floor

Last week, as a combination Christmas/parting gift for two girls close to us, a friend and I took two teenage sisters to a Indianapolis Museum of Art. We all loved it. (Having recently taken my own children there -- it's free -- I stand by my belief that the IMA is great for all ages. That is not the point of this post, but this isn't English class, so I can include it as a parenthetical if I want.) I was particularly excited to show the girls a particular work of art called, "Floor."

I was floored the first time I experienced it. Excited to finally be able to touch something in the museum, I hurried up onto the Floor. (*Spoiler alert.* You may click to see a far-away view of the piece I'm talking about. I'm writing to give you a better picture of it, but you can skip this paragraph if you want to truly have your own first experience of it at the IMA.) At first I didn't notice anything special about it besides the weird, multi-colored shag carpet standing straight up under the casing. Then I saw a little face, frozen, looking up at me. It startled me. I bent down. He was a plastic figurine similar to a G.I. Joe, dressed in street clothes, pushing upward on the casing. He looked trapped. I felt sorry for him. And, come to think of it, the person next to him. And, WHOA! The thousands and thousands of people all stuck under the casing, looking up at me as they held up the entire floor. All these little figures, frozen in their time, supporting my weight. Such tremendous effort just to give me a place to walk.

I thought of how many people must've gone before me, devoted their entire lives to something or someone that has served to support me now. How many people has it taken to give me my standing in this time and place? I thought of the "great cloud of witnesses" watching my path in life. I thought about how not everyone is so fortunate as me to have so many people who have done things merely to see me succeed. How many people have completed their journey and are now holding up the ground, looking to see what I will do from here? How many people's work did it take to give me all the advantages I have? How many slaves? How many civil rights leaders? How many parents and parents and parents? How many people I never met? How many people in the communities where I've lived? How many people's teaching, provision, prayers? How many? This many? More? I was overwhelmed with gratitude.

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Today, I attended a funeral of a man who has gone before me. Larry Bianco was a man who welcomed a much younger Pat McCrory into his home during a time he really needed some extra adults in his life. I had the pleasure of meeting him and of him serving me some of his famous-among-those-who-know-him hand made pizza. I watched him enjoy my kids and had what I learned was the common experience of being made to feel like part of his Italian family. The man did not scream perfection, but he did scream love and acceptance. Though he met Pat during some of Pat's more foolish years, Larry had this kind of rough, happy way of saying, "Eh...I always liked Pat," that felt like a hardy pat on the back and put all inadequacies to rest. I can't speak for what hearing those words did to Pat, but they made me exceedingly happy to hear. I've had some foolish years, too. It's amazing what just seeing good in people can do.

Pat shared a bit at the funeral about how Larry Bianco had impacted his life by inviting him in, liking him, and being a consistent man in his life. I see Pat making pizza with Israel or  inviting in a gang of kids who show up at the door or just plain liking people other people might not like. Those actions could be just part of who Pat is. But I also think he may truly have inherited some of Larry Bianco's loving hospitality. With that thought, I realize the deep gratitude I have for this man, though I only met him a couple of times. This man, remembered by many as a pillar in his own family, helped form the young man who would grow to be a wonderful husband and father in our own family. And now, from where we stand, he is frozen in time, having joyfully done what he could to raise the standing of those in his life...including Pat and me.

I'm not trying to be someone who gives too much credit to the deceased. However, I really will never know where I would be without this man who made a difference in my husband's life, affecting who he became. As I'm standing on the Floor that is the platform of my own life, taking the time to really see this one man's face and the work of his hands to provide support helps me to see just how many more there may be, holding us up, making all this possible. So today, as Larry Bianco joins that cloud of witnesses for a great feast, I thank God for His faithfulness through this man that was able to make a difference even in my own life. Thanks for Larry, who chose to be a gift to Pat so that he is now a gift to me.

on worms and little girls

not my picture, but it seemed a good illustration.

Life seems more full of great (or, you know, not-so-great) moments these days than trains of thought, but there is a very sweet moment I have to share from today.

     Eden and I were walking home and she happened upon a dead worm on the sidewalk. It was hard and flat. And dead. She picked it up, turning its two dimensions around, trying to figure out why it wasn't the way it was supposed to be, I guess. I didn't wait for her to ask.
     "It's dead," I told her.
     "We can put it in the shade," she said, since that's what we do with worms when we dig them up. We bury them in our compost pile. It makes for all kinds of small "good" in the world. I've taught her well.
     "No, don't touch it. You're going to need to wash your hands. It's dead."
     I took her hand to keep walking so she wouldn't stick her dead-worm-toting fingers straight into her mouth. She made some other hopeful sort of suggestion.
     "No, it's DEAD," I said, again. "It's not going to come back alive again. Dead things don't come back alive."
     "But people come back alive," she said in her matter-of-fact way.
     We just finished learning the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the grave. And we talk about Jesus giving us new bodies when these die. And I've made up and taught the kids a song on the verse "All things are possible with God." I guess me saying that dead things don't come back alive sent these recent contradictory snippets running through both our minds. However, it's not generally the way things work. The girl is going to have to know that. But in a way that doesn't cancel out the truth of all those things I've taught her. How is it God works, anyway? I don't really know. What can I say?
     "Well, people only come back alive because Jesus makes them."
     We kept walking. Eden made another effort: "We could put water on it."
     I realized I had two choices. I could proclaim to her that there is never any hope for dead, dried-up things. We could leave the worm there and it would most certainly stay dead. Or we could take the worm back to our yard, stick it in some wet dirt, and let the conversation continue on its own without me having to drill into her the ugly truths about dead worms and dead things in general. I went with Option B.
     We went back to the worm. Eden remembered exactly where it was as I was still searching for it. Looking at it, I had to admit that, though it was completely dried up, it wasn't completely hard and flat. It had one little spot on it that looked like it might bend instead of break if you forced the issue.
     I let her pick it up again and I carried it home in a discarded McDonald's cup. We put it in the peat moss under our apple tree, poured some water on it, and buried it with a thin layer of the watered ground. Water. Shade. That's all we could do. I put the cup we had used to carry it home upside-down over it to mark the spot so we could check on it later. I didn't want the false hope offered by a bird finding it first or something.
     After naptime, I decided to have the first look. I took the cup away and the worm was gone. I dug around and spread out the dirt. Yep. Gone.
     What happened to the worm? I guess I can't say for sure. There's always some chance I'm wrong, but I told Eden it crawled away. (Wouldn't you know she was sad about this, crying that she wanted to keep it?)
     There are plenty of unpleasant things I'm going to have to teach my kids. Plenty of unpleasant things and downright horrible things I've already had to tell them about the world. But on this day, in this moment with my sweet little girl, she has taught me well.

questioning leadership

Recently, I've been encountering situations of various magnitudes that put before me a choice: hope or despair. These are situations that cause me to wonder about my own purpose in life and my relationship with God. I wonder about what I can do and what God can do and what it means to pray. I have questions about what being rescued or "saved" means for people who continue to lead difficult lives. It can really weigh me down at times, even when my own life is fine. I see children with very difficult home situations, adults with children who break their hearts, children born with conditions that make life more difficult, and the myriad ways people are affected by other people's sin.

These are things I really wrestled with in college. The difference is that back then, most of these situations were hypothetical. I knew they were probably happening somewhere. So I had it out with God over the "problem of evil," also sometimes put as "Why do bad things happen to good people?" or "Why do bad things have to happen to ANYONE?" I was really calling unto account God's ability to make good decisions. I promised myself two things during that time: 1.) I would never be afraid to question things down to that level again, and 2.) I would question thoroughly so I would never have to do it again.

So when I find myself asking similar questions now, some 10 years later, I do what I can to keep both promises. I decide to just go ahead a lay it all out there, knowing I likely will get no more answers this time than I did the last. And I didn't get ANY answers during that crazy time of questioning God. I just got to know Him. He didn't explain Himself to me or anything. What's different now is that I don't expect Him to.

Something else that is different this time around is that I am some manner or other of spiritual leader. While I am re-wrestling with God over the things I see going on in the lives of my girls or their friends, or others, I'm also trying to lead them through their wrestling, too. When I'm having my own questions about how to know I've heard God, I'm being asked questions about how to hear God. When someone asks why God hasn't answered their prayer for rescue, I'm asking the same question. Don't hear me wrong. I don't think it's a human's job to know all the answers. Somehow I was just expecting to know a few more....

This Sunday, the girls were over. We've been learning stories that go straight through the life of Christ, which I'm trying to conclude before our Christmas party. This means that I had to teach the entire week of the Passion in one hour. In order to simplify, I made a sort of virtual felt-board to help keep track of the characters and who was where when. Starting out, we have Jesus and his 12 disciples. (I don't really think Jesus was a head taller than everyone else....)

He's washing their feet and sharing what he knows will be his last meal with them. He also knows that one of the guys whose feet he just washed, named Judas, is going to betray him. He tells him to go ahead and do it. (I don't think I'd do that.) So then it's Jesus and the 11.

He tells them about how he's preparing to die and how he will go to prepare a place for them so they can be together again. He takes the bread and says, "This is my body," and rips it in two. He takes the wine and says, "This is my blood," and pours it out. He has to be kind of freaking out inside. They sing together and he asks his close friends to come and pray with him up on the Mount of Olives. I can imagine he wants some company on what he knows is going to be a very difficult night. So there we have Jesus with Peter, James, and John going to pray.

But the guys keep falling asleep instead of praying. And Jesus has gone to talk to His Father, to ask if there's not some way for life to go well without this awful stuff happening to him. He asks three times. That makes me think that maybe He's not hearing anything back. Either that, or He's getting an answer He doesn't like. But he decides to believe God knows better and says, basically, "Do it your way, not mine." That's pretty intense. And cause for all kinds of theological unrest within the trinity, but I'm glad to understand Jesus as fully human here, because that makes sense to me...praying the same thing over and over, not sure if you're hearing (or not hearing) right, hoping you've heard wrong, hoping more prayer will change God's mind anyway. And then you're interrupted by more bad news.

So there is Jesus with his three sleepy friends and then here comes Judas back with the Roman soldiers to arrest Him.

Peter chops off the ear of one of the soldiers. Jesus says, "No, that's not how this is going to go down," puts the ear back on the soldier, and lets them take him away to be tried and killed. And he knows that's what He's doing, because where does he end up? At the house of the high priest, Caiaphas, who had already been talking with his friends about how it's be better for Jesus to die than not. I don't think anyone's expecting a fair trial, here. Peter and John follow along to the house and wait outside to see what's going to happen. It's there that Peter, in a weird rush of self-interest, calls down curses on himself and swears he's never had anything to do with Jesus in his whole life. Peter was one of Jesus's closest friends.

He's then taken alone before Pilate, who tries to release him. But then all those people who had been praising Jesus the week before, who thought He was going to come and be their king by overthrowing the Romans, show their disappointment in Him and His methods by asking for the release of a violent revolutionary instead. So then, when Jesus gets to the cross, He's up there all by himself, with the rest of the world either against Him or powerless to be for Him.

And while He's up there, He yells, "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?" I know there is a big discussion to have about that. How is God not really with Jesus? Is it because of the sin of the world? Maybe Jesus is just saying that and God the Father didn't really leave Him, after all. I don't think it matters...at least not for me right now. What matters is that, in the hardest time of His life, Jesus at least feels all alone. No one is helping Him. No one is saving Him. And, because He decided not to do it His own way, He's not even saving Himself. And He's going through that so He can later be with us forever. But He wasn't in the euphoric forever yet. No. He did all this in the, "Why, God?" where the rest of us live.

And then, with His last words, He trusted His soul to the one He didn't understand. "Into Your hands I commit My spirit."

Now, none of my questions are bigger than the one Jesus was asking. And none of my deciding to trust God anyway has such high stakes for me. But I was so grateful to be reading through this story with the girls and learning myself how there's nowhere I go in life where Jesus hasn't gone before me to show me how to do it. Even when being an example for us, He still asked, "Why?" He still tried to come up with a better way for the world to work than what He saw coming down the line. And it's because I can follow Him there that I can follow Him to hoping against all hope that somehow all things really will work for good. Somehow.

Israel: Wrestles with God

Israel asked out of the blue today if we know anyone who died while we were alive. I told him I didn't think he knew anyone like that, but he kept pressing, so I told him his Grandma's daddy died not long ago. He then had a string of questions that lasted for a good 5 minutes. I can't remember them all, but this is the gist of it.
"Well, why did he die?"
"Everyone dies sometime."
"But why does everyone die?"
"Because this world is not perfect, so we don't live here forever."
"So sometimes, if people eat food that is yucky, they die?"
"Well, I guess so, but everyone dies. People who eat yucky food die and people who don't eat yucky food die, too. Everyone dies."
"But why?"
"Because our bodies aren't perfect. They wear out and we die." (I realize this overlooks death by other means, but I was trying to be concise.)
"Why do they wear out?"
"Well, these bodies don't last forever. But when we die, Jesus gives us new bodies that last forever."
[long pause] "When I get a new body, can it talk?"
"Yes, it can talk." (I think it's funny that talking in his new body was his first concern.)
"But why will I get a new body?"
"Because this one will wear out. But your new one won't wear out and it won't get sick or be sad."
"Oh. Well, I got sick one time and I puked. But I didn't die."
"Well, you don't usually die from just puking."
"But if you puke a lot and a lot and a lot, then you die?"
"Well, maybe...but probably not."

The conversation ended strangely when we arrived at the grocery store. But Israel picked it up in the evening when Pat asked him if he wanted to pray before going to sleep. Israel said he wanted to pray for the man that died, that he would get a new body.
"Um, Jesus, I pray for the man that died and that you would give him a new body."
Pat said, "Well, usually when people die, that's it. They're either with Jesus if they want to be with Jesus or they're not with Jesus if they don't want to be with Jesus."
"Yeah."
Pat then asked Israel if he wanted to spend time listening to Jesus. (Pat did this with the elementary school students at church this week and was somewhat surprised to find that, when they spent 30 seconds of silence listening for Jesus, about 1/3 came back and told him specific things they had heard.) Israel agreed. But I guess he didn't hear anything. I accidentally interrupted the time and Israel had more questions.
"Mom, can you make Jesus talk?"
"No. I can't make Jesus talk. I can ask Jesus to talk, but I can't tell him what to do. I'm not His boss; he's my boss."
"But Daddy is his boss."
[snicker] "No, Daddy's not his boss, either. No one can make Jesus talk, but if you listen really well, sometimes you can hear Him talk. He sounds like a voice in your head and you know it's Him because of how He loves you when He talks to you."
"But why won't he talk?"
"I don't know. You'll just have to keep listening. Listen really well and you might hear Him."
"When we get our new bodies, then we will be able to hear Him?"
"Yes, that's when we will hear Him the best."

I can tell my child the right answers about God, but I can't make good on God's promises. Only God can do that. It's hard when your three year old asks about death and not hearing God. I can't show him anyone's new body. I can't make God talk to him. I can only give the correct response. Many times, that correct response is, "I don't know," and Israel nearly always replies, "But, Mom, just tell me," as though I'm holding out on him. But it's not that easy. While its tough to watch a three year old already wrestling with questions that don't have easy answers, we chose the name "wrestles with God" for a reason. All we can do is point him to the One who asks us to wrestle it out with Him.