Parenting Pariahs: Notes From the Foxhole

Yesterday I went to Costco.  

Everything was fine until I got to the bakery section.  There I was, rolling along between a mountain of pretzel rolls and a pallet of blueberry muffins (you Costco members know exactly what I mean), when suddenly I started crying.  

And when I say crying, I mean crying.  Not just a couple of tears, but the whole nine yards--the quivering chin, the snot, the ragged breathing.  It was more than I could pass off as my just being overcome by the sheer value of Costco's baked goods, so I quickly buried myself in the back corner of the refrigerated produce room until the jag passed and I could scuttle to the door.  

This kind of thing never used to happen when I was a young mom.  I cried then, but it was more of a private, scheduled event instead of the ugly, unbidden sloppiness that hit me yesterday.  There was no crying into shopping carts, or even in public bathrooms or parking lots. When I needed to, I could hold it together.

No doubt there were many factors at play during my breakdown.  Hormones.  Lack of sleep. General life stress and uncertainty.  

But mostly I think it was love.

For the past...since I had all my kids...I have had a fairly high degree of social anxiety.  Meaning, I have rarely gone anywhere where one of my kids has not insulted or offended someone, acted inappropriately, broken something, had a meltdown, or been socially unacceptable in some manner.  It is not always the same kid.  This seems to be the one area where they happily take turns.


But at some point in their lives, many of my kids have been very good at being "bad".

I am not talking normal offenses.  I am talking about things which require me to carry a checkbook to social functions.

I am talking about exit strategies which involve backing a child out of the room slowly as the adult who is hosting us does deep breathing exercises.

I am talking multi-level apologies for a child's behavior accompanied by the sinking feeling that our family's number will be removed from yet another contact list, effective immediately. 

You see, we are not a typical family.  Many of my children came to us with deep wounds.  They are healing as they grow, but the process is slow and sometimes ugly.  

When I see them, I see what they have overcome, what they are working so hard to correct, what they are not even aware they need to fix yet because they are still learning the basics of civilized life.  But not everyone sees this.

Over and over I have watched peoples' good will toward one of my children turn to disgust, disdain, dislike, and ultimately distance due to something untoward that one of them did or said--and I don't necessarily blame folks for bowing out of our little project.

They didn't choose this level of chaos.  They didn't sign up for the uncertainty, the unpredictability, and the volatility of some of my crowd.

I actually didn't know exactly what I was signing up for either.  But I love them so, so much.

They are not all bad, by any means.  Often, my children are tender and thoughtful towards me and others, service-minded, diligent, affectionate, resilient and tenacious, shyly vulnerable, kind.  

Other times my children are messy and awkward, rude, impulsive, inconsiderate, inexplicable, and lazy.

Always they are emotionally fragile, over-sensitive, and wounded in deep places.  

All of us are.  

Some of my children spent their early years in the chaotic stew of foster care--and I'm not just counting my adopted kids here.  

My biological kids gave up a "normal childhood" because when we signed up for a mission into a dangerously broken system, we brought them with us.  

They watched our foster kids be parented with different standards from them (by law and by necessity), and with different methods (also by law and necessity).

They watched their mother be hit and screamed at and hurt.

They watched their stuff be destroyed.  Over and over.

Their parents were either in crisis prevention or crisis management mode with social workers, biological parents, or foster siblings almost all the time.  

They were dragged into the emotional roller coaster of parental visits and witnesses to the traumatic aftermath of them.

Meanwhile, my foster kids were lied to by me (by order of the court), by their biological moms, by their social workers and counselors, by the system.

Their hearts were torn and torn and torn again. My first two went through this for one year.  My last two, for three.

I think that when we finally blinked in the sunlight after our adoptions, we were so tired and shell-shocked that we almost didn't know where to find "normal", so we just put one foot in front of the other and hoped it was the general right direction.

And I think it was.  We clung to each other and to Scripture.  We read lots of good books and sat under good teaching.  And slowly, slowly we watched the tightly curled hearts of our children soften.

Five years into parenting my tough-as-nails boy my goodnight kisses were still a one-way street, and then suddenly one night as I knelt by his bed, he caught my face in his hands and planted a shy, barely-there kiss on my cheek.

One kiss.  A thing that falls like rain on most mamas, but not for me.  Not from him.  

He wouldn't even look at me afterward, but buried his face in his comforter and pretended to be asleep until I left the room. And that kiss stayed with me like a physical thing all the next day and carried the weight of a thousand.

For him I knew it was an act of purple-heart bravery, and I could barely breathe at the enormity of the risk he had taken to give me that gift. To this day, I get exactly one kiss a night, and only if it is dark and no one is watching.

I do not hear, "I love you too," when I say it and even his smiles are dearly earned, but oh, how far he has come from the boy who didn't even know how to laugh at a joke when he came to us!


My brassy, sassy, act first, think later (maybe) child began to develop a center of calm in her storm.  Her eyes softened and her normal expression moved from a cross between "sullen" and "deceased" to something that looked like hope.

Her heart began to turn toward selflessness and service and her understanding of love blossomed into the ability to give as well as take.

But still sometimes we would have full-out screaming, defiant public melt-downs by children old enough to know better, and they would say terrible things to their friends and sometimes to ours, and I would see the disapproval behind the eyes of the parents who grew their kids "God's way" and had children who would never even think of breaking someone else's toy or shouting down their mother, and my heart would break over my failures and their failures.  

I couldn't blame people for not seeking us out for play dates, but it hurt.  

I remember the time we went to a homeschool co-op gathering and something little thing happened that unleashed an emotional Armageddon in my boy.  I clicked into damage control mode and began immediate evacuation procedures which involved sending hand signals to my older kids to grab their stuff and head to the van, while I simultaneously tried to talk my child off his psychological ledge and issue blanket apologies to everyone within earshot.  

We made it home with minimal casualties and I was sitting at the kitchen table feeling my typical, post-social-function mixture of relieved and sweaty and jealous and sad and embarrassed when a little, puffy face pushed into my shoulder and whispered, "I'm sorry."  

Sorry?  What?

This was HUGE!  Huge.  A spontaneous apology? Thirty whole minutes after the offense? Unsolicited?  

Like many of our victories, it was a breakthrough that no one else got to see, and my heart ached that his successes were so often achieved in secret. 

Because that is where he feels safe.

Same with my hungry-eyed girl.  She had a broken, empty heart and she would try to fill it with anything.  Everything.  And I would peel her off strangers and friends alike who looked at her (and sometimes at me) like we were dirty.  She took affection.  She took people's things.  

She took and took, and I would follow after and make apologies and watch the annoyance and disgust and dislike flash over the faces of grown adults who, having received grace and mercy for decade upon decade, could not find it within themselves to offer the scraps of understanding to a girl who had spent the first few years of her life being told in both word and action that she was useless, worthless, and unlovely.

From that she had learned to snatch food, possessions, and affection wherever she could find them.  Can you blame her?

People did.

And I held her head in my lap for so many years as she cried her little heart out over not being invited to yet another party, over being marched out of a field trip or a play date for yet another impulsive decision, over being the recipient of yet another angry glare, curled back lip, disgusted expression, heated accusation.

Sometimes it was true, and she had earned every ounce of what was being thrown at her, and even my mother's heart had to make the conscious choice to turn itself toward her and act in love, but other times her reputation had preceded her and people had already made up their minds to withhold grace or they had just forgotten where she had come from and what it might have done to her social skills.

So a decade later, here I was in Costco, reliving the whole scenario again with another little one:  an attempt at a nice evening the day before had turned into broken trust, inexplicable decisions, a politely disdainful reaction toward "your daughter...."

And I am just so tired of having to stand in that gap and beg for mercy.

I'm not asking for blanket forgiveness for all of my children.  I'm not saying that you should just smile and let them destroy your home, but can you take just a tiny moment to breathe before you add to the ledgers and litanies and lists?

Can you look around at the folks who are walking the razor's edge with special needs children (either biological or adopted or both) and instead of giving less grace--

Give more?

Will you help us?

Will you NOT jump to the conclusion that my kid is guilty when your kids tale-bear against her? She might be guilty (OK.  She probably is.) but guess what?

Not every time. And kids have a laser-beam instinct about scapegoats, and they cheerfully pin their own guilt or complicity on any convenient source.  Sometimes she didn't do it, or didn't do it alone.

And she hears you talk about the "bad kids" because I have heard it too--in small groups, in hallways, in the way people leap to confer guilt and innocence on the word of the "good" child before hearing any further evidence.  

Can you imagine the burden that is for these kids to carry?  They are not stupid.  They condemn themselves without help from anyone else. Several times I have found one of my children wrapped up in his comforter in the corner of his bed after a rough day, weeping and asking, "Why am I like this?  Why do I do this?"

I have no words.  It is heartbreaking.

Mothers of the "sometimes unlovely" go out into the world with our guards up.  We unfortunately are already on the defensive, already prepared for the ugly sneer, the huff, the gasp, the lame excuses, the speedy accusations, and the emotional fallout from our kiddos who may or may not even fully be aware of what they have done, but keenly feel the rejection of their friends and parents of friends.

Here is what I can promise you, and I think I speak for many parents of kids from hard places when I say this:

I promise you I will not stop trying to talk to and love on and preach to and discipline and model for and pray over and review with and cry over and read to and read about and learn from my needy children.

I will do my level best to protect your stuff and your feelings and your children from mine.

I will attempt to keep my eyes on all four corners of your house and on all my offspring while we are there.  

I will do my utmost to raise these little (and big) ones to become solid, productive citizens.

But after all this, it is still possible that I will get it wrong.  

I might actually be a terrible parent.  My blind spots might outweigh my wisdom 2 to 1. Believe me, my own heart tells me this on a pretty regular basis.

Maybe it is true.  

So?

This just means that I and others like me need you even more.  My kids need to see gracious, consistent nurturance and discipline.  

I need to be near you to watch you interact with your kids.  We need the slow, patient chiseling of friends who will stay and not run away.  

Will you try to see something--anything--good in my kiddo?  And tell him?  And tell me?

It is like a glass of water to a parched throat when that happens.  If you find something good to say about my child, I will carry it close to my heart for weeks.  So will he.

Maybe if he sees he has delighted you, he will become delightful.

Maybe your love and gentleness with her heart will help her be lovely--and gentle her raging spirit.

Maybe if he hurts your stuff, instead of marching him out by the shoulder with a hard face and white lips, you could gather him in and say your piece with shining eyes and soft hands.  Maybe he will see that he is worth more than a trinket or a bauble or a window or a rug.

I know it is hard.  Sometimes I get tired of living in the bunker between the explosions and I grow weary of making the choice to turn toward the little creatures who seem so desperately intent on pulling down their own world around them.

Sometimes even I come up empty and this is when God most often takes my face in His hands and says almost audibly, "Now you are beginning to see yourself and Me.  I have loved you with an everlasting love." (Jeremiah 31:3)

And then I know how blessed I am to be shepherding wounded lambs:  Through them I am beginning to understand God's grace toward me.

Maybe if you look at my children with the right eyes you can see it too--a picture of your own wretched, desperately defiant self.  

Lost, scared, needing to be loved--for so you were when Christ found you with your wild eyes and your hungry spirit. You and I didn't come to Him as soft, pink, fragrant bundles of potential.

We came with unruly hearts.  We came with no idea of what it meant to be a part of a family like God's, no propriety as befits the heirs to a kingdom, and sometimes no desire to learn.  (Romans 5:8 "God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.")

And He loves us in. Gently takes the sinful shreds we clutch against our nakedness and clothes us with holiness.  (Isaiah 61:10 "I am overwhelmed with joy in the LORD my God! For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness. I am like a bridegroom in his wedding suit or a bride with her jewels.")

He doesn't dump the full burden of His expectations on us at once so our spirits are crushed under the weight, but patiently, kindly reveals them to us, one by one as we gain strength and faith in His goodness.  He draws us gently to Him and makes us want to please His heart. (Psalm 18:35  "You have also given me the shield of your salvation: and your right hand has held me up, and your gentleness has made me great.")

He shows us His delight by giving us love letters before we are truly lovely, showing us pictures of what He knows we can be.  (Psalm 149:4 "For the LORD takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation.")

Do you really understand this, Friends?  He loves us. While we are actively defying Him. 

If you know Him, if you have experienced this, can you do the same for my broken children?  

Can I do it for you?

Do you hear God asking us to really love the people in our lives who add nothing and ask everything?

For those who break our hearts--and our stuff?

Those who disgust us?  Who make us want to cut and run?  Who possess no social graces? 

People who are obnoxious, time consuming, unattractive, irritating?

Can you look at them and see your face?

Because no matter what we give, we are still in the Father's debt.  He still came farther, reached longer, loved harder, and sacrificed more.  

From that grace, how should we love the least of these?

*************

Isaiah 53:1-12

Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 

For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. 

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

    yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

    and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

    so he opened not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away;

    and as for his generation, who considered

that he was cut off out of the land of the living,

    stricken for the transgression of my people?

 And they made his grave with the wicked

    and with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence,

    and there was no deceit in his mouth.

 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;

    he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,

because he poured out his soul to death

    and was numbered with the transgressors;

yet he bore the sin of many,

    and makes intercession for the transgressors.

The End of "The End"

I remember standing under the owl tree in our back 40 as the last fingers of sunlight lost hold on the sky.  I was a child.  It was late summer, the end of another good day on our farm, and behind me the lights from our windows made bright squares on the lawn.

Beyond the tree, the stars began to prick holes in the smooth blue dome which stretched above and around me, and it felt to me then as it had so many other nights before--like I was resting in the cupped hand of God.

 I had been taught about Him from birth, and I knew Him as my Father. And so I stood with my whole life stretched before me--secure in the love of my family, at rest in the peace of the twilit farm--and I was overwhelmed with praise for the goodness of this Great God and Father of my heart, whose face I had never seen, but who had written Himself into the fabric of my life so inextricably that I saw His fingerprints in the beauties all around me.  

Back then, I had the habit of speaking aloud my childish delight in His marvelous creativity whenever I chanced upon it.  I spoke to Him that evening--sang actually--from the fullness of my little heart, and I felt His answering affection spring up inside me. 

But something different happened that night.

As I sang, for the first time in my life my childish joy was pierced with a nameless and almost palpable grief.  It spread over me like a shadow or a chill, and suddenly the coming of the darkness, although still beautiful and serene, seemed not as much the birth of an evening as it did the death of a day.  

My song caught in my throat, and I stood and looked as far as I could--over my father's fields, past the jagged rows of trees which rimmed them, all the way to where the distant edges of our county broke into gentle hills against the sky--and felt the tug of something which was at the same time both invisible and irresistible.

It felt like a relentless force was pulling me beyond my sight into a vast and mysterious future, and I sensed that the urgent transcendence of this moment and the loveliness opening within it, were at the same time passing away and being replaced by...

...what?

I didn't know.  And it made me afraid.  

I suddenly saw that Life would only ever travel in the direction away from the bright wonders that daily broke upon me with such compelling freshness, and for the first time my spirit rebelled against the death of these small beauties and the absolute futility of trying to hold them still and safe.

And just maybe I caught a foreshadowing of the end of me--that incomprehensible certainty that one day I too would vanish like a sunset or a pretty wave on the beach.  

Whatever the cause, that night I lost my childish ability to completely revel in the wonderment of a perfect moment without simultaneously grieving its loss, so that the loveliness of the sky and the warmth of the air were infused with a sadness which sent me running from the mysterious twilight to the safe and familiar distractions of my home and family.

I don't mean to imply that from that day forward, I was not able to completely fully enjoy a moment while I was in it.  I have had a life so far marked by more joys than sorrows, and I am grateful for it.  I still sometimes stand under the stars and feel the pleasure of being the child of a Great God in a vast and glorious universe, but I do not think any of us can be completely happy here, nor do I think we are supposed to be.

You see, we were not made for endings, and try as we might, down here we cannot escape them.  

We were made for the garden, for eternity, for unbroken fellowship, for walking with unveiled faces with God and with each other.  (Genesis 2:7-15)

When that was destroyed by the corruption of sin, we were able to hold onto the shadows of the life we were made for, but not the substance. (Genesis 3:16-24)

From that day, we grasped the pieces of what we were to have had, but not the perfection, and we became in many ways the most pitiable of creatures: blind to our own deformities, eaten up by our own passions, unsatisfied by our gluttonous consumption, and imprisoned by our futile search for meaning and purpose and fulfillment in our confused, one-dimensional, materialist philosophies of life.  (Romans 1:18-32)

With all our science and psychology, we have not been able to explain why we are the only creatures who are routinely tortured by the "wrongness" of what we see around us.  

Other species seems to be accepting of "what is", but not us.

Look around you.  How many animals inebriate themselves on drugs and alcohol to escape the perceived horrors of reality?

How many are incapacitated by fear, anger, depression, and anxiety?  

How many choose self-mutilation or even self-extermination due to the unbearable weight of their own thoughts? 

I think the metaphysical reality of eternity rings in our hearts and demands an answer, and when we refuse to look for one, we doom ourselves to walk in an increasingly jarring landscape of grinding gears and slipping cogs.  

And here is what I also think:  God designed it to be that way.

He uses the internal struggle between the finite world and our eternal souls to drive us more fully and eagerly to Himself, to pry our fingers off a dying earth, and to lift our eyes toward our true home in heaven.  2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Because we are not living the lives we were created to inhabit as image bearers of the holy and eternal God, and only He can fix it.  (Romans 5:8)

I believe that God, in His mercy, sent the shadow into my childhood song as the first, gentle warning that despite my contentment here, all was not right. 

When you are young, the small griefs, small deaths (of perfect days, seasons, years, stages, moments with friends, passing accolades in academics and sports) are muted by the seemingly endless parade of beginnings (new skills, new teachers, new privileges, new friendships, new knowledge, young love, first jobs, new babies, new houses, fresh opportunities) which follow close upon one another--and the apparent distance of the ultimate end of oneself.

But then one day you wake up and the strength and vigor which once masked your mortality is replaced by visible lines on your face, gray in your hair, and weariness in your bones.

The children who once revolved around you like bright planets around a burning sun are creating new orbits which leave you sometimes feeling like a distant moon in a strange sky.

The career which defined you is not the ultimate fulfillment you imagined it would be, and your company's relentless hiring of 12 year olds who are smarter, fresher, more innovative, and more tech savvy than you are reminds you daily of your looming obsolescence.

The parents and mentors on whom you relied for wisdom and advice and comfort are growing older and weaker, and maybe aren't there at all anymore.

And your mind finally blinks awake to the truth that has been lurking around the edges for as long as you have been alive--the truth that broke over me on that quiet night so many years ago as a happy child on a peaceful farm:

That life is a story of perpetual loss in an ever-expanding corridor of endings.

That no good thing on earth lasts.

Children grow up.  Friends move away.  Love fades.  People change.  Jobs end.  Spouses die. Things break. Strength fails.  Buildings crumble. Nations fall.  Whole civilizations melt into history, and our hearts scream, "No!  Not yet.  Not now. Not me."

And often that truth is so enormous and incomprehensible that we burrow hard into what we know.  Distraction.  Denial.  Despair.

My impulse so many years ago was to run from the fields when the shadows fall, and too often it still is.  

I get scared and I run from the song I was singing.

Run from the close, cupping hand of God.  

Run from the hard truths of intimate communion with a Holy God to the bright, busy distractions of earth. 

I am not alone.  We humans are almost universal in our gluttonous appetites for too much of a good thing. We order our lives around the new and the novel, the safe and the comfortable.  We gorge on entertainment and busyness and we nurture our frantic obsession for belonging.

But eventually, even our gilded cages cannot keep out the sound of closing doors and what then? Denial?  Despair?

Yes. Just look at us.  

The old often embrace denial, cutting and recreating their faces and bodies into caricatures of youth and shaking a fist at the physical, financial, and logistical limitations that come with age.  

The young do it by throwing off responsibility, maturity--even biology--in a vain attempt to wrest the power of definition from the hand of an omnipotent God.  

All of us play at this grotesque game of dress-up to some degree, pretending that reality is not what is, but rather what we want it to be.

And when our sad little games fail, too often we choose despair.  We drown our sorrows, numb our pain--or worse, gorge ourselves on pain until it defines us, thinking that since life hurts, we will make it hurt on our terms.  Sometimes we even make it end on our terms.  

And still, still, still, this is simply us running from a loving, merciful, truthful God.

A God who is only closing doors so that we will not ultimately be satisfied with broken things in an alien land. 

A God who gives us good gifts down here to whet our appetites for the divine, but is kind enough to show us the dangerous, painful, shattered places underneath so that we might try find our way back to the garden, and back to Him. (Matthew 7:11, John 3:16)

I want to grow strong enough in my faith that I can stand in the field and watch the day die and the shadows fall and still sing from a full heart.  

I want to be unable to see beyond a horizon in any direction and still rejoice in the small wonders around my feet and the brilliant mysteries over my head.  

I want to feel a chill in the air and instead of running away, lift my face to the tender gaze of my Heavenly Father, who made me and loves me and is willing to break open my pale and narrow ideas of beauty and comfort and peace in order to one day restore to me what is beyond my imagination. (Philippians 3:17-20)

I want to be fearless at the dying of the light because it means the end of all endings. (2 Corinthians 5:6-8)

****************

Once upon a time I had a dream, or maybe it was a vision.  I was walking on a winding path in a little green wood.  A woman was walking ahead of me, and I could only see her from behind.  She was human, like me, but I cannot describe the beauty of her form or the grace and joy with which she walked.  

It was as if she had fallen from the fingers of God, and I felt pale and shabby and worn out by comparison--and utterly embarrassed to be in the presence of something as wonderful as she.

I wanted to run off the path and hide, lest she see me in my dilapidated state, but then she turned and looked at me over her shoulder.  

And shined a smile from her eyes and lips that left me breathless with wonder.

I knew it was my Grammi--not the Grammi who at that time was still alive next door, ticking off painful days in wizened body with a clouded mind--but Grammi as she would be when she finally came to the end of all endings, made perfect and going home.  

I don't know how I knew it was her, because she was incomprehensibly wonderful in her other-worldliness, but I knew.  

And I was just behind her, walking the same trail toward the same good end.  

From that time on, though this sounds odd, if it were not for the grief of the ones left behind, I would in some ways prefer a funeral to a wedding.

  
I feel like I was given a tiny window into the real "happily ever after" and now, nothing else will do.

As lovely as a wedding is with all its wide-eyed innocence and the hopeful dreams of youth, my heart grieves for the all the ways in which the two dreamers will one by one have to put to death their visions of how this union will bring about their ultimate fulfillment.  

Of course, in the process their relationship will mature from the heady emotional attraction which brought them to the altar, into the profoundly deep, self-sacrificial, and satisfying love which paints such a vivid picture of Christ and His church.  This is very good!

But how much better for the one who has come to the end of all endings--the one who has stepped out of his apparent finitude into the perfected fullness of eternal life. Psalm 16:11

*********************

To the dear ones in my life facing endings of various kinds right now, please know this: 

You are still before the face of God.

In His hand. Under His care.

He is still the God of truth, of beauty, of wonder.

He is the God of a love so great it drove Him from heaven to a bloody cross.

For You.

To an ending so enormous that it brought about the death of death, and the end of all endings for His little children.

For Us.

And He is speaking that Love to you in His word and in His world.

And if you let Him, He will lead you home. 

"So Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him."

Hebrews 9:28

"But as Scripture says, 'No eye has seen, 

no ear has heard

 and no mind has imagined

 the things that God has prepared for those who love him'."

 1 Corinthians 2:9 

How Do I Love Thee?

If you are not a Christian, this blog post will not interest you and does not apply to you.  (Just trying to save you some time:)

If you are a Christian, it still might not apply to you.  I wish it didn't apply to me, but I am regrettably susceptible to culture-creep, so it was an uncomfortable experience to write this post.

Actually, this blog pretty much wrote itself in one night several months ago after I experienced a particularly dark reminder of what I have been delivered from, followed by an overwhelming sense of the glorious relationship I have been saved for.

I have been actively NOT posting it ever since.  

For one, I don't think it has the right tone.  Too strident? Most likely. Too hard? Probably.

Secondly, I am a people-pleaser at heart.  I like to be liked.  I go all sleepless and weepy if I even think I smell a critical tone in an email, for goodness sake, so I don't tend to rush into crowded rooms and shout, "WAKE UP, YOU SELF-SATURATED SLEEPERS.  YOU DRANK THE KOOL-AID.  YOU'RE BEING POISONED BY YOUR OWN HAND. THROW IT OUT AND RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"

It just doesn't set well with one's friends to do that too often.

But ultimately I wonder if there is a way to scream a warning without actually...screaming a warning.  So I'm doing it.

Please know that I am writing this as a gut-check reminder to myself that every act of my life is worship--either of God, or of something else. 

"So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do ALL to the glory of God," says the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians.  

Or as John Piper expounds, "sin is not just a list of harmful things (killing, stealing, etc.). Sin is leaving God out of account in the ordinary affairs of your life. Sin is anything you do that you don't do for the glory of God." 

So let me ask you--


What if I wrote a song?

And it was the prettiest song in the history of songs?  What if the notes melded together in the perfect marriage of beautiful and bittersweet, and the melody moved the hearts of everyone who heard it? 

And then, what if I wrote into it a poem about the sweet satisfaction of drinking myself into a stupor and then going home and beating up my little girl?  

And then I sang it to my adopted daughter?

What if I commissioned a perfectly exquisite marble statue of my neighbor's husband...

...at the exact moment when he succumbed to the sexual advances of his secretary?

And then presented it as a gift to his betrayed wife?

What if I discovered the most inspired piece of artwork ever to grace a canvas?  And the technical skill and the use of color and shadow and boldness and nuance was universally acknowledged to have brought about the one painting that could make the Old Masters lay down their brushes and kneel at the artist's feet.

And it happened to be a painting of a terrorist beheading a child?

And I gave it to a Syrian refugee?

What would you think of me as a person?

What kind of horrible blog post is this anyway?

Just hear me out.

What if I insisted that I LOVED my daughter SO MUCH!  

And my neighbor's wife too.  Honest, I would do anything for her.  She's so amazing.  So selfless.  With such a heart for her family.

 And the Syrian refugee!  Oh!  She had absolutely captured my heart with her story, and I was committed to spending the rest of my life making her happy.  I had heard that her whole family was killed by ISIS and that just moved me so much that I didn't even care about my own life any more.  I just wanted to live for her.

And that is why I hung the gigantic, bloody reminder of her ultimate pain in her living room where she could be amazed by what a masterpiece it was.  

Because it is just art.

Because it stands apart from real life as ethically neutral.  Beyond judgement.  Sophisticated.  Inert. And thus, able to be appreciated in some sort of moral vacuum.

Ok.  Now I am talking to Christians.  And to myself as a Christ-follower.

So, what if I claimed to know Jesus?  Not "know about Jesus" like the historical figure or a storybook character.

But KNOW Jesus.  And love Him.  Like a person.  Like I know my daughter.  And my neighbor.  And my friends.  

And by know, I mean, I understand them--what they love and hate.  What makes them happy.  What hurts them.  

And by love I mean, my heart is for them, toward them.  Protective of them.  Anxious to please them.  Made sad by what makes them sad.  Made joyful by what brings them joy.  

And let's say this person, Jesus--this real, living, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-loving, sentient being--is with me all the time.  Let's say we are supposed to be best friends.  Let's say He proves it to ME every day.  

And lets say that He is mortally offended by certain things.  Literally.

Like they caused him to actually have to leave heaven and sinless perfection and perfect communion with His father, and DIE.  

And I know this.

But then, whenever the mood strikes me, I proceed to trot out a hit parade of everything that is most painful and repugnant to Him.  

Everything that distorts what He has made, and mangles His designs.

Everything that was responsible for putting real nails through his real flesh and causing His real Father to turn His face away and abandon Him to real evil.

I want to ask you a real question, fellow Christian.

How is that not like hanging a picture of Hitler in the home of a holocaust survivor?

Or putting together a slide show of her crime scene photos for a rape victim?

How can I stand before a Holy God and sing:

The club isn't the best place to find a lover
So the bar is where I go
Me and my friends at the table doing shots
Drinking fast and then we talk slow
Come over and start up a conversation with just me
And trust me I'll give it a chance now...

... I'm in love with the shape of you
We push and pull like a magnet do
Although my heart is falling too
I'm in love with your body
And last night you were in my room
And now my bedsheets smell like you...

... One week in we let the story begin
We're going out on our first date
You and me are thrifty, so go all you can eat
Fill up your bag and I fill up a plate...  --"The Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran

--without so much as blushing at the affront?

I am sick and tired of hearing Christians say that art and music and movies and books are elevated forms of expression that do not have to bow the knee to Anyone or anything.

"Get your legalism off my Deadpool."  

"Keep your moralizing out of my Grand Theft Auto."

"Let me sing my sex-saturated songs and read my horror-soaked books and laugh at the comedization of all manners of perversity in movies and television." 

And then say my choices are exempt from scrutiny or judgment because, after all, it's all art and entertainment.  And we are grown ups.

Well.
  
The only thing in the universe that does not have to bow to the standards of a Holy God is...God. 

 So, if art is exempt from the same kind of stringent, ruthless, critical, love-driven analysis that everything else in a Christian's life is supposed to undergo, then I guess that would make "art"..."God".  

And what does that make God?

And what are we really worshiping?
 
I can no more enjoy the glamorization of adultery or fornication in a movie (or a song or a painting or a sculpture or a book) than I could laugh over a comedy about child abuse or a comic book about ISIS.  

These things killed Someone I love, and because I love Him, I want to distance myself from everything that hurts His heart and my relationship with Him.   

And it's not just Jesus I want to love and protect.

Lets talk about the people down here.

My childrens' birth moms bought the distorted vision of what their bodies and minds were worth from a culture that soft-pedaled evil.  It was delivered via smooth pop and clever sitcoms and cheap novels and raunchy movies with happy endings.  And smooth-tongued players satisfied their appetites with them and left them and their babies to fend for themselves in a hungry world.

These women bought it all for cheap and it destroyed them and almost destroyed their children. 

I cannot wink at the carnage that sin has wreaked in the lives of the ones that I love.

If something is "not that bad" then why did hurt my babies and their mamas?

Why did Jesus have to die over it?  

If it IS that bad, then how can we justify listening to it, watching it, or reading it for amusement? 

 Ever.  

No matter how pretty or funny or entertaining or clever it is?

Just because there might be a jewel of truth buried in a mountain of lies, doesn't mean I am going to waste my life chopping through worthless rock looking for it.  

Especially when there is a mountain of treasure for the taking right behind me. (James 1:17, Ephesians 2:3-5)

And just because there might be a chocolate Whopper in the rabbit pellets, doesn't mean I'm going to suck on them until I find one.  

Particularly when there is a banquet full of every good thing already laid out for me. (Philippians 4:8, Psalm 84:11)

Call me a legalist.  Call me weak.  Call me judgmental.  Call me anything you want.  As a person who loves art, I have struggled as much as anyone with wanting to give myself to the appreciation of creativity--even when it is corrupted by smatterings of things which God, in His word, has called evil.  

But I live before His face, in His presence, for His glory, by His power.  I killed Him once.  

But He forgave me and took me into His family and gave me a hope and a future.

And nothing I might see or hear here is worth compromising the sweetness of His pleasure ever again.  

*************

Philippians 3:7-10

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 

What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.