Sunday, October 18, 2015

Devotion 350 - sticky

 I was focused and a good four paces ahead of my girls. We were headed to the fifth of five things on our agenda and we were making good time.

I had at least ten pounds of stuff in the bags I was carrying and I was anxious to dump everything in the back of the car and turn on the heat.  October had brought with it a cool night air that I still hadn’t warmed up to.

I could still hear the roar of the crowd and wondered the score.  We had made it through two quarters, the football game was well in hand and my eldest son who was working for the team felt loved and well fed.  
Success - mentally I checked this one off my list.

Something happened, as if in slow motion, deafened the crowd and slowed my feet.  I heard a gasp and then a woman’s voice, louder than the crowd and the click of my shoes, “Are you alright?”
I knew that you was mine.

I whipped around, now eight feet behind me lay my little daughter.  Her face up, her legs and feet up, but her belly plastered to the ground.  I ran to my eldest daughter and handed off my luggage.  

Strange how in a crisis our needs instantly minimize.  I looked at Ava’s face; she had not yet begun to cry.  She was surprised and looking as if she could be spun with every extremity still caught in the air.  

I asked how it happened shooting a look at my eldest daughter.  My glare told her I thought she had tripped the youngest yet knowing my infernal rushed pace was most likely to blame.  Lily was now weighted down with my bags and she meekly told me Ava had simply stumbled.

I stood her up but her knees pained her and I agreed to carry all forty –seven pounds of her to the car.  Lily lugged all our belongings but knew better than to complain, somehow so did I.  Our rapid progress now crawled, but somehow it too was okay.

I fastened Ava in the car; we dumped all our unnecessary necessities and turned on the light to examine bleeding knees.  I was in the driver seat trying to quickly fire up the heater.
Lily who has been taught by me...the master, started to distract Ava.  Lily handed Ava her stuffed puppy and said, “As soon as we get to Grandpa’s, I will get you band aids!”   "Brilliant!" my mind responded.  At five years old, Ava has learned to love Grandpa’s band aids.  He doesn’t mess around with Barbie or ponies; he buys huge real estate type band aids for his papery eighty eight year old skin.  Ava is allowed one per visit, but we all knew tonight with our sustained injuries would bring two if not more.

Ava paused listening to the promise of things to come, then said something so profound.  She looked at Lily and hollered up to me, “We must pray for healing” she said,  “I cannot wear a band aid forever.”
I drove away in silence.  This child who has fashioned band aids from the moment she first discovered their stickery splendor had turned to prayer.  I was amazed. 

Prayer should have been my first response, but I am stuck on solutions I can touch and feel band aids.  In any and perhaps all situations, I look for how I can help or fix or remediate.  I stick to what I know, what I can see, what I can hold.  When it is the invisible the all knowing to whom I should cling.

I read the other day that the moments one let’s go, we taste heaven. Yes, I have done that too.  In foreign countries, holding babies birthed by heaven, I have tasted it.   Not because it was some holy errand, but because I could control nothing,  I could change nothing, I could remedy nothing.  It was just God, meaning, it was ALL God.

And I tasted it. I tasted what it is to be all out, and Him all in and it is nothing short of divine.
It is surrender.  And Beloved, I stink at it.

Oh, I have wanted it, I have prayed for it, but you see I find myself praying with closed hands, holding on to what I know or hope for or esteem as perfect solutions, instead of opening hands to what is the Holy good.

Sometimes, I stick to head knowledge and forego heart knowledge and I want band aids instead of blessings.

It is a new way of thinking for me.  It is contrary to education, contrary to accomplishment, contrary to the forward progress I am always craving.  It is being still;  it is listening, it is HEARING and it is foregoing me for the foretaste of heaven.

It is the single most important work we can ever do.  And, it is hard and it's never done.  It is a morning and evening renewal of ceasing our in- charge position for a better, more frightening, more freeing, white flag surrender to the One who already fought the battle and won.

It is laying it down, to take up the cross.  What feels like an enormous sacrifice is the single most liberating thing we can ever do.  It is intoxicating in its effect.  

It is so good; it is hard to believe it is real, because at its core it is supernatural.  To understand we do not have to be in charge, we do not have to think about what others think, we do not have to wonder if it will turn out alright; is only God.

Yes, Ava, we have to pray.  We have to sacrifice band aids and we have to surrender.  In return, we taste heaven and know it is extraordinary and good and absolutely Holy.
 
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”  Jim Elliot

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