Spring! Time for housebound kids to get outside. I love the intensity on Maddie's face--so much a part of her personality.

I find it comforting to know that Paul, too, struggled. I guess that could be disheartening—“If PAUL struggled, what hope is there for ME?”—but I find it encouraging. Romans 7 is so honest about the human condition: the Law—God’s Way—is all good, and we are not capable of even KNOWING how to follow it. We’ve reduced it to rules, therein missing the entire point. Not only is that the state of all humanity, but Paul adds a personal cry wrenched from his own sense of inadequacy to be GOOD: “O unhappy and pitiable and wretched man that I am! Who will release and deliver me from the shackles of this body of death?” (Amplified).

But there is much good in being that aware of my helplessness, my need.

One school year a while back, I had a daily running partner, the only time I’ve ever had one. I think God gave us to each other to get through that particular season in our lives. In between the huffs and puffs of one of our runs, Amy, my running partner, said, “It’s helped me to see trust as a circle of light surrounded by darkness. It’s natural for me to stay in the dark, but I have the choice to step into the light. I have to do that over and over again, sometimes minute by minute.”

At that time Amy was in life circumstances in which the darkness outside the

circle was pretty dark. She KNEW when she had stepped out of it because she was almost immediately assailed with discouragement and doubt. I walked (or “ran”-Ha!) with her through this, and a year later when I had a few months of intense waiting on the Lord’s direction, I experienced it myself. I learned to plant my feet in the circle, dig in with my toes.

But sometimes the darkness outside the circle isn’t so instantaneous. Rather than being a plunge into despair or doubt, it’s a creeping into self-sufficiency, idolatry, busyness, a habitual “ok” sin (like anger or discontent), or any sin addiction. I inch my way out of the circle and don’t realize the lights have dimmed until I’m well away from it. These are often the times in my life when things are going “ok, not too bad.” I’m “doing all right.”

Those are dangerous periods in my life.

More than any of my other kids, Patrick wants to know where I am at all times. That may be because he’s the youngest and with me alone more than the others. It may be because of his chaotic life before his adoption. I don’t know, but when he doesn’t know where I am for even a few seconds, he hollers, immediately, “Mom, where are you?”

And when I answer, “I’m right here, Buddy,” he says, “Oh, good, I thought you were gone.”

Sometimes I think, “Really, bud, I’m just in the next room. You could try LOOKING for me.”

But he recognizes my absence, right away, and he knows the quickest way to remedy that is to holler for me.

It’s the same with God. I know He doesn’t ever leave; that’s a promise made firm by the Word. The circle of trust doesn’t move. But I do, and too often I creep, creep away without seeing my gradual movement.

I want to be like Patrick, super-sensitive to the close presence of my Lord. I want to be like Bartimaeus, the blind man in Mark 10, who cried out, not caring what others thought, heedless of his own image, comfortable with his own need: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

That same Jesus, my Jesus, gives me the power to step back into the intimate circle of trusting in His love (Ephesians 3:18-19). He, time and time again, “rescues me from the shackles (the darkness) of this body of death.”

But I have to cry out!

With a sense of my great need,

With eyes fixed on my awesome Deliverer,

Loud, loud, loud,

I,

Cry,

Out!

Patrick--with about four hats on. Don't ask me why, particularly since this day was about 60 degrees.

When Emily was about three, I came home from a solitary grocery store trip to find a silent house. Where were she and Dave? I found them in the living room, with Dave stretched out on his stomach on the rug, and Emily peering into one of his ears with her toy otoscope (I may be a doctor’s daughter, but I still had to look that up).

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Emily turned a very serious face toward me. “Mommy, Daddy’s sick. I’m taking care of him. He needs lots and lots of rest.”

Dave, very nearly asleep, didn’t say anything.

And I said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

In the years since, Dave has found oh, so many ways to “play” with our children that involve his getting a nap. It helps that the man can doze through just about anything, and he is all right with getting a kind of pseudo-sleep that never really drops into the real thing. The doctor/nurse scenario has had some real staying power, but he has also been a mountain for climbing (when the twins were really small), a soldier injured in a war (that allows Jake to be a fellow soldier while Maddie nurses), and a dead body that Detectives Jake, Maddie and PJ investigate for clues (I think that one is a bit morbid, but they all like it).

A few months back I finished up the dinner dishes while Dave was upstairs getting the younger three in bed. I joined them when I finished. Dave was in his dead-body position on the boys’ carpeted floor. Maddie was rubbing his back, PJ his head, and Jake was reading his illustrated New Testament aloud to all three of them—with different voices for all the characters.

When Jake turned a page, Dave said, “A little higher up, Mads, and, PJ, right above my ears, please.”

They obliged.

“We’re massagers, Mom.”

It seemed like a better deal than the dishes, so the other night I decided to try it. Maddie was already asleep, so it was just PJ.

As his little hands moved, butterfly-soft, across my back, he asked me, “Mom, do you have a rope?”

Hmm.

“A rope?”

“Yeah, one that’s all twisted up.”

Aah! “A knot in my back?”

“Yes.”

I’ve always thought the injured-soldier/dead-body routine was a bit of a cop-out, but maybe Dave’s been onto something all along.

When you stay quiet long enough, they say—and we learn—wonderful, wonderful things!

I’m reading The Kite Runner with my seniors right now. Beautiful book.

Haunting book.

And because Afghani culture and history is not something I, a middle-class suburban American, know much about, I’ve been doing a lot of research on its recent history and current issues.

So far I’ve read about the massacre of the Hazaras, a minority group, in 1998; the widespread mistreatment of women; the regular and somewhat-accepted rape of young boys; the more than 2 million orphans—and the laws that prohibit adoption; the very recent destruction of schools by the Taliban; the huge numbers of Afghanis who have fled because a certain regime wants to wipe them out…

I’ll stop there.

Last Saturday Dave and I snuck away for an hour to have a breakfast date, and I processed this with him.

“You know,” I told him, “if I were God, and I looked at how humanity treats humanity, I would just want to wipe it all out right now. I mean, it only gets worse. I look at Afghanistan and think, ‘What do you do with that?’”

Lest I begin to think of this as some “other” culture’s problem, I started a poetry unit with my sophomores this week. I’ve been finding poetry slam videos to help 15-year-old boys get just a little enthusiastic about alliteration, similes, and rhyming couplets!

Today I learned that there are “special” poetry slams, as in poetry slams for people with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, brain damage…

They were cool! I watched a little boy with a shrunken body, strapped tight to his wheelchair, share that if he were an animal, he would be a big black bear because “they are powerful.” I watched a woman about my age describe how she would like to be a princess with a big pink car.

And then, I don’t know why, I scrolled down and found the comments.

I thought I was going to be sick.

No, humanity treats humanity badly all over the world.

And rather than wondering—as our culture often does—how a loving God could JUDGE people, I had a moment of pure amazement that He could even tolerate us, much less love us, how He could hold back from judgment.

The other day, with music blaring from one computer in the dining room, a dance video game going in the living room, a huge mess of baking being created in the kitchen, and a Nerf gun battle raging in and out of everywhere, Dave and I retreated to our bedroom to do some schoolwork in relative quiet.

“They’ve taken over,” I thought, “as if they pay the rent and utilities—which they don’t. They do all the play and carry none of the responsibilities.” And when I came out to find the kitchen had exploded, I thought, “and they have an amazing ability to ignore their messes.”

(And God gave grace and helped me remember that we WANT our house to be full of life, that mess is just an unfortunate side effect.)

But truly, as I’ve been reminded of human trafficking and bullying and street children and our passive and sometimes active ignoring of them—all the ways we DON’T do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with our God—isn’t it true that we’ve treated God the same way? We’ve forgotten who made the house and keeps it running. We lay blame on Him, abdicate our responsibility, and ignore the messes we make.

*Sorry for the depressing ending. I’ve always been amazed at how so many of the prophets took on collective blame, saying, “WE have sinned,” when the specific sin they confessed did not apply to them personally. There must be something to seeing not only MY sin but how I am part of the general sin of humanity.

Birthday weekend is over! Whew! Chef Em (with me acting as her assistant) created her second cake in two days. This one is Jake's. I couldn't get the black writing on brown frosting to be bright enough in my camera lens, so here is what it said: Happy Birthday, Jedi Jake. Star Wars." The light saber is rice crispy treat covered in frosting and then in marshmallow fondant.

This past week I ran across the hymn “Oh Love that will not let me go” and was amazed at how much it speaks to the questions about significance that I’ve been writing about lately. So I did some research on the hymn writer: George Matheson (1842-1906), a man who experienced the failure of several significant dreams. He was born with poor eyesight, and it progressively grew worse until he went completely blind at age 18. That was when his fiancé decided she couldn’t be married to a blind man and broke off their engagement. Still, Matheson didn’t give up on his other passion: study. He was an excellent student, but he couldn’t become the scholar he wanted to without being able to read. His sister learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew so she could read to him. He graduated from university and wrote a book on theology, that—though critics called it brilliant— contained several serious research errors. Matheson realized he couldn’t pursue scholarship at the level he wanted without the use of his eyes. He became a pastor instead and was able to memorize Scripture and his sermons so well that first-time listeners often did not realize he was blind.

Despite his fruitful ministry as a preacher, it was not his first dream, and Matheson saw his life as “an obstructed life, a circumscribed life… but a life of quenchless hopefulness, a life which has beaten persistently against the cage of circumstance, and which even at the time of abandoned work has said not ‘Good night’ but ‘Good morning.’”

Wow!

The blows continued. On the night of his sister’s wedding (the same sister who learned languages for him, his very close companion), Matheson, forty years old, never married, was alone at home. He wrote this about that night: “Something happened to me, which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. The hymn {“Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go”} was the fruit of that suf­fer­ing. It was the quick­est bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the im­press­ion of hav­ing it dic­tat­ed to me by some in­ward voice ra­ther than of work­ing it out my­self. I am quite sure that the whole work was com­plet­ed in five min­utes, and equal­ly sure that it ne­ver re­ceived at my hands any re­touch­ing or cor­rect­ion. I have no na­tur­al gift of rhy­thm. All the other vers­es I have ever writ­ten are man­u­fact­ured ar­ti­cles; this came like a day­spring from on high.”

These are the words to that hymn:

Oh Love that will not let me go

I rest my weary soul in thee

I give thee back the life I owe

That in Thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

I obviously don’t know what Matheson’s “mental suffering” was, but I imagine him feeling thwarted, insignificant, and alone. But God gave him the image of his life being a small stream joining with the ocean, and somehow, in that joining, finding true significance. Matheson saw his little flame shining bright and true in the blaze of God’s great shining Son. In the middle of deep disappointment he heard God’s whisper: “Look for the rainbow. Morning is coming.” I know I’m just repeating his images, but they are powerful and vivid, and they bear repetition.

I also read I Corinthians 3 and 4 this week. Paul didn’t hold any punches when he warned the church at Corinth of the dangers of seeking significance the way the world around them did. “I follow Paul,” said one; “I’m an Apollos guy,” said another. It sounds a lot like the things we glory in today: our friends or acquaintances, degrees or experiences, responsibilities and accomplishments, and our STUFF.

But Paul has a lot to say about that: God’s wisdom is different. Don’t put men and men’s “stuff” in places of importance. You belong to Christ and God, not yourselves. Everything you “have” is a gift—how can you boast in it when it is provided FOR you and is not of your own making? Why are you pursuing the world’s values when you have the example of Christ—and now of the apostles—living for the purposes of eternity?

I think Paul would have liked Matheson’s song. I think he, too, would have sung, “O Cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee; I lay in dust life’s glory dead, and from the ground there blossoms red, life that shall endless be.”

One of Maddie's art projects! I kept telling her, "I'm not sure that's going to work, Mads," but lo and behold, it did!

“The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.” Joanna Macy

“He’s got the whole world, in His hands. He’s got the whole wide world…

He’s got the itty bitty babies, in His hands…

He’s got the mamas and the papas, in His hands…”

I sang that song with my kids a while back and realized what a sweet, gentle picture it created in my head.

Giant, soft, smooth hands full of well-cared-for babies and constantly-smiling mothers and fathers.

A pretty, happy picture. I can see myself in those hands, my children, too.

But it’s FAKE.

For starters, my scene doesn’t include much of the world’s population.

To be accurate, I should see crack babies, starving people, sex slaves, and suicidal teens along with the dimpled infants and upper-crust citizens (who honestly comprise only a few percent of the world’s population).

But that’s still not really “true.” I’ve just lumped in the “victims.” The upper-crust set may shrink back from the dirt carried in by the crack babies and crew, but they can think, “At least we’re all deserving.”

Ah, I need another adjustment in my picture—because that kind of thought MUST make God laugh.

So the massive hands in my imagined scene stretch a bit, and I see, hidden in the crevices, the “others.”

Pimps, drug addicts, sadists and dictators, child molesters, murderers.

They’re in the mix, too.

But when the hands stretched—oh, dear—the well-fed slipped down among the others. They lost their shoes and tore their clothes, and, oh, they are not so polished any more. Hurtful, damaged souls throb in plain sight now, so it’s clear they aren’t any different from the rest. They only think they are (and THAT has kept them from nestling deep into the cupped hands.)

Yes, the cupped hands! They, too, are unlike my initial picture. They are NOT soft and smooth, groomed and manicured.

They are cracked, bruised, scuffed, and scarred.

Deeply scarred.

Pierced through.

All because God’s heart broke wide, wide open,

And His arms stretched out,

And His head hung low,

So that

His hands, His beautiful, scarred hands,

Could hold the WHOLE world.