Tag: faith

The Drive

A few Fridays ago, I found myself riding shotgun in the cutest little crossover with my husband behind the wheel. We were heading north back home on two-laned little roads in the dark of a spring April night. Tired from the car-buying process, I found myself trying my best to stay awake to keep Alan company on the 3 hour drive home. Thrilled to be surprising our baby who’s not so baby anymore with her first car, yet melancholy to think that she was old enough to experience the freedom of a driver’s license.

Wasn’t 16 years ago yesterday?

On the night before she was born, I found myself driving a pick up truck with my husband riding shotgun. Belly bulging at the steering wheel full of our local seafood joint AJ’s deep fried everything and a baby ready to bust out, we were taking a little after dinner drive on a two-laned little dirt road in the dark of a spring April night. Tired from the being pregnant and all the process that entails, I found myself trying my best to not annoy Alan to death with my whining about how miserable I was with a body cavity full of another body and fried shrimp and hushpuppies. Thrilled to death to be soon welcoming a little tiny baby, with a nursery ready complete with Dreft smelling onesies and the cutest bedding, excited to exit this baby and have her experience the freedom to move her limbs about without a spleen or a bladder in her way.

It was yesterday, with a 16 year lifespan between.

A few yesterdays ago, there was a tragedy in Texas. As my heart tries so hard to make sense of that which my brain knows, the thought of the drive came floating out of my eyes. All those little girls, their rides to camp. For some, their last one. Jesus be near.

I imagine the loading up and the stress that inevitably brings. Playing Tetris with all of the luggage, the “did we remember to pack thes…” and the “don’t forget to get thes…”, making sure the alarm is turned on at the house, the backing out of the driveway and asking no one out loud, “did you unplug the iron?”

I imagine the car packed to the brim with camping accoutrements: THE trunk, the play clothes labeled with her name, extra underwear because those things grow legs when you take your own legs out and walk away, along with their other leggy counterparts socks; the bathing suits, the towels, the shampoo, the sunscreen that made her mama feel better although it would likely return just as full, the nightlight, the notebooks and pens, the Bible, a picture or two of her family and maybe even the dog, the lovey for nighttime hidden so tenderly so as not to embarrass the growing up, confident-ish little girl, the tiny tucked away I love you note in the bottom of the side pocket of the trunk from a mama who was already missing her girl before she was even sleeping on her bunk at camp. My lungs become rocks in my chest just typing that…

I imagine the little girl, full up of nerves in her belly so that she couldn’t eat the breakfast her mama tried to coax her to…the excitement all in that empty belly, too. The questions: “Who will be in my cabin?” “Will my friend from last year be there?” “Who will make sure all my stuff stays together?” “What if my counselor doesn’t like me?” “I can’t wait to eat s’mores every night at the bonfire!” “What if my bunk mate smells like chili dogs?” “What will they think about me if they see my little lovey I tucked underneath everything and hid in the deepest part of my pillowcase?” “What if I miss my mama and my daddy? Will they make fun of me if I cry a little bit?”

I imagine the mama and daddy, their bellies both empty yet full of all the feelings, too. Excited about endless opportunities for their girl, perhaps thrilled for a little alone time, nervous about leaving their baby in the care and trust of another, already counting down the days until they returned to collect their most treasured possession this side of heaven. Maybe I know and can imagine these things because I have received the gift of them, too.

Change moves at lightning fast speed. If you turn your head too slowly, you will absolutely miss it. Turn your head too fast, and the life that passes by will leave you whiplashed. There’s no other way but to keep your neck still and your eyes straight ahead, gazing for a time, the time you have right in front of your face, and you have to take it all in then. Because it stops for no one.

Until it absolutely feels like it does.

No doubt the world in which the parents of these tragedies now find their existence has come to a complete and blinding, blindsiding halt. There is no more drive left, at least for now.

My mind won’t let me imagine the drive back. It’s the Holy Spirit that whispers to me: just pray. Just pray for those mamas and daddies. Pray over those now empty beds. Pray for the holes in the hearts. Pray for the rescue efforts. Pray for the survivors. Just pray, even if a guttural groan is all the frozen lungs and fiery throat and wet eyes allow, because Jesus knows. He knows, He knows, He knows, and He weeps with us here left behind on the dirt of our Father’s World.

My mama heart aches thinking about what some of those mamas don’t even know to miss out on yet. And I pray for their future heart wounds that are sure to surface as the world slowly, slowly, slow as a snail on a track of sand begins to tell time again.

The clock unwinds for us all. At times, it’s faster than necessary, like the way my 16 year old girl drives…sometimes. Sometimes, it can feel slower than we’d like. Regardless, it drives right along. Time stops for no one.

Whether time is speeding through or seemingly stopping for a minute or even trucking along on cruise control for a bit, He is along for the drive home with us. And we needn’t worry about a thing we might have forgotten to plan for, what we might have left behind, the iron we didn’t unplug, or if others might laugh when they see our loveys or we somehow show our hurts out loud, because Jesus is thisclose. He’s right there. Gassed up. Ready for the ride.

And then, the only question to ask as we back out of the driveway:

“Jesus, will you take the wheel?”

Mary, You Do Know

It’s Christmas.

To the commercial world, it’s presents!, parties!, profits!, packages!, and panic!…

To the Christian world, it’s a little baby born King, it’s light in the darkness, it’s the promise of eternal hope. It’s joy.

But joy feels hard right now. Things feel heavy, hearts feel leaden. Tragedy struck in this season of corporately manufactured cheer here in my hometown, and while I’m not close to the ground zero, the shrapnel of devastation has claimed many hearts as targets. The Christian Christmas enters.

It makes no sense. When things don’t make sense, we ask questions. Lots of them. What if? How in the world? Where are you, God? Why God? We ask questions to try to make sense. To manufacture sense. And we can’t, y’all. We can’t. We can’t because it was never supposed to be this way and it’s not supposed to be this way. There was never supposed to be hurt, never supposed to be tragedy, never supposed to be brokenness, never supposed to be a mother and father doubled over in pain of grief, never supposed to be, never supposed to be, never supposed to be…

It’s in Genesis. God created our world in all of it’s beauty and splendor and created man and woman to inhabit it. He gave them good direction with no confusion, no questions. And then, then that snake slithered in, filthy dirty belly worming it’s way into that garden of Eden and I imagine that serpentine body being squiggled into the very form of a question mark when it posed the very first question…”Did God really say?…” That first question–which spiraled in to sin, to confusion, and then to shame, and then to hiding. Hiding from the order, the assuredness, the very good, very perfect original plan.

But then, the Lord, in the middle of that hiding, shame, and sin, called out the second question to the man, “Where are you?” Of course, He already knew, just like the hiding Adam knew deep down in that heart of his, formed from the very dust of the ground that sneaky viper slid across, by the Maker’s very own hands, His very fingerprints still probably molded onto the surface of it. The Lord Himself asked the question that we often ask of Him in the midst of the storm, of the terrible news, of the utter disbelief, in the standing in the middle of the complete mess here on God’s green Earth. Where are you, Lord?

But He never left the building, y’all. Sin entered in, and yet He stayed. He was so committed to His world, His building, His dusty, muddy-hearted people, that he sent a baby to rescue us all. A baby! A completely dependent, weak in form, yet unknowing, toothless wonder. His baby, His only son. The huge monster of sin that leaves destruction everywhere it casts a glance with its serpentine eyes is to be defeated by this one and only son.

And that’s why we have Christmas. Here we are. As the Christian world. To celebrate the Victor who laid in a rock hewn baby bed amidst the stench of animal dung and with his heart beating in the cadence of a conqueror. What Christmas means…

All of that makes my heart full to the brim, yet weightless. I guess that’s where the “my yoke is light” comes in, because soaking up the world around me makes my heart feel like a lead balloon.

When we choose to love someone, we also are choosing to possibly lose someone. It’s not the forefront of choice, but it’s the current reality of this fallen world in which we now live and breathe. It literally pains me to even type those words out as the corners and crevices of my stained muddy heart holds countless, numerous ones I love, ones I never want to lose. Never. The thought makes the next breath hard to come–

because it was never meant to be that way. It was never, never, never, no not even ever meant to be that way. See Eden, see the beginning. There was light. Always light. And that is love. Light is the love. THE Light is never ending, never burns out, never even fades, or flickers. There was order, no confusion, no reason to doubt, no reason to question. By divine design, life was never meant to be lost, love never meant to have pain.

In my feeble and humble prayer and toil for another mother, the only way I could offer any tangible support, I couldn’t help but think of Mary. Mary, who as a young girl was giving birth to a king, The King.

At Christmas, light reentered the world, in the form of a baby. A baby born deity, to live and die for us all. Where the loss of the life was only the beginning of eternal love. Eternal. That’s forever. For ever ever, for eva eva. (I mean, would this be my blog without some sort of musical reference?)

And I imagine Mary did not know all of that, just like that song we sing at Christmastide. She didn’t know all those things her son Jesus would do, didn’t know the miracles he would perform, didn’t know any of it at all, though she pondered things in her heart. I imagine she thought about how much she loved him all the time, how he was something special, how he was a gift from God above and God alone. How His heart was created in her womb, His fingerprints smudged all over the form of it. How she couldn’t imagine her life without him in it. How proud of him she was. How much she loved him.

Sort of how we mothers here feel now, minus that immaculate part and that the baby IS God part…

But I do know what Mary did know, and that was utter, gut-wrenching, soul crushing pain. A love lost here on earth. A pain no mother, no father should ever have to endure. It was never in the original plan.

Thankfully, at Christmas, the original plan was reclaimed. Reclaimed by a baby boy, tender, gentle, and mild. Light born in the midst of a dark, dark world.

And thanks be to God, in the loss of Mary’s son, when it probably felt to her like all the light in the world was gone, especially in her heart, the light was actually being transferred to us all. We now carry that flame inside of us; those who believe. We get the privilege of being light in the darkness with Mary’s baby’s light that lives on within us.

May we choose this Christmas to carry Christ’s light in our hearts, especially in this time that feels so…dark. And then, may we also gather up the light of others that has been left behind for us here on Earth to carry on in this dark, until we all get to light eternal one day, with NO more pain, NO more sorrow, NO more confusion, NO more questioning….well, only one more question there:

For eva eva?

And then the answer: For eva eva!

Thank you, God, for Christmas: reclaiming the original plan. Life eternal is promised.