“Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?” (Song of Songs 8:5).
Micah “sent” me a note last night—sealed it in an envelope and
handed it to me while three-week-old Esther wailed on my bouncing thighs. “I
saw you cry, Mom, so I made you this,” he said. Patting Esther’s back with my
right hand, I opened the white envelope with my left and pulled out the
note written in green marker and accented with a smiley face and wavy lines:
“be Happy even in hard times.”
It had been a hard afternoon, for sure. The hard part started
when I picked up Micah from school. Micah stood on the curb, forearms extended
with palms up, like a monk in deep meditation. His teacher said, “Micah was quite the vigorous monkey-bars climber today. He’s got some pretty bad
blisters.” I stared down at Micah’s palms—yellow flesh hanging loose over raw,
red skin. “It stings, Mom,” Micah said, grimacing.
“Well, I’ve had blisters like these, and they healed nicely.
We’ll bandage them when we get home.”
We’re too much alike—Micah and I—always fighting to be the
toughest, the fastest, the strongest on the playground, and in the adrenaline
pumping moment of competition, we numb to pain. It’s only afterwards that the
throbbing begins . . . .
After Micah hopped into the van and buckled in without
touching raw skin, baby Esther began her I-hate-this-car-seat girl-wailing
(which Jon swears is much louder and higher pitched than a boys!) Even after I
drove home and pulled her sweaty-from-crying body out of the car seat, Esther
kept on wailing, face red, legs kicking.
Once inside our cool house, Esther wailed on, but Micah’s
raw palms needed tending, so I placed her in the pack 'n play. While I snipped
tape and gauze, my head began throbbing in time with Esther’s wails. Fifteen
minutes later, Micah’s palms bandaged and taped, I picked Esther up and held
her close, but she beat my chest with curled fists, as if to say, “why did you
leave me?!”
With fist-beating baby in arms, I stepped into the bathroom
and discovered my potty-training three year old dropping his Lightening McQueen
pull up—full of poop—onto the tile floor. He’d also left a little trail of
deposits round the house, just for me.
So I put screaming Esther back in the pack 'n play. As I scrubbed the three-year-old’s poop
smeared legs, scooped up deposits from the carpet, and carefully wiped down the
fabric loops on the green rug in the boys’ bedroom, the throbbing in my
temples began pounding in tandem with Esther’s now operatic screaming.
Clean up complete, I picked up Esther’s squirming body and
stuck the green hospital paci in her open mouth. She arched her back, spit
green paci on the floor, beat fists against my chest, and wailed at a higher
decibel.
For the next two hours, I bounced, squatted, back-patted,
nursed, and changed Esther while yelling at the boys to “go in the basement and
be quiet!” When every muscle in my still anemic body gave out, I sat down at
the kitchen table, slung Esther over my knees and cried. Micah—unbeknownst to me—witnessed
my little meltdown, and that’s when he wrote and ‘sent’ his note: “Be
happy even in the hard times.”
There’s something sweet and oh so humbling about receiving sage
counsel from your eight year old son. It’s
not easy to “be happy in the hard times” because my selfish self would rather
the hard times just “go away already!”
When Esther finally stopped screaming, the boys scavenged up a dinner of corn chips, string cheese and tomatoes. Then I put everyone—myself
included—to bed, hoping a little sleep would help me “be happy in the hard
times.”
Then in early morning light I read in my new devotional, Streams in the Desert:
God said:
Child of My love, lean hard.
And let me feel the pressure of
your care;
I know your burden, child. I shaped
it. . .
Even as I laid it on [you], I said,
“I will be near, and while she
leans on me,
This burden will be mine, not hers.
So I will keep My child within the
circling arms
Of My Own Love. . .”
You love me, [child] I know. So
then, do not doubt,
But loving me, lean hard. (Streams
in the Desert, 347 emphasis mine).
All too often, just like my monkey-bar climbing son, in hard
times I “vigorously” lean on Self. Doubting God’s goodness and care, leaning on
my own strength, I grow throbbing blisters on my hands and in my heart.
So, the next time my son injures himself while my baby
screams and my three year old poops all over the floor, (or we have a bad
school day, or I feel the pain of not having a "normal" family, or __________) I pray I remember to
Lean Hard on Him who holds me in His Loving Arms.
For only in His Loving Arms can I be “Happy even in hard
times.”
