms and legs look like bones. She looks like an old woman, not a child. And is that her hair falling out? Strands of dark brown lightening to red from malnutrition? My mind lingers over these terrible questions and yet my heart cannot even bear to go there.
Am I watching her die?
Father, you are asking me to trust you with the life of my daughter. And so I find myself wondering if I ever knew what it meant to trust - to relinquish ALL control.
No...to acknowledge that I never had it.
I realize now that in the deepest parts of my heart I have been deceived into believing that I do have control - over my life and also over the lives of my children. I feed them. I clothe them. I take them to the doctor when they are sick.
I take care of their every need.
Don't I?
I am now feeling the fear of what it is like to be totally and completely out of control. I have no earthly power to save Siddhi's life. I have none but You. Is it because, for the first time, I am helpless? Or is it that for the first time I am seeing that I have ALWAYS been helpless? That I have no control over any of my children's lives, not just Siddhi's. Every day we're dependent on the One who gives and takes away.
Nothing that has come to be, or that will eventually come to be, happens without first passing through Your hands. And if I truly believe that this adoption is ordained by You - that this little girl is our daughter, our covenant child - then I must also believe that she was Yours before she was ever mine. In fact, she will never be mine. Always Yours.
So I have no other choice but to trust You with what is already Yours.
I plead every moment of every day that she will make it home to my arms. My heart groans with words that only Your spirit understands. Please save her life, Father, if it be Your will. Please bring her home to us, if it be Your will.
But what will Your answer be?
We don't know. And all I have to cling to are Your promises, no matter what the answer may be. I must tell myself what I know to be true - the miniscule and finite understanding I have of who You are. Yet my understanding is too small; I must not lean on it too heavily. And so I find myself repeating this over and over again:
I trust You. I trust You. I trust You. Whatever the answer may be...she is Yours.
December 28, 2008
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:27
The thing about John 14 is that it takes place before the cross, and the irony is that Jesus is about to make this gift of peace possible because of that fearful thing He is facing.
What kind of power is this?
He knows that He is facing torture and death and yet He speaks of peace. KNOWING peace - a gift not of this world, because He does not give to us as the world gives.
Other worldly peace.
I have learned this in its fuller meaning these past seven months. First You were teaching me how to trust, and now I realize that I could not experience Your peace without first trusting You. Peace is the bloom that flowers from the scraggly roots of trust which are gripping tightly to their source of nourishment.
The terrorist attacks in Mumbai could have sent me into a new wave of concern - realizing the turmoil in India in a new way, and worrying that our travel may be inhibited to go and get our daughter, even worries for our own safety when we travel. I could have been sent flailing into a stormy sea of fears.
We felt incredible sadness for the families involved, but somehow no fear was added to that sadness. And the strangest thing happened as I watched the horrible news stories flood in: there was a profound peace, an unusual and very present sense of peace. And this passage came to mind as Your peace washed over me.
Mary's Song: "My God has been mindful of the humble estate of His servant. The Lord has not abandoned us here. He has performed mighty deeds...brought down rulers and lifted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things."
Those words I had never memorized were whispered in my mind as I watched the images of terror on the television screen. Your Holy Spirit was reminding me of all you have already done - not only in continuing to preserve Siddhi's life, but in teaching my heart contentedness. You have opened every closed door that seemed to signify the end of this adoption. And now those words in Mary’s song, "filling the hungry", mean so much more to me than ever before. You have physically sustained her tiny, hungry body, just as you have sustained my fainting spirit.
You have made my heart, as the proverb says, like a weaned child is with its mother; content to just sit on Your lap and be held by You. The struggling to meet my own needs has vanished. You will meet them in Your way, in Your time. Every day I give Siddhi back to You. She is Your child. You have brought her this far and Your mighty hand will bring this work to completion.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
Aug 15, 2013
Jul 2, 2013
Of Wars and Men
He had strong, carpenter hands that were rough and calloused. From building things and making them sound or fixing something when it was broken. “Pick me up!” I’d squeal, knowing those hands were gentle and affectionate too. He’d oblige and carry me about the yard which was half meadow and half woods.
The air around his house smelled of old pines and sandy soil mingled with the scent of motor oil on his shirt. It drifted from his workshop too. And sometimes he’d walk me through his treasure trove in that outbuilding so I could marvel at all of the old things he’d kept stored away. An antique milk cart that had once required a horse to pull it. A black car that had first seen the road in the 1930’s but no longer had the will to run. An attic full of desks he’d salvaged from a 19th century school house, along with a myriad of other items he’d saved from destruction. I was curious at the stories which these objects had been a part of and I held a deep admiration that my grandfather had kept these pieces of history hidden here. Safe from an ever changing world that did not always appreciate their value.
At the back of that workshop was a small garage where I would often find him and my father bent over the hood of an old Ford restoration together. Except for the sound of clinking tools, their work was quiet and earnest. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours were invested into that engine over the course of my growing up years. And when it was all ready for going, I would sit in the rumble seat with my sister and take a ride down the pebbly New Jersey roads, with granddad at the wheel and daddy sitting proudly beside him. Or sometimes, the other way around.
At precisely 12 o’clock my grandmother would holler from the back porch: “Harold!” And granddad would come into the house for his lunch. Together they sat at a checkered tablecloth and ate sandwiches beneath a ticking antique clock, as they had for decades. He kept a stock of pantry items on a long shelf just inside their basement door. There were always extra canned goods and bottles of 7Up ready for another depression should it ever come. Because he could not un-know what he had seen. Somewhere else in that dusty basement was a military issued duffle bag full of yellowed letters that had been written between the years of 1941 and 1945.
At the end of our visits we’d relax on their screened-in porch. My grandfather would sit in the same upholstered chair each time with his large hands hanging off the slip-covered arms, a big panting dog at his side. Keeping watch over him. And we would talk about the weather, or some other simple thing, before we left for home. Every time we pulled away granddad would stand in the driveway and wave until we were out of sight, his face looking longer and more weary as the visits numbered over the years.
Eventually, his body did give out. As all men’s do. But I will never forget how he laid next to grandmom in the bed they had shared for sixty years, with caretakers tending to them. Holding hands. His work shoes sat by his nightstand, retired from duty. A row of weathered shirts hung in his closet.
And like so many of that greatest generation, he went quietly into the night.
There was a long shelf in my father’s basement where stacks of books and volumes of military encyclopedias were stored behind a closet door. Each page of those thousands recalled some detailed memory of the Second World War. Throughout my childhood I had studied those black and white pictures and words, trying to understand the atrocities that took place in Europe and the heroes who fought to end them. But it didn’t occur to me until I was much older that perhaps my father’s purpose had been the same. Only he’d been seeking to know his own father through those pages. Of landing in Normandy on D-Day plus two. Of fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. Of Holland and the tokens of war now hidden away in our family’s safe. These were stories that were hardly mentioned in passing. Perhaps because my grandfather had learned too many hard lessons from grief and he would never speak of things done in darkness. Or perhaps because he meant to keep those memories safe in an ever changing world that doesn’t always appreciate the value of such things. His strength had come with stoic quietness that did not recognize his own contribution to salvaging something so large from destruction.
Or maybe he truly believed that he had done nothing grand. Nothing of importance.
A few years after I was married that old duffle bag from my grandparent’s basement sat in my home. And I poured through the handwritten love notes exchanged between a young bride and her groom, who were oceans apart at the time. On those brittle papers were the simplest words that held the deepest of meaning, which could only be perceived in full by the next generations who would watch these two lovers hold on to each other until the end.
He gave his life to her, all that he had. And that was all we needed to know about him. That he had strong, carpenter hands which were rough and calloused. From building things and making them sound. Or fixing something when it was broken. Maybe, more than anything though, he just wanted us to know that they were gentle and affectionate hands too.
The air around his house smelled of old pines and sandy soil mingled with the scent of motor oil on his shirt. It drifted from his workshop too. And sometimes he’d walk me through his treasure trove in that outbuilding so I could marvel at all of the old things he’d kept stored away. An antique milk cart that had once required a horse to pull it. A black car that had first seen the road in the 1930’s but no longer had the will to run. An attic full of desks he’d salvaged from a 19th century school house, along with a myriad of other items he’d saved from destruction. I was curious at the stories which these objects had been a part of and I held a deep admiration that my grandfather had kept these pieces of history hidden here. Safe from an ever changing world that did not always appreciate their value.
At the back of that workshop was a small garage where I would often find him and my father bent over the hood of an old Ford restoration together. Except for the sound of clinking tools, their work was quiet and earnest. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours were invested into that engine over the course of my growing up years. And when it was all ready for going, I would sit in the rumble seat with my sister and take a ride down the pebbly New Jersey roads, with granddad at the wheel and daddy sitting proudly beside him. Or sometimes, the other way around.
At precisely 12 o’clock my grandmother would holler from the back porch: “Harold!” And granddad would come into the house for his lunch. Together they sat at a checkered tablecloth and ate sandwiches beneath a ticking antique clock, as they had for decades. He kept a stock of pantry items on a long shelf just inside their basement door. There were always extra canned goods and bottles of 7Up ready for another depression should it ever come. Because he could not un-know what he had seen. Somewhere else in that dusty basement was a military issued duffle bag full of yellowed letters that had been written between the years of 1941 and 1945.
At the end of our visits we’d relax on their screened-in porch. My grandfather would sit in the same upholstered chair each time with his large hands hanging off the slip-covered arms, a big panting dog at his side. Keeping watch over him. And we would talk about the weather, or some other simple thing, before we left for home. Every time we pulled away granddad would stand in the driveway and wave until we were out of sight, his face looking longer and more weary as the visits numbered over the years.
Eventually, his body did give out. As all men’s do. But I will never forget how he laid next to grandmom in the bed they had shared for sixty years, with caretakers tending to them. Holding hands. His work shoes sat by his nightstand, retired from duty. A row of weathered shirts hung in his closet.
And like so many of that greatest generation, he went quietly into the night.
There was a long shelf in my father’s basement where stacks of books and volumes of military encyclopedias were stored behind a closet door. Each page of those thousands recalled some detailed memory of the Second World War. Throughout my childhood I had studied those black and white pictures and words, trying to understand the atrocities that took place in Europe and the heroes who fought to end them. But it didn’t occur to me until I was much older that perhaps my father’s purpose had been the same. Only he’d been seeking to know his own father through those pages. Of landing in Normandy on D-Day plus two. Of fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. Of Holland and the tokens of war now hidden away in our family’s safe. These were stories that were hardly mentioned in passing. Perhaps because my grandfather had learned too many hard lessons from grief and he would never speak of things done in darkness. Or perhaps because he meant to keep those memories safe in an ever changing world that doesn’t always appreciate the value of such things. His strength had come with stoic quietness that did not recognize his own contribution to salvaging something so large from destruction.
Or maybe he truly believed that he had done nothing grand. Nothing of importance.
A few years after I was married that old duffle bag from my grandparent’s basement sat in my home. And I poured through the handwritten love notes exchanged between a young bride and her groom, who were oceans apart at the time. On those brittle papers were the simplest words that held the deepest of meaning, which could only be perceived in full by the next generations who would watch these two lovers hold on to each other until the end.
He gave his life to her, all that he had. And that was all we needed to know about him. That he had strong, carpenter hands which were rough and calloused. From building things and making them sound. Or fixing something when it was broken. Maybe, more than anything though, he just wanted us to know that they were gentle and affectionate hands too.
Feb 12, 2013
My Last
You tell everyone that you were a surprise. And you were.
I named you “God is Gracious” because He gives good and perfect gifts. And because the best gifts are the ones that aren’t asked for but given anyway, and received with an overflowing heart.
You tell everyone that preschool “didn’t work out for us.”
But in truth, it was me. I wasn’t ready to let you go yet; I wasn’t ready for this stage to be over. Because you know, we can never get this back again. And I don’t want to miss a thing.
After all, you’re only three.
My last three.
You tell me that you want to grow big so you can play the big drums.
But I tell you to wait for me. I’m not ready for growing big yet, and when you’re big you’ll leave.
You promise, “I won’t, mommy”. You smile and say that I can come and live with you when you’re bigger, and I’m older. You seal the promise with the sweetest of kisses. And daddy thinks I’m funny when I laugh and cry at the same time. But I kiss you back and receive it just the same.
You take my hand when we’re walking; your chubby fingers nestle in mine. And I find myself walking a bit slower than usual, keeping pace with your shorter stride. Do you know that I would walk slower still if it would make this last a little longer?
You hug me so tightly when I tuck you in at night and I am thankful to have been loved by a rough-and-tumble little boy. It’s the best kind of love.
But sometimes I come into your room at night and I watch you while you are sleeping. In the shadows. Snuggled up in a Star Wars blanket. Your long lashes resting on your cherub cheeks. And I think that this baby-like sweetness is the best kind of love too.
After all, you’re only three.
My last three.
That next birthday is just around the corner. One day very soon it will be our last day of three. And on that day I’ll walk all the more slowly with you; I’ll rock you a little longer and sing to you a little sweeter. I’ll hold you more tightly, if it were possible.
And then, when the morning comes, I’ll do the same for my four year old.
I named you “God is Gracious” because He gives good and perfect gifts. And because the best gifts are the ones that aren’t asked for but given anyway, and received with an overflowing heart.
You tell everyone that preschool “didn’t work out for us.”
But in truth, it was me. I wasn’t ready to let you go yet; I wasn’t ready for this stage to be over. Because you know, we can never get this back again. And I don’t want to miss a thing.
After all, you’re only three.
My last three.
You tell me that you want to grow big so you can play the big drums.
But I tell you to wait for me. I’m not ready for growing big yet, and when you’re big you’ll leave.
You promise, “I won’t, mommy”. You smile and say that I can come and live with you when you’re bigger, and I’m older. You seal the promise with the sweetest of kisses. And daddy thinks I’m funny when I laugh and cry at the same time. But I kiss you back and receive it just the same.
You take my hand when we’re walking; your chubby fingers nestle in mine. And I find myself walking a bit slower than usual, keeping pace with your shorter stride. Do you know that I would walk slower still if it would make this last a little longer?
You hug me so tightly when I tuck you in at night and I am thankful to have been loved by a rough-and-tumble little boy. It’s the best kind of love.
But sometimes I come into your room at night and I watch you while you are sleeping. In the shadows. Snuggled up in a Star Wars blanket. Your long lashes resting on your cherub cheeks. And I think that this baby-like sweetness is the best kind of love too.
After all, you’re only three.
My last three.
That next birthday is just around the corner. One day very soon it will be our last day of three. And on that day I’ll walk all the more slowly with you; I’ll rock you a little longer and sing to you a little sweeter. I’ll hold you more tightly, if it were possible.
And then, when the morning comes, I’ll do the same for my four year old.
Dec 6, 2012
All Resolved, A Christmas Story
Today was a poignant day for me. What seemed like a routine doctor’s visit became something else altogether. It was an ebenezer, of sorts, a remembrance of where my family has come from, of where I have come from. You see, six and a half months ago I met a little girl, a beautiful but fragile little girl. On the other side of the world. In an ancient city called Pune. In a little white orphanage with cracked walls, with faded paint and a dusty cement floor. She’d been born of another woman but was ordained to be my daughter from the beginning of all time. A mystery I still can’t fathom.
I will never forget the first time her mahogany eyes looked into mine. And I will never forget how I saw myself in them, a reflection of bittersweet joy. Because I had longed to hold her for so long, and when I finally did I saw the full extent of her desperation.
She cried. Afraid. Terribly afraid. Not knowing who I was. Not realizing that love had finally found her. She cried because she’d borne so much pain before we’d ever met and she could only see me filtered through that filmy lens. She couldn’t see me as I was - the one who wanted to love her.
They said she was sick. They said she had failure to thrive. They said she wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t grow. And I saw the scars on her skin. The infections and discomfort. I saw the hollow look in her eyes. She was barely alive. She’d barely survived to the day that I first held her. Battled for her very existence. A miracle child.
And I carried her home. Across miles of mountainous landscape and ancient rivers. Over war torn countries and cavernous depths of ocean we flew. And she never left my arms. Even when she slept, I was there; my hand was over her. I never left her. Not once.
She arrived in this strange new land with strange new people. A frightening arrival, because she didn’t know that Home had finally found her. She feared she was lost, that she would never return to the cracked walls and the dusty floor she remembered. The doctors said she was severely malnourished. Developmentally delayed. Neglected. She had feeding issues, social issues, relational issues. Her swallowing reflexes weren’t strong enough. She couldn’t stand. She could hardly hold herself up to be seated. The list went on and on, and the road ahead seemed long. Perhaps it would be a life-long journey. So we set our eyes on the path and our hearts on the goal.
For months we tried to feed her. We labored for each bite. Each swallow. We fought the everyday battles for her heart. And inch by inch, she learned to trust. We taught her how to use a bottle. How to be held and rocked. She learned to eat. She learned to crawl and then to stand. She learned to smile. And then to laugh. I heard my child laughing and it was one of the sweetest sounds I’d ever heard. And then one day she took her first steps. She walked, even though the physicians in India had not been sure if she ever would take a step.
Six and a half months of laboring. Doctors appointments, specialists, nutritionists, hospitals and more. Poked, prodded, examined and x-rayed. Diagnoses and predictions. All coming up short. Because all she had needed…was love.
She needed to know Love.
Today she had her last follow up appointment. She’s gained a total of eight pounds (nearly twice the weight she’d been when we brought her home) and she was four inches longer! My heart swelled with joy. The doctor sat with me and asked me some questions about my little girl’s progress. I answered them all, each one with a positive reply. Then the doctor laid open the medical file and began to write. She made a list inside my child’s records, and as she wrote she said it aloud for my benefit: “Orphaned, malnourished, neglected, failure to thrive, swallowing difficulties, developmentally delayed…”
Her list was long, and I found them hard to hear with the chubby, radiant child smiling back at me in my lap. It was painful to remember my daughter like that. And I wondered what the list meant. Why would the doctor take the time to write all of these things in the record now, after everything?
The physician stopped; she looked up at my daughter for a moment, introspectively, and then looked back to the list. With one long, decisive strike she crossed the list out, a line drawn through it. I held my breath as I watched. She made an arrow at the bottom of that line and pointed it to the words she wrote beneath.
“All. Resolved.” She said in her thick Middle Eastern accent.
And those words of absolution made my throat catch. Made my eyes well up with tears. I had to say it again in my head to be sure it was true. All resolved…. All resolved. And the physician smiled with me.
I could not tell you the relief that flooded over me with that declaration. The freedom I felt from the fears that had plagued us for the previous year and a half. Lightness and joy now washed every one of those fears away. This was the greatest Christmas gift I could have received: Hope. This child will know life and know it fully. The weight of her past was being lifted away. And though I know there will be hard days ahead, as with any child, today I felt the full realization of peace. After the agonizing wait to bring her home, and the fear for her health and her future, she was home in my arms. She was safe. And now she was well. All of the unknowns and all of the fears had been resolved.
“You rescued this child,” the physician said in all seriousness. “You know that is the greatest thing any person can do? To save the life of another human being.” The milky gaze through her glasses was tearing up now. “And you will have a big castle in heaven.”
I shook my head. That was all wrong, though I knew her intentions were kind, and that in all her seriousness she probably believed it to be true. But the synopsis was reversed. I was the one who had been rescued, and my love for this child was just a small glimpse of that much bigger story. A microcosm of the greater One. The far greater work. My works were filthy rags. Even my attempts to love this child as Jesus loved are worthless. Nothing without Him.
Because you see, there was another child. Born many years ago. On the other side of the world. In an ancient town called Bethlehem, with cracked walls and dusty floors. Conditions far worse than the orphanage I found my daughter in. This was a baby born of a woman, who also came to a strange land with strange people. A baby who cried when he breathed his first breath, just like you and me. And He must have been afraid. Because unlike my child coming into a strange world, He knew where he was going. He knew the purpose for which he had come. A child ordained for a purpose much greater than any man had ever known. Born to become the Hero of mankind; born to die. The God man. Emmanuel - God with us. The most miraculous child of all. A mystery I can’t fathom.
But I can imagine that dirty stable a little bit better now, that filthy hole in the ground where the God of the universe condescended into flesh as the most vulnerable creature possible – a human baby. Defenseless. Reliant on the arms that held him. As fragile as my baby had been. And somehow in this divine mystery, the hands that had defined the universe and laid out the stars were now clinging to an earthly mother for warmth in the chill of night. Beneath the very moon He created.
The bright sun of Heaven, now the light of the world. Without any beauty or majesty that we should recognize Him. He put on flesh to dwell with us.
It’s so curious, isn’t it? Why the God of the universe chose this method to reach us. Maybe before that precious Baby came we couldn’t view God rightly. We could only see Him through the filmy lenses of sin and depravity. We couldn’t see Him as He was in Heaven: The One who wanted to love us. And so to view Him - as He revealed Himself - to view the manger as God intended, we must also view the cross. The inseparable ‘coming’ and ‘reason He came’. The whole reason that Heaven and earth collided and the veil was lifted for those thirty three years when God walked among us. And the reason was this:
Love found us. Love came to rescue us.
The humble beginning in a manger was only the foreshadowing of His work to come, His servanthood. It was only a foretaste of how He would enter human frailty completely to fight the battle for us in physical death. The yoke of our burdens would be upon Him. The Hero of mankind would have to become the Man of Sorrows first. Stricken by grief and afflicted. The pain of sin and death, the punishment for all of it, would be upon that Baby’s shoulders. And not just my burden, but yours, and his, and hers and theirs. All of them. All of us, who were and are and are yet to be born. Those sons and daughters He has called to Himself in His infinitely divine mercy. The mighty crushing weight of all of our human distress. Our utter clamoring desperation. Hollow eyed, sickly skinned, wretched creatures of our own demise. Enemies of God. Unable to know His love.
If all of that burden was lain upon one Man, how great must the burden have been? So much sorrow. So much sin. So much death and darkness. I cannot comprehend the burden of it. And how it grieves me to know that my own burden is in that awful heap! It was my terrible weight that helped to crush Him!
This one thought gives me comfort in the knowledge of Christ’s indescribable sufferings: How much greater must His love have been for us, to carry ALL of this to the cross willingly and slay it there upon Himself? His love for us had to have been greater than all of the sorrow and sin of this world combined. It had to have been immeasurably greater.
And my daughter’s physician was right. The greatest thing any one person could do is to save the life of another human being. To save just one life. So how much greater is Christ then, who saved many from every nation, from every people, through all of history. And more: The life He gives to those He saves is everlasting, never to be lost again.
A Savior. In the purest, truest, most beautiful and perfect understanding of the word.
God’s reconciliation for us. The greatest gift ever given.
And I will never forget the first time I met Him. How I saw myself for the first time in His eyes. The reflection of my complete forgiveness being understood. The reflection of my new-found hope and purest joy received. I will never forget how I saw Him, because I knew then that Love had found me.
I know that in my feeble nature I am still learning to trust Him. Inch by inch He battles for my fully-surrendered heart each day, even though the final battle is already won - I am already His child, and I cannot lose that inheritance. Still, He is teaching me how to be held by Him. I’m learning that His arms are safe. Over time I have learned to crawl. To eat. To stand. And still I teeter as I learn to walk these years later. Someday I hope to run this great race as other saints before me have run. But He has been there. He is carrying me homeward to His unveiled presence. Over the war torn lands and high mountains I never could have crossed on my own. Over the murky rivers and cavernously deep oceans that would have swallowed me for certain. Even when I’ve slept, His hand was over me. He has never left me. Not once.
And I imagine that maybe this list could have been made about me before Love came to rescue me that very first Christmas: Liar, cheater, gossiper, slothful, spiteful, prideful, broken, wanton, hurting, hopeless, motherless, godless …
But a strike has now been made through my list, a list far longer than I have given here. And far more shameful, I’m afraid. That list was struck from the record by my Savior.
No…
It was struck ON my Savior. And the strike that was needed was not one of ink, but one of blood. The most precious blood of all. Spilled for me. So that these words could finally be written of me: All. Resolved.
That is the story of Christmas. That is the ebenezer I place in the ground today. I will remember from where I came. And I will look on the manger with eyes that have also looked on the cross. I will see Him now, with the film of sin and depravity peeled back from my eyes. He is the God of Heaven, come down, the One who has loved me from before time began. The One who has ordained in His mercy to call me His own, before I ever had a formed mouth to call on Him. The One who made the moon and placed the stars. The One who remembers how He formed me and knows that I am only dust.
I am His. I rejoice in my adoption. I sit radiantly upon His lap. A lost child - found. A sinner – forgiven. A wretched and depraved heart – cleansed. My brokenness - made whole. My sin – resolved. And my separation from a Holy God – resolved.
All. Resolved.
I will never forget the first time her mahogany eyes looked into mine. And I will never forget how I saw myself in them, a reflection of bittersweet joy. Because I had longed to hold her for so long, and when I finally did I saw the full extent of her desperation.
She cried. Afraid. Terribly afraid. Not knowing who I was. Not realizing that love had finally found her. She cried because she’d borne so much pain before we’d ever met and she could only see me filtered through that filmy lens. She couldn’t see me as I was - the one who wanted to love her.
They said she was sick. They said she had failure to thrive. They said she wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t grow. And I saw the scars on her skin. The infections and discomfort. I saw the hollow look in her eyes. She was barely alive. She’d barely survived to the day that I first held her. Battled for her very existence. A miracle child.
And I carried her home. Across miles of mountainous landscape and ancient rivers. Over war torn countries and cavernous depths of ocean we flew. And she never left my arms. Even when she slept, I was there; my hand was over her. I never left her. Not once.
She arrived in this strange new land with strange new people. A frightening arrival, because she didn’t know that Home had finally found her. She feared she was lost, that she would never return to the cracked walls and the dusty floor she remembered. The doctors said she was severely malnourished. Developmentally delayed. Neglected. She had feeding issues, social issues, relational issues. Her swallowing reflexes weren’t strong enough. She couldn’t stand. She could hardly hold herself up to be seated. The list went on and on, and the road ahead seemed long. Perhaps it would be a life-long journey. So we set our eyes on the path and our hearts on the goal.
For months we tried to feed her. We labored for each bite. Each swallow. We fought the everyday battles for her heart. And inch by inch, she learned to trust. We taught her how to use a bottle. How to be held and rocked. She learned to eat. She learned to crawl and then to stand. She learned to smile. And then to laugh. I heard my child laughing and it was one of the sweetest sounds I’d ever heard. And then one day she took her first steps. She walked, even though the physicians in India had not been sure if she ever would take a step.
Six and a half months of laboring. Doctors appointments, specialists, nutritionists, hospitals and more. Poked, prodded, examined and x-rayed. Diagnoses and predictions. All coming up short. Because all she had needed…was love.
She needed to know Love.
Today she had her last follow up appointment. She’s gained a total of eight pounds (nearly twice the weight she’d been when we brought her home) and she was four inches longer! My heart swelled with joy. The doctor sat with me and asked me some questions about my little girl’s progress. I answered them all, each one with a positive reply. Then the doctor laid open the medical file and began to write. She made a list inside my child’s records, and as she wrote she said it aloud for my benefit: “Orphaned, malnourished, neglected, failure to thrive, swallowing difficulties, developmentally delayed…”
Her list was long, and I found them hard to hear with the chubby, radiant child smiling back at me in my lap. It was painful to remember my daughter like that. And I wondered what the list meant. Why would the doctor take the time to write all of these things in the record now, after everything?
The physician stopped; she looked up at my daughter for a moment, introspectively, and then looked back to the list. With one long, decisive strike she crossed the list out, a line drawn through it. I held my breath as I watched. She made an arrow at the bottom of that line and pointed it to the words she wrote beneath.
“All. Resolved.” She said in her thick Middle Eastern accent.
And those words of absolution made my throat catch. Made my eyes well up with tears. I had to say it again in my head to be sure it was true. All resolved…. All resolved. And the physician smiled with me.
I could not tell you the relief that flooded over me with that declaration. The freedom I felt from the fears that had plagued us for the previous year and a half. Lightness and joy now washed every one of those fears away. This was the greatest Christmas gift I could have received: Hope. This child will know life and know it fully. The weight of her past was being lifted away. And though I know there will be hard days ahead, as with any child, today I felt the full realization of peace. After the agonizing wait to bring her home, and the fear for her health and her future, she was home in my arms. She was safe. And now she was well. All of the unknowns and all of the fears had been resolved.
“You rescued this child,” the physician said in all seriousness. “You know that is the greatest thing any person can do? To save the life of another human being.” The milky gaze through her glasses was tearing up now. “And you will have a big castle in heaven.”
I shook my head. That was all wrong, though I knew her intentions were kind, and that in all her seriousness she probably believed it to be true. But the synopsis was reversed. I was the one who had been rescued, and my love for this child was just a small glimpse of that much bigger story. A microcosm of the greater One. The far greater work. My works were filthy rags. Even my attempts to love this child as Jesus loved are worthless. Nothing without Him.
Because you see, there was another child. Born many years ago. On the other side of the world. In an ancient town called Bethlehem, with cracked walls and dusty floors. Conditions far worse than the orphanage I found my daughter in. This was a baby born of a woman, who also came to a strange land with strange people. A baby who cried when he breathed his first breath, just like you and me. And He must have been afraid. Because unlike my child coming into a strange world, He knew where he was going. He knew the purpose for which he had come. A child ordained for a purpose much greater than any man had ever known. Born to become the Hero of mankind; born to die. The God man. Emmanuel - God with us. The most miraculous child of all. A mystery I can’t fathom.
But I can imagine that dirty stable a little bit better now, that filthy hole in the ground where the God of the universe condescended into flesh as the most vulnerable creature possible – a human baby. Defenseless. Reliant on the arms that held him. As fragile as my baby had been. And somehow in this divine mystery, the hands that had defined the universe and laid out the stars were now clinging to an earthly mother for warmth in the chill of night. Beneath the very moon He created.
The bright sun of Heaven, now the light of the world. Without any beauty or majesty that we should recognize Him. He put on flesh to dwell with us.
It’s so curious, isn’t it? Why the God of the universe chose this method to reach us. Maybe before that precious Baby came we couldn’t view God rightly. We could only see Him through the filmy lenses of sin and depravity. We couldn’t see Him as He was in Heaven: The One who wanted to love us. And so to view Him - as He revealed Himself - to view the manger as God intended, we must also view the cross. The inseparable ‘coming’ and ‘reason He came’. The whole reason that Heaven and earth collided and the veil was lifted for those thirty three years when God walked among us. And the reason was this:
Love found us. Love came to rescue us.
The humble beginning in a manger was only the foreshadowing of His work to come, His servanthood. It was only a foretaste of how He would enter human frailty completely to fight the battle for us in physical death. The yoke of our burdens would be upon Him. The Hero of mankind would have to become the Man of Sorrows first. Stricken by grief and afflicted. The pain of sin and death, the punishment for all of it, would be upon that Baby’s shoulders. And not just my burden, but yours, and his, and hers and theirs. All of them. All of us, who were and are and are yet to be born. Those sons and daughters He has called to Himself in His infinitely divine mercy. The mighty crushing weight of all of our human distress. Our utter clamoring desperation. Hollow eyed, sickly skinned, wretched creatures of our own demise. Enemies of God. Unable to know His love.
If all of that burden was lain upon one Man, how great must the burden have been? So much sorrow. So much sin. So much death and darkness. I cannot comprehend the burden of it. And how it grieves me to know that my own burden is in that awful heap! It was my terrible weight that helped to crush Him!
This one thought gives me comfort in the knowledge of Christ’s indescribable sufferings: How much greater must His love have been for us, to carry ALL of this to the cross willingly and slay it there upon Himself? His love for us had to have been greater than all of the sorrow and sin of this world combined. It had to have been immeasurably greater.
And my daughter’s physician was right. The greatest thing any one person could do is to save the life of another human being. To save just one life. So how much greater is Christ then, who saved many from every nation, from every people, through all of history. And more: The life He gives to those He saves is everlasting, never to be lost again.
A Savior. In the purest, truest, most beautiful and perfect understanding of the word.
God’s reconciliation for us. The greatest gift ever given.
And I will never forget the first time I met Him. How I saw myself for the first time in His eyes. The reflection of my complete forgiveness being understood. The reflection of my new-found hope and purest joy received. I will never forget how I saw Him, because I knew then that Love had found me.
I know that in my feeble nature I am still learning to trust Him. Inch by inch He battles for my fully-surrendered heart each day, even though the final battle is already won - I am already His child, and I cannot lose that inheritance. Still, He is teaching me how to be held by Him. I’m learning that His arms are safe. Over time I have learned to crawl. To eat. To stand. And still I teeter as I learn to walk these years later. Someday I hope to run this great race as other saints before me have run. But He has been there. He is carrying me homeward to His unveiled presence. Over the war torn lands and high mountains I never could have crossed on my own. Over the murky rivers and cavernously deep oceans that would have swallowed me for certain. Even when I’ve slept, His hand was over me. He has never left me. Not once.
And I imagine that maybe this list could have been made about me before Love came to rescue me that very first Christmas: Liar, cheater, gossiper, slothful, spiteful, prideful, broken, wanton, hurting, hopeless, motherless, godless …
But a strike has now been made through my list, a list far longer than I have given here. And far more shameful, I’m afraid. That list was struck from the record by my Savior.
No…
It was struck ON my Savior. And the strike that was needed was not one of ink, but one of blood. The most precious blood of all. Spilled for me. So that these words could finally be written of me: All. Resolved.
That is the story of Christmas. That is the ebenezer I place in the ground today. I will remember from where I came. And I will look on the manger with eyes that have also looked on the cross. I will see Him now, with the film of sin and depravity peeled back from my eyes. He is the God of Heaven, come down, the One who has loved me from before time began. The One who has ordained in His mercy to call me His own, before I ever had a formed mouth to call on Him. The One who made the moon and placed the stars. The One who remembers how He formed me and knows that I am only dust.
I am His. I rejoice in my adoption. I sit radiantly upon His lap. A lost child - found. A sinner – forgiven. A wretched and depraved heart – cleansed. My brokenness - made whole. My sin – resolved. And my separation from a Holy God – resolved.
All. Resolved.
Jul 13, 2012
The Greatness of Small
I long for respite. For peace.
To see breathtaking places and fly away from here.
I want to see the world. It calls to me.
There is so much to be tried, accomplished, felt. I yearn for it all, a big bite of the human experience – that thing which is only given once.
And yet it can be found here too. Couldn’t it?
The giggles. The playfulness. Yes, even the tears. The pain that makes us hold tighter to the intimate moments. Finding it all precious.
Growing and changing. Shedding the old skin, what I used to (want to) be.
For them.
I often wonder what treasures could be found in that far away place I saw once so long ago.
I didn’t know what I was seeing then. I know it now. I’ve contemplated it for years, pondered and mulled over deeper things than I knew back then. Time has nurtured that understanding and desire.
I would savor it now. If I could.
There is so much of life to explore outside of these four walls. So much that still needs discovering.
But little voices call, holding me back.
Little faces need wiping. Little hands need holding.
Little mouths need sweet kisses goodnight.
I imagine the stories I could write. They live inside of me, clawing. Writhing.
Could I create them if there were quiet here? If there were time?
I long for greatness. Not for myself, but in the things I accomplish. To see results. To know that my working hands did what they set out to do, and did it well.
Greatness in smallness, I suppose.
And yet it’s here, isn’t it?
The smallest of small.
It’s here.
The greatest of great.
Maybe one day I will go there, to that other place.
I’ll see that treasure. I’ll write that story.
I’ll do all the things I’ve longed to do for so long.
But anything else I accomplish, anything else I succeed at, will all be for naught if I fail at this one thing I've been given.
To see breathtaking places and fly away from here.
I want to see the world. It calls to me.
There is so much to be tried, accomplished, felt. I yearn for it all, a big bite of the human experience – that thing which is only given once.
And yet it can be found here too. Couldn’t it?
The giggles. The playfulness. Yes, even the tears. The pain that makes us hold tighter to the intimate moments. Finding it all precious.
Growing and changing. Shedding the old skin, what I used to (want to) be.
For them.
I often wonder what treasures could be found in that far away place I saw once so long ago.
I didn’t know what I was seeing then. I know it now. I’ve contemplated it for years, pondered and mulled over deeper things than I knew back then. Time has nurtured that understanding and desire.
I would savor it now. If I could.
There is so much of life to explore outside of these four walls. So much that still needs discovering.
But little voices call, holding me back.
Little faces need wiping. Little hands need holding.
Little mouths need sweet kisses goodnight.
I imagine the stories I could write. They live inside of me, clawing. Writhing.
Could I create them if there were quiet here? If there were time?
I long for greatness. Not for myself, but in the things I accomplish. To see results. To know that my working hands did what they set out to do, and did it well.
Greatness in smallness, I suppose.
And yet it’s here, isn’t it?
The smallest of small.
It’s here.
The greatest of great.
Maybe one day I will go there, to that other place.
I’ll see that treasure. I’ll write that story.
I’ll do all the things I’ve longed to do for so long.
But anything else I accomplish, anything else I succeed at, will all be for naught if I fail at this one thing I've been given.
May 28, 2012
The Good Ol' Days
There’s a nudging in the heart for the good ol’ days. Those times we spent together as children, when the world was bright and innocent. The memories that remain from those early years have a softer glow about them, like film from an 8mm camera. Grainy at the edges. Yellowed with time. Sweetened with age.
I remember how I used to crawl into my sister’s bed when the night closed in too dark around me. When the dreams haunted me. When monsters threatened to bite. My little feet would creep across the hall and lift me up beside her; hide me beneath her coverlet. There I would fall asleep, dreamless. Safe beside her.
Those were the good ol’ days.
We used to play in that cabin at the edge of our yard. Daddy had built it with boards and shingles the summer I grew in my mother’s belly. We’d imagine ourselves as Mary and Laura Ingles, growing up on the vast prairie of our imaginations. On warm nights I’d have a sleepover in the loft with my closest friend from down the street. We’d prop open the cabin door and watch the stars, talking through the night. Innocence rang out in our bubbling laughter.
Those were the good ol’days.
Christmases around a sparkling tree.
Dinners around a small, laminate kitchen table.
School mornings waiting on the front steps for the bus.
Mommy in her fuzzy slippers with a steaming cup of coffee.
A ditch that imagined itself a grand creek, full of summer adventures for a small child.
A black and white dog playing fetch in the yard.
Those were the good ol’ days.
They were.
But it occurs to me whenever I am watching five little pairs of bare feet traipsing across the yard, on an adventure of their own, that these are the good ol’ days too.
Every time I’ve had the gift of looking down into a newborn baby’s wondering eyes. Or nestled a sleeping toddler into his bed. Or played a game of kickball in the backyard with a small tribe of laughing children. Or kissed the man I love at the end of a full day.
These are the good ol’ days.
The days rich with memory, golden with beauty.
I don’t want to miss a moment. I want to store it all away – precious treasures – for later. I want to look back when I am old in my bed and know that I did not waste a single minute; I did not wish any of it away or long for other days. Though many days the work is hard, and though grief may creep in from time to time, one day I want to look down at wrinkled hands and know that they worked hard, and loved well, and cherished every gift.
I remember how I used to crawl into my sister’s bed when the night closed in too dark around me. When the dreams haunted me. When monsters threatened to bite. My little feet would creep across the hall and lift me up beside her; hide me beneath her coverlet. There I would fall asleep, dreamless. Safe beside her.
Those were the good ol’ days.
We used to play in that cabin at the edge of our yard. Daddy had built it with boards and shingles the summer I grew in my mother’s belly. We’d imagine ourselves as Mary and Laura Ingles, growing up on the vast prairie of our imaginations. On warm nights I’d have a sleepover in the loft with my closest friend from down the street. We’d prop open the cabin door and watch the stars, talking through the night. Innocence rang out in our bubbling laughter.
Those were the good ol’days.
Christmases around a sparkling tree.
Dinners around a small, laminate kitchen table.
School mornings waiting on the front steps for the bus.
Mommy in her fuzzy slippers with a steaming cup of coffee.
A ditch that imagined itself a grand creek, full of summer adventures for a small child.
A black and white dog playing fetch in the yard.
Those were the good ol’ days.
They were.
But it occurs to me whenever I am watching five little pairs of bare feet traipsing across the yard, on an adventure of their own, that these are the good ol’ days too.
Every time I’ve had the gift of looking down into a newborn baby’s wondering eyes. Or nestled a sleeping toddler into his bed. Or played a game of kickball in the backyard with a small tribe of laughing children. Or kissed the man I love at the end of a full day.
These are the good ol’ days.
The days rich with memory, golden with beauty.
I don’t want to miss a moment. I want to store it all away – precious treasures – for later. I want to look back when I am old in my bed and know that I did not waste a single minute; I did not wish any of it away or long for other days. Though many days the work is hard, and though grief may creep in from time to time, one day I want to look down at wrinkled hands and know that they worked hard, and loved well, and cherished every gift.
Apr 13, 2012
Time
Time is a mysterious thing.
It is the ebb and flow of the universe. The pulsing of life.
Elusive yet definable.
It is the shallow breath in my lungs and the fluttering rhythm in my chest.
It is the sun rising and setting in its course.
Tender shoots sprouting from the earth. Trees blooming then laying themselves bare again.
Stars rotating above this blue and green orb like streaks of fire in the black velvet sky.
Time.
It is a human constraint too, a frame of reference.
Clocks spinning. Numbers changing.
An attempt to explain what is slipping away from us - that which is brief and unable to be retained by human hands.
The one thing we can never get back again.
Time is history; the end of one era and the beginning of another.
It is the rising and falling of empires.
And it is also the sweet intimacy of a little girl’s arms wrapped tightly around my waist.
“Mommy, you have to come see! It’s a cardinal!”
“Really?” I smile down at her.
“Come see it! Hurry!” She races from the kitchen to the dining room.
But I get caught up. I truly intend to go and see that cardinal. I couldn’t even tell you what interrupts me from going and enjoying that moment of simple wonder with her. Someone needing something from me; a momentary emergency, perhaps. But a few minutes later I am passing down the hall and I see her frame in the front window. Her face is turned toward the yard.
“You missed it,” she says, looking back at me with a rueful smile. “It flew away.”
It is the ebb and flow of the universe. The pulsing of life.
Elusive yet definable.
It is the shallow breath in my lungs and the fluttering rhythm in my chest.
It is the sun rising and setting in its course.
Tender shoots sprouting from the earth. Trees blooming then laying themselves bare again.
Stars rotating above this blue and green orb like streaks of fire in the black velvet sky.
Time.
It is a human constraint too, a frame of reference.
Clocks spinning. Numbers changing.
An attempt to explain what is slipping away from us - that which is brief and unable to be retained by human hands.
The one thing we can never get back again.
Time is history; the end of one era and the beginning of another.
It is the rising and falling of empires.
And it is also the sweet intimacy of a little girl’s arms wrapped tightly around my waist.
“Mommy, you have to come see! It’s a cardinal!”
“Really?” I smile down at her.
“Come see it! Hurry!” She races from the kitchen to the dining room.
But I get caught up. I truly intend to go and see that cardinal. I couldn’t even tell you what interrupts me from going and enjoying that moment of simple wonder with her. Someone needing something from me; a momentary emergency, perhaps. But a few minutes later I am passing down the hall and I see her frame in the front window. Her face is turned toward the yard.
“You missed it,” she says, looking back at me with a rueful smile. “It flew away.”
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