What Breaks and What Breaks Through

At 6:30 yesterday morning, I was deep in lectio divina (sacred reading), communing with my God through Psalm 105, hunkered down in the phrase Be alert to signs of God's presence.  I imagined Him taking me by the hand and pointing out wonder upon wonder. 

At 7:00, I heard it begin to rain, though the room was filled with the bright, pinkish light of a promising sunrise.  I stepped outside to the unveiling of a rainbow...a complete arch, bursting with color...a hint of a second one appearing as one by one, each robed member of my family came to join me under the umbrella of our giant oak.   Absolute joy on our faces.  Gratitude spilling from our mouths.

Oh, what a morning had broken. 

At 4:00 I got news that a life was changed forever in my family.  My step-Grandpa Bob, dear man, hulking farmer with a barrel chest and twinkling eyes, did not see the semi truck when he pulled onto the highway.  The next thing he knew, he was in a hospital bed, broken all over. 

I spent the rest of the day trying to sort through promises and realities, platitudes and hard truths, assurances and doubts, as I listened to my sweet, little piano students make young music.  I woke up today still aching for Bob, his wife, his daughter (my step-mom), the extended family gathered around his bed in Peoria. 

I want so badly to take him by the fragile hand, ease him out under the oak, and point him to the rainbow.  But it is gray and colorless today. 

Brave

You set out to do the extraordinary,

you brave, homeschooling mother

Armed with the consummate classics:

Tom Sawyer, Little Britches, A Wrinkle in Time

and piles of God's Heroes:

Amy Carmichael, Nate Saint,

and some days you think you'd rather be

on the Amazon with the natives

than in the living room with

your own flesh and blood,

who've got you at the end of your rope,

or is the end of the spear?

The oldest fusses over analyzing sentences

while secretly peeking at football plays

Another disappears from her math lesson

and magically reappears out the window,

a pendulum on the rope swing

And why is the youngest in tears over

their, there, and they're?

All day long you point

to the piano the dishwasher the next problem

the key word the vowel team the pile of towels

the board game spread across the couch

the half done science experiment on the counter

the dog

begging for dinner

You wish you could control their eyes

while your own wander to the

hummingbird at the feeder

and you privately long for wings

The words nag:

Am I enough?

And then you remember...

the first school was in a garden

So you say to the children,

let's go pick the rest of the vegetables

There is going to be a hard freeze tonight

And, blessed, you call it a lesson in

biology, meteorology, home ec, and religion

Suddenly you notice

their roots have eased down a little deeper

and you feel just a little braver

today

Seventy Times Seven

I stood in church yesterday, singing and worshipping at one level, but wrestling at another, trying to be a good soldier and take captive the enemy thoughts.  I was battling feelings of betrayal and rejection. 

It was the most innocuous, indirect kind of rejection you can imagine; I would be too embarrassed to detail in a blog, and yet my mind kept wandering back to it and my body responded in clenched jaw and knotted gut. 

"Let it go," I told myself over and over.  "Forgive.  Forgive.  Forgive.  You are here to commune with the God of the universe who humbles Himself to dwell in you, and you are fixated on the ridiculous." Yet all morning those viral thoughts invaded. 

I think I understand what Jesus meant when he told Peter in Matthew 18, "No, you don't forgive your brother seven times.  You forgive him seventy times seven."  In other words, as many times as it takes to let it go.  Every time the angst rises up, you stamp it "forgiven."  It's not that a brother or sister is going to break your heart 490 times.  It's that your mind is going revisit the hurts over and over and you are going to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and call it forgiven.  Every.  Time. 

Until the healing comes.  And what does the healing look like?  It looks like you walking in his or her shoes, changing your point of view and finally, understanding. 

It is you moving beyond this offense and praying that all those people that you have offended would be kind enough to stamp "forgiven" across every thought of you.