I spent part of Saturday night crying bitter tears into a laundry basket. It is not my favorite weekend activity, and (thankfully) not one I often engage in.
It wasn't the laundry's fault. I have nothing against dirty clothes, per se. I wasn't in a tiff or having a pity party. My tears were born of the pure stabbing pain of loving a person who, a) does not love you back as passionately as you love him, b) is causing you pain, and c) may not even be able to receive the love you so desperately want to share with him.
After several years of smooth sailing with one of my kids, we've hit a rough patch--anger, acting out, self sabotage, unkind words, destructive behaviors.
I was fairly certain after all he's been through that we had not seen the last of the visible manifestations of his internal pain, but he's been "fitting in" for enough months to give me that hopeful expectation that maybe the scars were diminishing. Maybe love had won. Maybe truth had spoken loud enough to break through the walls of mistrust he had so carefully built around his heart.
I had done that foolish human trick of taking "what is" and drawing a line out from right now to forever, and assuming that the person who is either making your life wonderful or miserable is going to keep on doing that forever and ever, amen.
I have done this with all of my children (and my husband) from time to time, forgetting that they are, like me, changeable beings prone to all the variations, moods, impulses, weaknesses, and foibles of all of our species.
But even if a setback is momentary, it hurts so very much.
What if, in the end, the ones you love don't accept what you're offering? What if your best isn't good enough? What if their hearts want what you don't have the power to give them?
I have not loved my children perfectly. Far from it. In fact, some days my parenting is perfectly...abysmal.
But other times I am laying out my whole self to the point of exhaustion. I am reading books and blogs, watching webinars, pulling out all my tricks--old ones, new ones, some marked with warmth, some with great patience, and some with desperation, but all of them in hopes of winning the hearts of my little audience.
Some days I feel like a frenzied jester performing for a fickle court: six hours of song and dance, fire eating, and wrestling alligators, only to see my little ones shrug and throw me out of the room.
Meh. Boring.
"I don't want what you're offering."
"I want my real mom."
"Why did you take me away from her?"
"She wasn't bad."
"She didn't hurt me. She never would."
"Why did you tell the judge to take me? I don't like this family. I want my old room."
"Don't touch me."
"Don't talk to me."
"Leave me alone."
Statements with this emotional weight might not matter if they came from a stranger, or a casual acquaintance, but from your child...
...from one whom you have moved heaven and earth to secure?
...from one whom you have rocked and held, cleaned up after, cooked for, bathed, bandaged, taught, cheered for, cried for, cried over, cried with, read to, cuddled, lost sleep over, worried about, prayed for, and protected?
There are no words.
I go to sleep thinking about my children, and wake up thinking about them. I love them with a fierce protectiveness that surpasses any other form of love I have ever known. So when a sweet little face looks at my open arms, hears my words of love, experiences my devotion, and says "no thanks", it makes me wonder why I am doing this.
But even in that same instant, I know why.
The answer lives in the nature of true love.
It is the reason that I will lay down my heart and my prayers and my life for my children until my last breath, no matter what they offer me in return.
Because that's what love does.
Not the "I love how you make me feel" love.
Or the "I love what I can get from you" love.
Or the "I love how you make me look" love.
This love is the crazy, inexplicable, unconditional, sometimes unrequited, consuming passion that endures independently of the recipients.
They can't stop it, kill it, or shut it up, but oh! How I want that love to go both ways!
How desperately I want to pull my little (and big) ones to me and see the answering light in their eyes...
...and yet their periodic coolness is so much like what I offer to my own Heavenly Father.
He gives and gives, and I say it is not enough, or it isn't what I want, or it isn't on my terms, and I answer His loving gaze with an icy stare.
Hasn't he shown me enough how He feels toward me? He gave me the world and everything in it, even as I shrugged and spit.
He stepped into that world and won my freedom at the cost of His own blood. He laid it all out--every possible way of showing the extent of His love, His trustworthiness, His good intentions toward me, and His provision for my needs.
But somehow even after He took me into His family, I still find myself looking at Him with shifty eyes and a suspicious heart.
Just like my little guy looks at me.
"I don't want what You're offering," I say.
"I want my old plan/circumstance/habit/situation/idol back."
"Why did You take it away from me?"
"It wasn't bad."
"It wouldn't hurt me. It never would."
"Why are You treating me this way?"
"I don't like Your rules."
"I don't like this reality. I want my old one."
"I don't trust You."
Not until I was on the receiving end of this kind of wariness did I understand what I have been doing to God since I met Him, and from that cold
knowledge has sprung a strange sort of gratitude.
I am grateful because the sting of this rejection both deepens my appreciation for God's patience toward me, and at the same time creates forbearance in me over the weakness, fear, and mistrust I see in my own children.
And if I, an imperfect and often inconsistent parent, love my little ones to distraction even when they are prickly and suspicious, how much more am I loved by my Father in Heaven through all of my sulks and tantrums?
God loves me with my best interest in His mind, no matter whether I understand it, agree with it, or like it. He loves me through my unloveliness and doubt, in spite of myself, for the purpose of guiding me out of my wretchedness and insecurity into the place of peace and safety that He has prepared for my benefit.
Just like I am trying to do for my sweet boy.
This is the thought that eventually lifted my chin out of the pile of tear-stained laundry
I was reminded today by in a blog post by Tim Challies that "God loved us so much he spoke a language we didn’t want to hear, and we learned to receive it as the best language of all."
Hopefully. Eventually. I pray that will be what happens here in my home with my children. Until then, the only responsibility I have is to love God and keep loving my little ones with the strength He provides.
That's it. Results are not up to me. This is hard, but true, and next time someone I love hurts me, I hope it will remind me not to do the same to the people--and the God--who loves me.
A prayer:
“ . . . May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous
love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people
should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is” Ephesians 3:17-18
