It is a bit overwhelming to realize
that you have bled your whole heart – the ugly sin, the raw emotion, the
unbridled truth – out on paper for the whole world to read.
It is a bit exhausting to hear over
and over again how “awesome” you are when you, in fact, know very well that you
are not.
People expect romantic, and all I
have is a wildly disorganized bookshelf and dirty children shrieking with
too-loud laughter. People expect that the days all hold life-saving medicine
given to children on the brink of death and profound revelation and while some do,
most consist more of peeling potatoes and wiping spills and listening to
recited memory verses and biting my tongue as spaghetti sauce splatters
everywhere and I light the pot holder on fire, again.
I believe the lie that I must meet
expectation, and I try harder. I stay up later answering emails and I
desperately try to finish a book that I said I would endorse and I organize the
bookshelves and wipe down the counters again.
I brush past the children who hold my heart in order to be a “good mother” who
has homemade food on the dinner table on time. We finish lessons and recite
Psalms and fold laundry and welcome visitors. Life gets too busy, it gets so
fast and so full that at the end of the day it can feel just empty.
This was not the first time I had
been here and I knew what to do. I pull back, I dig into the Word and I listen.
The lesson whispered in the quiet is always the same. My friend Sara calls it Adoration. My friend Ann counts it all up as Eucharisto. Paul says it’s the
secret of contentment, hands full or hands empty. Whatever we name it, it is
astounding Truth: Communion with the Savior is the only thing that makes anything
matter.
I choke because my every day life begins
too feel small compared to the expectation. And He breathes truth that a life is
not made by lives saved or bellies fed or words written. To adore the one who
created the Heavens and the Earth, to give thanks for who He is and all He has
given, to worship and commune with Holy God, whispering in the quiet, clinging
in the noise, believing in all circumstances – this is what makes a life large.
The miracle is joy in Him in a day
that goes all wrong. The miracle is standing in awe of abundance as I chop
carrots and bathe babies and fold laundry. The miracle is a Son sent to die for
the very likes of me and His ever-pursuing love for me still.
Paul knows the secret, and even
when I think I learned this lesson already Jesus teaches me again: we can live
a full life wherever we are – even in the days that seem to small – when we
live in communion with the Savior. We look up, praise on our lips, and as we
worship Him for all He has done our hearts open wide to more. We wait,
expectant, for all that He is doing and this is it, this is life to the fullest.
Foster babies go back to their
families. How do you raise a child as your own and then say good-bye? I guess
because you know that God ordained their family to be another one, but that
doesn’t make it easy. My baby will start therapy before she starts
kindergarten. I do not like the idea of a child having to endure trauma so that
one day she may learn from it, or teach another about it. But I still believe
He has purpose, even when I can’t see it. I look outside at the insanely noisy
game of tag taking place in my yard: 4 Hindu neighbors that my children are praying
desperately to reveal Christ to, 2 little girls off the street who lost their
mother 2 weeks ago and passed by for a drink of water, 13 little girls that
have walked through hell and made it out on the other side with a family. Is
there anything my lips could say but thank
you? I don’t know what to make of it all, but I can’t think of anything to
do but praise the God who is always working and will not leave us here. Where I
end, He is only just beginning.
Paul says he strains to take hold
of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of him and isn’t this why He took hold
of us -that as we open our lips to praise Him for who He is, He opens our
hearts to be transformed in His likeness. He trades my dirty rags for the
splendor of Him, breathes new life into dry, dead spaces.
We
know the secret: Christ Jesus crucified and risen from the dead reaching
out for relationship with you and with me. And a heart turned toward Him is the
only way to live full of joy.
On the days when children run
around the yard happy and the bread rises warm in the oven and those we’ve been
nursing return home with new life in their veins, and on the days when the
reading doesn’t get done and I half carry a mother up the hill to the place
they will lower her 3 year-old’s body into the ground because of a fever – a fever! - and life seems too unjust and the head wants to shake “no”,
my lips will say yes to all that is Christ and I will adore my Savior.
Communion with God is what we are
standing up under here – on the days that go as planned and on the days that
don’t. On the days with expectations left unmet and dinner running late because
of an extra game of hide-and-seek, on the days that seem mundane and the days
that seem magnificent, we are saying yes
to all He gives and we are saying thank
you.
O God, you are my God,
I earnestly seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is not water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the
richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
Psalm 63:1-5