I scoop up my wailing daughter, Esther Sophia, from the
living room rug, her eyes blotchy-red from fitting, cheeks slippery with
saliva, pink dress smelling milky-sour as she sucks air between sobs.
Cupping her ruffled bottom in my blue-veined palm—
I tuck Esther under my chin, neck-to-neck, heartbeat to
heartbeat, her chick-soft hair tickling my cheek, our pink flesh and blood throbbing,
mingling with the crimson pulse of living.
My heart fills with loving this daughter, my Only daughter.
I wish this love—fallible Mother love—could fill Esther’s
soul well to the brim, fill it so deep she’d never hurt.
But in this broken and bruised world, Mother love can’t fill
the soul well, can’t give lasting comfort, perfect peace.
My Father’s Only Son is the Only One who fills the soul well:
“As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. . . . [I] will quiet you with [my] love.”*
Esther stirs, lifts head, little fists digging sharp with
fingernails not yet cut. Holding squirming Esther on my knees, I glide on the rocking
chair. Her back arches as balled fists flail. I smile saying, “Hello, my sweet
girl,” and dimpled cheeks smile back as she babbles: “Aaah, waaa. Aaah waaa.” I kiss her downy hair, gently brushing my palm
across her scalp, fingers dipping over the soft spot—the tender spot—where bone
has yet to cover brain.
And I wish Mother Love could cover the tender spots in Esther’s
heart—the rejection and pain that life inevitably brings. But I’ve learned
through dark days of my own:
My Father’s Only Son
is the Only One who covers our tender places.
Esther, still perched on my knee, lets out a quiver-cry, and
I pull her close, snuggle her against my heart. She lays her downy head between
the curve of my cheek, the slope of my neck.
As Esther rests in the earthly comfort of Mother-Love, I
deep-heart pray she comes to know the heavenly Comforter—Jesus.
Only Jesus—God-man born in a stinking manger stall, to a
frail human Mother like me, because he Loved the World!—can fill the soul with
perfect comfort, perfect peace.
As my mentor-Mother once
said to me: “The prayer I pray for my sons and daughter is this: that they have more and more of Jesus, because if they have Jesus, they have everything.”
So this Christmas, and every Christmas, my Mother-prayer is
this: Grace, eternal comfort—Jesus—overflowing in the souls of my children.
Isaiah 9:6
6 For
to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace
Driving our Dodge Caravan down 95th street at
3:30pm, the line of cars in front of me braking red because of the yellow light
flashing on the white “School Zone” sign to my left, I see a boy-man swaying
down the sidewalk, ear buds in ears, head bobbing side-to-side, backpack barely
hanging onto wide shoulders, and a goat loaded up like a pack mule trotting
down the sidewalk behind him.
What in the world?
I close and open my eyes just as our van passes the shaggy,
brown-haired, two-horned, bearded goat and his teenage owner, and I yell at my
boys sitting quietly (for once!) in the back seat, “Boys! Look over there! A
goat!” As the boys look over their shoulders at the goat’s swaying rump, my
mind wanders from 95th street to the time my parents took my boys
and I to Deanna Rose—a working farm in the middle of the city—to feed a tribe
of shaggy goats.
I remember Dad pushing silver quarters in a gumball-looking
machine that dumped out brown lumps of goat feed into waiting palms. I remember
three-year-old Micah running into the goat pen, food pellets dropping from clenched fingers, only to fly out screaming when a grey goat with glossy black eyes
gnawed on his white t-shirt, leaving behind a hole, slimy goat spit, and a kid
who didn’t like goats anymore . . . .
It’s that time of year again—when the smallest (or
strangest) thing triggers a mural of memories. You see a piece of jewelry, an
old black-n-white photo, a sweater, a restaurant sign, and one memory leads to
another, leaving you in tears of joy or tears of pain.
Even now, as I sit on the white couch in my living room
typing on my laptop, I hear the deep bong-bong,
click-click, click-click, of the
electric clock on my buffet, an out-of-the-blue gift from a cousin earlier this
year. Across the bottom of the dark wood clock is a silver plate with the
inscription: Irma and Gil, 25th
Anniversary, 1937-1962.
That clock sat on top of the TV cabinet in Grandma Irma’s Chicago condo all through
my childhood, and now, as its gentle bong-bong
snakes around my living room, I remember the one time I played hide-n-seek with cousins in Grandma’s condo. I
hid in the front hall closet with my cousin Josh, right next to the old Hoover,
right under the moth-ball-smelling coats, and as we waited for someone to
discover our hiding place, I asked him if he liked girls, and I don’t remember
what he said, but I do remember my parents, uncles, and aunts sitting on
Grandma’s floral hide-a-bed and rose
colored wing chairs, chatting about Chicago weather and memories of long-dead Grandpa
Gil, avoiding politics and religion because no one (well, except Grandma)
wanted to offend Uncle Jack, the lone atheist/agnostic Democrat. As the
conversation flowed round the room, the clock rang out its gentle bong-bong, click-click every fifteen
minutes, marking the seepage of time.
And now, twenty-some years later, I remember another family
conversation, a conversation between Dad and I the morning after one of mom’s
rages ended in scary suicide threats and crazy stories. I remember pleading
with Dad to see a Christian counselor who specialized in such things, and he said:
“There’s nothing
I can do. I’ve tried it all. There’s
nothing a counselor can tell me that I
don’t already know. This is my life for the rest of my life,” his voice flat-line, cold,
matter-of-fact.
No hope. No hope. No
hope.
I remember saying to Dad, the pastor turned seminary
professor: “But God can do anything,
anything at all. There’s always Hope!”
but even as I said the words, they felt soulless because I wasn’t sure if I
believed them anymore.
No hope. No hope. No
hope.
And the memory of Dad’s hopelessness
brings me back to my junior year of college—sitting in American Lit. with Dr.
Sommers, the white winter sun beaming in through the narrow window of the
fourth floor classroom onto the worn blue carpet, and I hear her voice reading
soft:
“’Hope’
is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune
without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is
heard - And sore must be the storm- That could abash the little Bird - That
kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest
Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me.Share this text ...?Twitter”
Emily Dickinson).
According to Miss Dickinson, Hope
keeps you warm in the midst of a storm, in the chillest land, on the strangest
sea. Hope is like a bird—perching on the edge of your soul, singing a silent, sweet
song that buoys you up in the hardest of times.
But what is the foundation
of this Hope? What keeps Hope singing its silent song to your soul, even in the
most hopeless of situations, the darkest of memories? What makes Hope more than
mere wishful thinking: “I hope things will turn out!”
What makes Hope the sure anchor of
the soul?
For years I put my Hope in family members getting help, in
counselors giving answers, in research and understanding, in ME just being
strong enough, fighting hard enough to fix all the problems in my life. But I was left feeling betrayed, disappointed.
And this morning, as I ran my miles on the treadmill, I put
this song on repeat, letting the truths sooth my soul:
Here we have a firm foundation,
Here the refuge of the lost;
Christ's the Rock of our salvation,
His the name of which we boast.
Lamb of God, for sinners wounded,
Sacrifice to cancel guilt! None shall ever be confounded Who on him their hope have built.
(Stricken, Smitten
and Afflicted, emphasis mine)
This
year, as my mind inevitably travels down the hall of memories, as my heart longs
for healing in my family, I place my Hope in He who does not disappoint: And hope does not disappoint
us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy
Spirit, whom he has given us.(Romans
5:5-8)
This
year, when tears of sorrow fall--for lost family, for broken marriages, for the
difficulty of life circumstances, I look to Jesus, the sure foundation of my Hope.
He is love and peace, and works “all
things together for good.”
May the God of hope fill [us] with
all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by
the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)
Salve to the soul this morning: Fernando Ortega's Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted.
You can view a live cello/piano version of this song here. The song was played at John Piper's Act the Miracle Conference. (My hubby got to hear it live! Said it brought him to tears.) The song is at 41:48 on the video.
A couple weeks ago the boys and I propped waist-high
scarecrows wearing burlap clothes and painted smiles on the front steps of our
town home, and we picked out orange mini-pumpkins at the grocery store and dug
out last year’s thrift-store-décor from underneath the basement stairs—six inch
scarecrows with yellow straw poking out of orange-checked shirt sleeves—and I
let Josiah arrange (and re-arrange and re-arrange) the mini-pumpkins and
scarecrows on our china buffet.
Josiah's Final Arrangement:)
And this week I tripped on acorns hidden in our brown carpet
and watched the oak tree out front shed curly leaves while squirrels scampered
up and down the trunk with bulging cheeks. And in the late afternoon sun, I watered
browning petunias in flipflops, crisp leaves tickling my bare toes.
It’s fall again.
Fall is my favorite time of year. I savor snuggling in bed
under warm blankets in early morning, long runs in crisp air over leaf-strewn
trails, and the promise of Thanksgiving and Christmas in cool breezes and 5pm sunsets.
And last Fall I learned from an expert gardener that oak leaves make great
compost for Spring plants, so I scooped up crunchy leaves and buried them in
moist dirt, hoping for richer earth and stronger plants in Spring.
This year, as oak leaves pile round my front door and fill
empty pots on my front steps, I ponder the reminder that fall brings: death—loss—births new life. Just as fall precedes winter and winter, spring,
so death precedes redemption: “Because of his great
love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,5 made
us alive with Christ even when we
were dead in transgressions”(Ephesians 2:4-5).
When we were dead—consumed with
Self—God, who is merciful, made us alive in Him!
In recent years the winter winds of trial stripped me
bare—the loss of three babies, not yet named, the loss of my Grandpa, 95 years
old, the loss of family relationships, the loss of expectations for what life should be, and in this bare-naked state—stripped
of Self—I finally looked to Christ.
“Not until self dies can Christ live in us;
not until self dies can we possess the faith that works by love and purifies
the soul.” (ST, October 11, 1899, emphasis mine.)
When Self dies (and continues, daily, to die) a willingness
to risk all for Christ—relationships,
material possessions, career, reputation—fills the soul, and you live FREE!
"The deepest
death to self lies in the motives and intentions, hence this all-consuming motive to want to be nothing but a capacity
for Christ to live in, lies at the foundation of the death of self and the
highest life of Christ.” (G.D. Watson, emphasis mine).
In other words, the deepest death to self is a genuine—all consuming—desire to let Christ be all. When
Christ is all, my soul rests in the knowledge that the difficult seasons of
this life are birthing new life in my heart—a deeper reliance on Christ and
true, lasting Joy.
So, when the trials of this life strip you bare, when the
winter winds of difficulty seem to last forever, remember that death births new
life, that God is fertilizing your soul so that your reliance on him is deep,
rich and true, and just when you think winter will never end, Springblooms in your heart.
"Be not afraid,
though every stay [foundation]
Should fail, or be removed away, And thou be stript of all;
But lose thyself in that vast sea,
The ocean of the Deity,
And all thy cares shall fall.
In death which is the most profound,
The purest life is always found; Then, blindly, all forego!
He ne’re shall find, who will not lose;
Who sinks from self, shall gain repose,
Which none but he can know."
