out of the mouth of my babe

Last night at bedtime, Israel was complaining of is foot hurting. It was a minor issue, so I pulled out that line my dad used on me as a kid: "Do you want me to cut it off?" (As I child, I thought this was stupid, because of course it would hurt more to cut off your foot than it would to deal with the minor boo-boo. Kids can't realize this is the point of the question. So I add an explanation.) "Your foot can't hurt you if I throw it over there somewhere."

This led immediately into a string of questions from my son that ended up with a discussion of prosthetic limbs and how it is possible to live and not die from losing a limb and how it is possible to walk, even if you're missing a leg. And then, of course, it led to giving an account of what has happened in Boston. It was time for prayer, anyway, and the subject seemed the logical bridge from hurting foot to prayer. Pat and I looked at each other and I dove in:

"So tonight we can pray for people who have been hurt and are missing their legs. Lots of people in a city far away called Boston got their legs cut off by a bomb."

The kids looked at me, waiting for further explanation for a second, so I continued to answer the silent "why" question by saying, "A couple of men left a bomb around a lot of people and it exploded and lots and lots of people were hurt really badly. It was a very bad choice for them to make...a very bad choice that really hurt a lot of people."

I always hesitate before letting my kids know about such horrible events. Israel still prays for Syria lots of evenings after Pat informed him of that one world event something like a year ago. I don't want him to know about every bad thing that happens, because he does not forget them. I don't want my kids to be afraid of bad things happening. But since ignorance doesn't tend to make unafraid people, I try to tell them SOME bad things that I think they will hear about as we listen to the news. (As we have one starting kindergarten next year, we skipped Sandy Hook for the most part.) So I drop these things on them in a context of something to do about it. "You can pray about this because...." and then they aren't powerless; I'm telling them so they can do something about it. Even if it's for people far away. But I wait to see how this will affect them. Israel didn't ask any further questions, but sat thinking about it for awhile. Eden, who, has a completely unsuppressible spirit, piped up immediately about the people who had made the really bad choice that hurt a lot of people: "But Jesus still loves them."

And so we prayed for them, too.

I'm not the most filled-in on the details and on how different media outlets have portrayed the young men presumably responsible for creating the need for all the heroism we've read about. I have read people being upset that they were initially described in terms of skin color. As I tuned in today, there was mostly talk about ethnicity, religion, and place of birth. Would we make such a big deal of these things if the person was born and raised here and had light skin? I can't say for sure.

But I do notice, on many levels in society, in times of tragedy and times of relative peace, we like to distance ourselves from people who make bad choices. We like to point out how people we would label "bad guys" are different from us. It's easier to find some way to cut them off from "us." We say to each other: "Here. You want me to cut it off for you so it won't hurt you?" I can't say for sure that's what is happening here. What I can say is that we need to guard against that. As humiliating as it is, Christians have to admit that we don't have anything up on

And so we pray for EVERYONE'S hearts and lives who have been changed (or not) by this horrible choice/event, recognizing that the best thing that can happen is for God to be at work in the lives of all involved.

Instead of focusing on why "that person" is different from us, Eden honed in on the very powerful and humbling thing that we have in common. The most basic and wide-reaching truth about me is the same for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: "Even when we make bad choices, Jesus still loves us." And if I can't affirm this about him, I cannot truly believe it for myself. I don't know what Jesus's love will mean for Dzhokhar in his life or the next, but I know he wasn't created less in the image of God than I was. And Jesus didn't only die and rise again for people who meet some basic moral standard. I am no more worthy of forgiveness than he is. (Can one be "worthy" of forgiveness?) As an adult, I have a whole list of theological questions about this, but none of them advance my knowledge any further than what my daughter already knows: "Jesus still loves us, (all of us,) even if we do something wrong."

unbroken

Though this whole process with Lia's family being united under one roof is far from a done deal, I have to say at least I am greatly encouraged by the progress I know of. Since this is a case currently being heard in the courts, details of who is saying what are just not available, so I wait with just as many unknowns as the rest of you and likely just slightly different set of unknowns than the Frank family is experiencing themselves. I often break off trying to imagine what they must be going through. I can't imagine.

Someone asked, and I don't know the exact timeline, but sometime this summer, God healed Lia. I don't know how it happened. I don't know if the medical community has a way of explaining this or if the healing was just as enigmatic as the entire rest of her life until then. But I know that where there was once hurt, brokenness, and a kind of hopelessness, there is now wholeness and the promise of a much-less-painful future. And I know that it doesn't matter to me whether the medical community has a way of explaining it or not -- this sort of a break-through after so many years searching for one is a great miracle. I am in awe of it. It's the sort of miraculous healing that I doubt I could comprehend, even if it were explained to me by the best medical professional or even an angel.

And this second healing -- of Lia's family -- that we're asking for involves its own hurt, brokenness, and kind of hopelessness. If healing is going to take place for this, it's going to take a miracle. Much will need to happen to bind up this family and Rhys in particular, I'd imagine. It's the sort of thing that calls into question the very core of who a person is. I wince at the thought of anyone calling me into question, much less a person with the authority to tear my loving family apart. Healing from that will take a miracle. It will take God stepping in.

The hope that presents itself is that He is stepping in. When Lia's body was broken, I found hope in the love I could see within her family and in the persistent faith and constant assertion of God's goodness in the middle of it all. Now, I find hope in how I see the Body of Christ sweeping in to protect and support this part that is broken. Somehow, word is getting out and people are being prompted to support. Some have opened their homes. Some have taken to fasting and prayer. Some have given money. Some have given of their time. Others have offered up their skills. It will take all these things -- serious commitment from friends and kindness of strangers and the favor of God over it all. This is the sort of healing we feel we can comprehend, since we understand talk of relationships and money and generosity. One person has this or that and gives it to someone else. But for all of these people and resources and unseen agents being at the right place at the right time to hear and respond...it is and will be a miracle.

That said, the most easily quantifiable sign of hope we have is the money. The money is not what will solve this problem or heal this family, but as it is going to pay for legal representation, it opens up the road ahead of the Frank family. It's an expensive key. They have to pay $12k to their lawyers by Sept. 11. And this without having a source of income (that was lost when Dave had to stop working to be the adult staying with their kids). Many of us have dealt with losing income. I've never had to deal with it at a time when bills like this were mounting. But yesterday I read from Rhys's mom....

Great news! We are now at approximately $11,276 and are within striking distance of our first goal of $12,000!. Thanks to everyone for their generosity. The Lord is good.

and I am reassured that nothing is impossible for God. This is the first goal. I would imagine some of what is to come depends on how hearings go and how long this is expected to be in the courts. But we're almost to the first goal...maybe EARLY! (Wouldn't that be great?!)

I didn't set up the account to raise the funds, so I have no idea who gives and when, but thank you because I'm sure some of you did. Thanks to all who have been praying and praying and doing whatever it is within your power to do. I'm sure it encourages Rhys; I know it encourages me. We serve a God who is limitless and whose love for us remains unbroken. We know and hope and rely on it being so.

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.

heart mending

This is my friend, Andrea. You may remember Andrea of Abigail fame from about this time last year. Last year, we were raising money for Abigail to have a tumor removed from her leg. The good news is that today, Abigail's check-up revealed a "normal 3-year-old." This is news worth celebrating!

Unfortunately, this wonderfully uneventful visit to the doctor is under the shadow of her sister's extended hospital stay.

This is Shilo, Abigail's sister. She is five months old. All told, I think she has spent something like three of those months in the hospital, mostly in some form of an ICU. This particular stay has lasted since February, brought on by a typical-in-other-people virus. But Shilo is little. And she has a heart defect. The virus required her to go on all kinds of equipment, including a ventilator. After quite a while, it became evident she would not be able to get off the ventilator without undergoing open heart surgery. The surgery was expected...a little on down the road, perhaps, but expected. As it is, though, things keep happening that destabilize Shilo just enough to where they cannot go through with the surgery. The surgery should alleviate all kinds of health issues, so as scary as open heart surgery on an infant sounds, it is welcome. All Shilo needs for the surgery is some stable days in a row -- days free of fevers, with clear lungs. Those have been hard to come by lately.

Could you join us in praying for Shilo and her family? They have been separated from each other for most of the last 8 weeks. That is a long time, and a great percentage of Shilo's life and Abigail's recent memory. Or anyone's recent memory. Even if the surgery goes through quickly, there will be at least a few more weeks apart before Shilo and Abigail can be together in the same house with both of their parents at the same time. Until then, the scene is Andrea and Shilo sitting in a small room full of medical equipment all day without snuggling each other while Jason is at work and Abigail stays with various friends. Therefore, prayers for "in the meantime" are greatly appreciated as well. I'm not going to say that this is a super-family or anything, because I know Andrea would hate that. But their normal days require more stamina than most of our normal days. We trust God's grace can cover us all and each of them even as the answers we wait for are slow in coming. Please join us in entrusting each of them to the care of their Father and asking that He would speedily mend Shilo's heart...and everyone else's.

dreams take flight

We are working on adjusting to the time change we will encounter in Idaho. It feels a little surreal that it's actually going to happen. We're to the final preparations stage. We are almost better -- just a lingering cough for the kids and lingering sinus issues for me. They have a few days to go away. Please pray that they do.

I'm told Zaya is planning a party. There is much to celebrate.

Eden is content knowing Lia and Zaya have toys they will share. The girl has her priorities in line.

Israel is busy finding every scrap of paper he can to cut it to bits and make it into a "collage" for Lia and Zaya. It's his latest invention. Every one of them looks like a small firework stuck to a single piece of clear tape. Every one of them is actually some really specific thing with specific parts to do specific jobs that are dreamt up after the collage is assembled.

So many pieces have come together to make this possible -- anonymous people giving their bits (or chunks!) of money, prayers, and other assistance to make such discussion possible.

After so much blunt honesty with the kids about Lia and her condition, I was initially hesitant to talk with the kids about the trip. For it little while, it seemed Lia might not be around by the time we could visit her. Maybe she would still be in the hospital. Maybe not. But she's home and as well as she's been in quite some time. I was also afraid that perhaps the money might not come in and I knew there was no way we could make up any deficit. Then I realized pieces were coming together to make it work. This bit stuck; that piece landed just so. One bit was a friend asking the kids about the trip before I had told them about it. That was the push I needed to go ahead and let the kids know this is something I believed would happen, but wasn't sure of yet. (I wish we didn't need to teach our kids about faith; it's scary. Ah, well. Someday that won't be necessary.) With the whole thing being assembled, we are now free to dream up exactly what this will be, leaving plenty of room for the artistic freedom of the other dreamers. These days, part of us lives up above the clouds. We talk about what it will be like.

Thank you.

you can say to this mountain....

I think this is take on the impossible week for me. I'll slip into my "disclaimer voice" and tell you I'm involved in things every day that only God can make right. I suppose that's true even just because I wake up in my own skin. But this week, I've been praying for the faith to move mountains -- or, you know, not.

On one hand, I'm trying for faith to move mountains that stand between us and going to see our friends. For that to happen, a girl needs to be strengthened enough to go home and we need over $1000 more dollars. We have been blown away by people's generosity thus far and really moved to tears that people would come together to help make this happen.

On the other hand, I'm fighting against mountains that are being moved -- real ones. And these not by faith, but by big machines run by few people. I came to Kentucky this week to attend I Love Mountains day. My cousin (okay..maybe he's my 2nd or 3rd cousin. What is your dad's cousin's son?) who lives back where I'm from in Harlan County told me about it and was gracious enough to take me with him. I have never attended a protest in my life. And I know there are so many issues about justice that are worthy of being championed. But I've been really impressed in reading a little Wendell Berry with the idea that the best way to solve big problems is to work locally. I feel powerless against so many of the world's problems, but this is my hometown and this is what is happening to it, and this is a problem I am qualified to address. (Bottom image is from the State Journal, the Frankfort, KY newspaper; I couldn't climb that high.)

I don't think I can outline all my reasons for going here in this post, because it takes me a lot longer than that to be succinct. But I'm working on it. What I can say is that I long to hear news of back home and truly desire for it to prosper. I know that coal is VERY important to the people of that area. Coal is truly the only reason any of the towns back in those mountains exist. But I hope there is a future there and I want to encourage people to look for it. Coal is not the future for my hometown. Yes, there is coal left in the mountains, but if you have to actually destroy the mountain to get to it, it is not worth getting to. People cannot afford jobs that cost them their health. You cannot buy your way out of cancer or birth defects. Besides that, I think destroying something like an entire mountain in order to get a stripe or two out of it is prideful and wrong. Sentences like that can sound really arrogant coming from an adult, but the child in us knows it's true.

On the way down, I told Iz why we were making the late-night drive from Muncie to Kentucky. "You remember when we went to the mountains where Granny lives?"
"Yeah."
"Well, there are some people who want to tear down that mountain."
"But WHY?!"
"Well, because people can make money doing it."
"But they CAN'T!"
"Well, yes, they can. But I'm going down there to ask them not to."
"But, they can't just do that!"
The next day, before I left for the protest, I asked if there was anything he wanted to say about the mountains.
"Well, those mountains are good for walking around on, but we aren't going to do that, anymore."
"Why not?"
"Because there aren't going to be any mountains."

The apple didn't fall too far from the tree in terms of realism vs. optimism, I guess. Maybe he just already has a great understanding of human nature and the way of the world. I hope not. And I sure hope he's wrong.

I don't know if we changed anyone's mind by protesting, but we did draw attention to the issue. And we empowered ourselves to be the one who will do something about it. One man (who was walking on stilts) held up the quote about how all it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing. I try not to make good guys and bad guys in these matters, but there is definitely a hard but right decision vs. an easy but terrible one here. And all it takes for the terrible decision to be made is for the rest of us to feel like there's nothing we can do about it. But I'm doing something. And especially if this is a local issue to you (did you know those of us in Indiana get our electricity from the destruction of mountains?), I want you to know that you can do something about it. I'm no college student and I'm not a hippie. But I can go to a protest. My brain isn't as articulate as it was a few years ago, perhaps, but I can write letters. No one leaves comments on my blog, but I can write entries to influence whoever I can. :) So I do. I'm going to do whatever I can, because it beats doing nothing. And I'm not alone.

"[Abraham] is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed -- the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were."

Romans 4:17

God calls things that are not as though they were. He gives life to the dead.

"Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead -- since he was about a hundred years old -- and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God."

Romans 4:18-20

Abraham believed and hoped against all hope.
Without weakening in his faith.
He looked the facts square in the face.
And he believed the promise of God, anyway.

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When Pat and I were officially NOT dating (that totally awkward time after we told each other we knew we were supposed to be married when he broke up with me and dated another girl...) I kind of hated thinking about the promise God had given me about Him. It just made me mad. It didn't line up with the facts. And I faced the fact of no relationship with Pat just about every day, since we studied together every day in a group of about 12. One day, at the end of class, he met me in a doorway, looked at me, and said, "Hope."

I could have killed him. How dare the one killing, or delaying, or preventing, or stepping all over the promise ever think he is in the right place to demand hope of me!

Still, it was the right thing to do. Even though it hurt. Especially coming from him. Hope. Not try and make it happen. Not figure out how to make it sound good on paper (or on a blog entry). Just hope and believe and wait in the face of the facts.

----------

This advent and Christmas season, my thoughts around Jesus were taken over with the story of my friend's little girl, Lia. I've never met her in person (since she lives far away), but I have known her through my friend's blogs (click to read it) since she was a newborn and Eden was kicking around in my belly. Lia has had a rough time from the start, with surgeries, lung problems, G-I problems, developmental anomalies, and all kinds of things no one understands going awry in her beautiful little body. I want for my friend's daughter everything I want for my own daughter and it is hard to see her robbed of her own health.

Lately, she has been losing weight and is losing many of the abilities she had worked so hard to gain, such as speech, walking, being alert, and eating. And no one knows why. What we don't say outright is that we are afraid she is just wasting away and will die without ever being given a fighting chance. Test after test yields no result and no diagnosis. It feels hopeless in terms of her longevity.

One night, I laid in bed crying and praying for her and I felt like God had something to say to me about the situation. It wasn't a promise that everything would be just as I'd like. It was a directive to pray believing that God CAN make everything just as I'd like. Not because it's important that God can do my will, but because it's important for me to recognize that I pray to the God who can do more than I can ask or imagine. To that point, I had been acting as though His power in the situation was pretty much the same as everyone else's. But it's not. When I pray, I'm praying to the God who really can give life to the dead and call things that are not as though they were.

More often than not, I try to hedge my bet in prayers and assure myself with reasons why it will still be okay and I will still trust God when He doesn't come through like I want Him to. But I found myself faced with a decision one day. I was looking through pictures of Lia when Israel eavesdropped and decided to make her the topic of a string of questions. And I had to decide: Do I introduce this girl to my kids? Do I encourage them to pray for her, as we do for others we know who are sick? What if she dies? What will my kids believe about God then?

I realized then that I was trying to hedge my bet. It's not my job to explain or tidy up God's plan for the world. And why would I think it's a good idea to keep my kids from getting to know anyone they may lose in life? Are we only supposed to pray for things we know are going to turn out alright, anyway? No! This precious little girl and her family are people. They are people who hurt and who laugh and who fight and win and fight and lose just like we do. They are people of prayer and courage who need prayer and people of courage, which is just what I want my children to be. So we're not going to hedge our bets, here. We're going to pray for them and stand by them however we can.

The God who can raise the dead, who can intervene to make anything any way He wants meets us as we walk in through the door. He says, in the face of despair or pain or death that only He has the power to obliterate: Hope.

So we do, even though it may hurt and even though it could be dangerous...especially coming from Him.

We hope against all hope
trying not to weaken our faith
we look the facts square in the face
and we believe in the power of God, anyway.


----



I am not the world's best pray-er. And I don't have the world's strongest faith. At all. Those facts don't change just because I'm writing this blog entry about prayer and hope. But if you're not perfect like me, I hope you'll be encouraged even as I have been encouraged.

What a GIFT!

You may have gathered from my recent facebook postings that my friends, Jason and Andrea, are adopting another daughter this week. It's been a wild and crazy ride this time around from the word "go," but I want to give them time to share their own story before I share it with you. But I wanted to share with you some of the amazing things I've seen from here. I'm told it's both Special Education week and National Adoption Month. Happy coincidence.

One of the reasons I am so pumped about this (besides the pure adrenaline rush and the fact that this kiddo is a Kentuckian, just like me!) is that my kids get to experience it this time around. When my friends adopted their first daughter, Abigail, Israel was just almost a year old and Eden was in hiding. This time, they get to experience it and understand a little about what's going on. We've made a couple of visits to the hospital lately to visit friends and their newborns who "just came out of their mommy's tummy," so when I told them that Abigail was a big sister, they of course asked, "Did Andrea have a baby in her belly?"
"Well, no." I said. "Someone else grew this baby in her belly and now she gets to be part of Abigail's family!"
Israel busted out: "That is SO COOL!!! Mom, we should do that!"
I agree with him on one count, anyway. :)

It is so cool. And I think these babies must be doubly loved. First, a mom, who for whatever reason would rather not have a child, finds out she is going to have a child and decides to keep growing that life for months. That's some love. She may not feel well, she gains weight, she deals with whatever social or familial repercussions exist with her pregnancy. She feels she is inadequate for the task of raising the child she is growing. She could be prideful and try to act like she has it all together*, but instead she decides to find a family she feels could give the child what she can't give her. I have nothing but admiration for such a mom. That is some love and some courage. (I'm sure God understands something about that, as He trusted His child to another family, to0...for opposite reasons, but requiring courage and love nonetheless.) I know how hard it is for me to admit when I don't have it all together. It's hard for me to admit it even to just one other person. I cannot imagine how much courage it takes to admit whatever weaknesses you find in yourself in a way that is put on display for strangers. To want the best for your child and be willing to look for someone else you believe can provide it...you have to love your baby a lot to go through all that for her. It's a selfless act of love.

Of course, the child is a complete gift in all respects. And no one knows this better, I'm guessing, than the parents chosen to adopt her, who receive the gift of a child. Parents who adopt amaze me with their love. Having had two surprise babies with nine months each to get used to the idea, I have no idea what it would be like to think about it before-hand and choose to suddenly welcome a baby (plus whatever birth family she comes with!) into my family. Jason and Andrea in particular amaze me because they chose beforehand to pursue a child with "special needs." The terminology changes all the time, but the term always is trying to get at the fact that some children face extra adversity in life and challenges to overcome. One of the challenges I've seen for parents I know of special needs children (in addition to the anxiety and agony brought by various medical procedures and unknowns) is that they have the frustrating job of teaching the general populace that their child is a gift. They know it. People who know their child personally know it. But I have heard enough stories from friends to know that too many people have become doubtful in this regard. Showing every day how valuable and amazing their children are seems to be more of a difficult job than it should be. Enduring people asking, "What's wrong with her?" in front of your child? No parent should have to try to come up with an appropriate response to that. But to have an inkling beforehand of what your child may face because of others and choose to walk that road with them.... Well, when I write it that way, what parents wouldn't make that choice? But to choose to walk that road with a child as their parent when no one is asking it of you? Amazing. And I know that both the child and the parents will be greatly blessed by the process and better people because of each other. That's the way it goes in life. But I reserve the right to be amazed by it anyway.

And if you haven't had the pleasure of praying for baby Shilo ("God's gift"), go right ahead. She seems to be recovering well from the heart surgery she had today at the ripe old age of 6 days. (She'll have open heart surgery in a few months.) She's a strong girl, that one! I can't wait to get to know her in person. I am beyond happy that we, in whatever small way, get to be involved and are blessed to call this family our friends. I'm with Israel: This whole idea is SO COOL!




*I'm not meaning to imply that birth parents don't have it all together and adoptive parents do. I don't know any parent of any child who can honestly be convinced they have it all together.

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.