Their story captivated me. How creative you have to be when you live in a country where 3% of the population is Christian and God has called you to be a missionary there.
"How do we do this, God?"
"Graffiti," God answers.
And so began their campaign to erase the prolific graffiti from the public surfaces in their town in Spain. It was a brilliant plan. What city and neighborhood leaders wouldn't back a plan to beautify their environment?
My favorite part of the story: a tunnel, a mural, an artist. First they paint black over the graffitied walls of the tunnel. Then the artist on their team begins to paint his beautiful vision. Who should wander up but three young, delinquent, graffiti artists and taggers, curious about this project. (Why does the number 3 always make the story better?)
In a stroke of inspiration, the artist puts the boys to work helping with the mural. It catches the attention of the newspaper. In the end, there is a community celebration and private prayers that the tiny seeds planted along the way would lodge and grow in hearts and eventually grow into a church.
I love a good story, but when it rainbows a bigger truth, I am truly moved. God takes the grimy, graffiti-stained walls of my life and paints them fresh and blank. He gives vision and community to slowly, faithfully paint the mural, which tells the story, which is meant to be shared and celebrated.
My life mural is not finished until my last breath, but there are milestones to be celebrated as portions of the picture are completed. When He brings unlikely people and circumstances to contribute to the painting, doubt and resistance flare up, and I must remember He is there in the tunnel holding the completed sketch and nodding approval, as He reassuringly whispers, "It's OK. You think they are going to wreck your painting, but actually, they are painting the most beautiful parts, and they are making you a better artist."
Because I loved their story so much, Rob and Nancy, the missionaries from Spain, left an envelope for me on my music stand with the words "Thank You" written in crayon. Inside was this pastel drawing by the artist in their story.
My eyes blurred with tears when I saw it. COME, He says. Be fully in this story and trust Me all the way.
This is the story I read the morning I stepped out on my deck and screamed.
I am a child and it is nearly Christmas. I stand on a kitchen chair pummeling cookie dough with a rolling pin. I wallop the bag of flour right off the counter and it explodes in a cloud of white dust. I do not move, waiting for my mother's reaction. "What's your favorite cookie shape?" she asks. I find my voice. "A star." Smiling, she hands me the tin cutter. "Make lots of stars while I clean up," she says. -Sue Monk Kidd, Firstlight
This story seared my conscience. How I've shamed and belittled my children for much less than a flour bomb.
Later that morning, I stepped into the lovely dappled light on our deck and looked down. Then looked again. Then let my eyes trail down the steps and across the lower level. Then hurried down to look across the length of the deck. The deck that we built last year. The NEW deck. Then I screamed through clenched teeth.
From one corner to the other, up the stairs, and across the top level, were splatters of dark red stain, like the drips across the driveway from a sprinkler-soaked child. For a moment I thought someone with a severed limb had run to the kitchen, but no, it was not blood that stained our blond wood. It was, indeed, stain. The color of the newly stained playset.
I saw the can of stain and the paint pan neatly placed on the rocks where they should have been. And then it dawned on me. The sponge brush was tucked in its Ziploc bag in the refrigerator, waiting to be used for final touches on the playset. Someone who shall remain nameless did not realize how drippy a stain-drenched paintbrush is when carried from playset to kitchen. Gulp.
I had a choice to make. Somewhere in my brain was an arsenal of shame-based words that no parenting book ever had to teach me. But those go-to words had been covered over during my early morning quiet time by a story of a wise and tender mother who chose the path of love and grace.
I went inside and drank some more coffee and washed up the morning dishes. Then I took my beautiful gift of a child onto the deck and said, "We're going to figure out how to clean this up the best we can. You can help."
"I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't know. I'll help."
I looked up from my shady spot under the tall red pine to watch a young boy and an older woman dipped back into the cool lake waters. They had come before this group to declare their devotion to Christ through the ceremony of baptism. In God's immense creativity, He designed a beautiful symbol that will forever be a step in the Christian faith: descending into the waters of death, then bursting forth new and sputtering and dripping with life.
I remember Dave standing next to me, smiling a nervous, encouraging grin as we took the same drenching journey almost 20 years ago. Our dabbling, half-hearted interest in Christianity had taken a dramatic turn into full-blown faith, and baptism was our way of saying, "No turning back. No turning back." Since then, God has slowly, steadily taken over my eyes, as I've honestly sung and believed the words "Be Thou My Vision."
What I was really paying attention to as I stood under the pine last Saturday was not the baptism, but something that caused a sting of tears in my eyes. Four children from four different families were all within feet of each other.
Joswe sat on the ledge. He is the son of missionaries from Spain. He has a chromosomal anomaly which you don't notice until he tries to communicate with you and is difficult to understand. He makes you listen more intently than you listen to others, because you find that you can understand him if you make the effort. He is enraptured by rhythm. I had asked him to play the djembe drum during one of our worship songs and he was perfectly amazing.
Near him sat Ariana. She has a physical malformation that renders her small arms permanently bent and out of proportion with her body. But God gave her a tender sweetness, a self-determination, and a servant's heart. Earlier, I had watched her wash the tables in the dining hall. To move the wet cloth, she had to have her cheek nearly on the table, and I wonder how far we are willing to bend to serve others.
Young Levi is the pastor's son. He also has a chromosomal issue and is difficult to understand. But I loved his fresh, unfiltered comments. "You're strong," he told me, looking at my bare arms. "I lift weights," I told him. He nodded, approvingly. That sealed our friendship for the weekend. He wants to have 9 children when he grows up. Six boys and three girls.
Next to Levi was Mariah, moving in her dance-like way. Her seizures got so serious that Mayo doctors severed her corpus-callosum, which connects the two sides of her brain. It corrected her seizures, but it makes her a handful for her two amazing parents. Kind of like a permanent 2 year old in a 9 year old body. My goal was to persuade a smile out of her over the weekend. I didn't quite accomplish that, but I did take a damp towel and ran it gently over her warm, sweaty face, and she looked at me squarely with her large gray eyes with something like a thank you.
I'm not sure that anyone else noticed these four special kids so near each other in the crowd. But I believe I was meant to notice, because in my vision, they were glowing and the phrase imago dei was flooding my mind. Image of God.
These child-souls were drenched in the image of God. Washed in the glow. Baptized in sacred love.
Since I turned 40 in April, I have sensed a tightening, like the dragonfly on the dock in Canada, confined by a dark, hard exoskeleton, while pushing her bright green head out the tiny opening.
I watched her molt all morning, emerging, growing, brightening, spreading, until she was many times larger than the shell she would leave behind. Then she was gone. Maybe she was the one who landed on the slat bench next to me on the last day of vacation, reveling in her next chapter. I was envious.
There is a knot that needs untangling. I haven't been talking about it. Or praying. Or writing. Or thinking, really, but it's not going to untangle itself. It will have to be written smooth, because most of the problem solving in my life happens internally, spilling into written words. Such is the way of the introvert writer.
When a woman has everything to be thankful for, like a faithful God, a rock solid husband, healthy, cheerful kids, good friends, and a lovely home, she takes that nebulous angst and palms it like a ball of clay, making it as small as possible. Then she swallows it and lives with the pit in her stomach. Sue Monk Kidd calls it "an obscure longing for something I cannot name."
The Bible says that "while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened." 2 Cor 5:4 There is a groaning in me that cannot be ignored, a nameless burden. Is it a longing for heaven? Is it an invitation to a new chapter or bigger wings? I don't have an inkling of the root or the purpose, but I suspect it's a univeral experience, and that, like Lady Dragonfly, I am simply molting.
