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Contemplating Home and the Passing of Days

November 27, 2018December 18, 2018

Fall is turning to winter and we are, once again, considering Christmas preparations. But as we do, I think back on the events of my fall and they seem to coalesce around one concept: HOME.

What a loaded word that is.

HOME. My third-grader listed it as one of the places he most likes to go on his “All About Me” poster for school. This blessed me greatly. For him, home is close to what it should be – a refuge and stronghold of love.

And I fervently hope my children will always feel this way about the home they’ve grown up in.

HOME is where we live, where we once lived, and what will be our place of living at some point in the future. And yet despite our best efforts to make HOME stable, it is perpetually in flux.

From one year to the next, home changes.

Because the people are changing. Moving in and out. Closer and farther away.

This is my lesson from fall 2018.

Last month, I sat across from my 15-year old son at a wedding our family attended, and felt the years stretch out ahead and behind.

The bride was radiant (as all brides are) and the groom was dazzled by her. Family and friends wished them well and prayed for their happiness. I was especially hopeful, as the bride is a diamond of a person whom I’ve known for 15 years. Yes – ever since she started babysitting an infant boy – who grew into the teenage boy sitting across from me at her reception dinner. Back then, she herself was his exact age.

I see the way his increasingly broad shoulders fill out his blazer, how remarkably relaxed he is in a tie, joking with his teenage sister in a manner closely approximating adulthood. There are clear outlines of the man he will become; only the shading need be filled in.

And I returned again to my mind’s refrain – the one I’ve heard daily since September.

I miss him already.

He’s only a sophomore in high school. A couple years to go.

But you can see a bird is going to take flight when it raises its wings off its back, and that’s where we are now.

How do you sit with melancholy?

The instability of knowing the inevitability of an event that is both happy and sad? Desirable – even prayed for – and yet – not exactly what your heart craves.

He will be leaving his home.

I can stand back and watch time pass quickly – like sand through an hourglass – or I can break open the glass and examine each grain.

So I watch him eat. I listen to him laugh. I hear his stories and respond empathetically. Try not to react with alarm when surprised or concerned. I ask questions that I hope will bring us closer, and when he shares with me – I thank him. His life is his. I know this. And yet….and yet….

Home is where we want to be….together. But togetherness is fleeting. All homes are temporary shelters of love since the members come and go. They draw closer to us. And pull away. For days, months, years, or forever.

There is no real home here on earth.

I bear this in mind, and take my heart to the only One who can console, and who loves my son more than me. It’s his Creator, and mine, after all.

And while I pray for my son’s protection, I am reminded that this boy was given to me for a time, and no more.

Let’s live the days as if they are numbered, for indeed – they are.

So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom. – Psalm 90:12

When Did We Stop?

May 14, 2016October 15, 2018

When did we stop?

When did we stop walking through our lives with wonder?

Looking for the next amazing thing?

Seeking out another delight?

Expecting a miracle around the corner?

A bunny in the bushes?

That we’d surely see…while wearing shockingly purple glasses with no lenses….just because?

When did we stop dancing through life knowing the wonderful was coming?

The promise of it has always been there.

Let’s reawaken our souls to it today.

However far back we need to go, let’s go there. Let’s go back to when we simply accepted that there was so much we didn’t know, and we just trusted, and lived in awe.

You visit the earth and water it,
make it abundantly fertile.
God’s stream is filled with water;
you supply their grain.
Thus do you prepare it:
you drench its plowed furrows,
and level its ridges.
With showers you keep it soft,
blessing its young sprouts.
You adorn the year with your bounty;
your paths drip with fruitful rain.
The meadows of the wilderness also drip;
the hills are robed with joy.
The pastures are clothed with flocks,
the valleys blanketed with grain;
they cheer and sing for joy.

-Psalm 65:10-14

Holy Moments – Day 13 – Mac Cam

October 23, 2015October 23, 2015

I lived in Manhattan from 1994 to 1996 – the two years just after college graduation. It was a paycheck to paycheck existence, and I was fairly creative with ramen noodles. But that’s not the point of this post.

One day, I was crossing Fifth Avenue at the foot of Central Park, near the Plaza Hotel, when I noticed a high fashion model doing a photo shoot on the island at the middle of the street. It was late summer, and she was dressed in a brown wool coat and coordinating hat, tights, and stiletto boots. Every glossy hair was in place, she stood in a way no average person ever would, and she held her chin up, as if she disdained the city while also trying to blend into it. Nothing about her ‘look’ said, “I’m comfortable.”

I have no idea, of course, but I’m guessing she was feeling a bit self-conscious. She had made herself the target of the camera’s eye, and she was doing everything she had been told was necessary to be worthy of its attention.

I thought about her when I came across these photos the other night.

Taken more than 7 years ago with the tiny camera staring down at me from the top of our now-ancient Mac, they are “I can’t-believe we still have these” photos. Compared to most of our others, they are terrible. The lighting is awful, there is no composition to speak of, they are grainy, and the quality is poor. And those special effects the kids love? EEk. But, they also capture the essence of something the more “perfect” photos do not.

Me and my two oldest kids when they were really little.

This is us.

Unfiltered. Uncombed. Untidy. Silly. Happy.

But as I look at these pictures, I also know there is only one person who was feeling like that fashion model. Only one who was self-conscious because she was self-critical. Me.

How often, as I approach God in prayer, trying to understand how He could love me unconditionally as His child, do I only see myself with a reductive gaze? I pick myself apart. I hold back on talking to Him about certain things. I convince myself I have some kind of power in this way.

But God is like the camera. He sees what’s there. All of it. And He wants me to come to Him like children do.

“Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 18:1-4

Children are naturally trusting, tender-hearted, curious, humble, and free of skepticism and cynicism. Look at how my kids threw themselves at the camera with abandon. There’s not a trace of self-hatred in them.

“That’s all well and good,” I might say, “but they haven’t suffered…haven’t had to make the hard choices that I have… yet.”

Is this a reasonable response?

The following verse adds:

“And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.” – Matthew 18:5

Can I look at myself – in a mirror, or in a camera – and see His image? Can I receive Him, in me?

The criticism we heap on ourselves can only be useful if we hold it up to the Light of the Lord’s love. If we allow Him to enter into the places we try to hide from Him, He will grant us the wisdom see what we can change with His help, and what is beautiful just as it is.

It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus. – Philippians 3:12

Bump in the Road

July 29, 2015

“Mom!” she yells. “Why are you turning around?”

“There’s a sign back there. I want to take a picture of it. For my blog.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

And for once. For once! She doesn’t press. ‘Because’ is enough of an answer. I thank the Lord for this small mercy.

I don’t know how I could explain it to her anyway….The many reasons why I called her grandmother yesterday, just because I needed my own mom for a few moments…

When I dialed Mom in Florida I looked at the clock and assumed I’d need 10 minutes to vent – to really get it all out. Ten turned into 30, and Mom listened patiently – to all the ways the state of the world had gotten me down. She offered only words of encouragement, a tiny bit of advice, and the gentle reminder that, “The devil loves to see us stewing in anger.”

Deep sigh…I know. I KNOW. And don’t our moms often tell us the truth? Whether we really want to hear it or not?

And then later I see a sign. Literally. A SIGN. Telling me again that all the things I vented to my mom about are just BUMPS. Bumps. And I have been forewarned.

This world is not perfect. And it will continually disappoint me because I was not made for it. I was made for more.

I crave the purity and loveliness of the One in Whom there are no imperfections. And so no matter what might fall or spring up in my path today, I must keep my eyes on eternity and on Him whose perfect sacrifice has washed me clean from the ugliness I loathe in myself and others.

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

– John 16:33

Look again at this photo. On the left there’s a father with his child on his shoulders. Dad carries the weary child, and from the new vantage point, the child can see a bit farther. It’s exactly the way my Father in Heaven wants to carry me. And you.