I Think Maybe Everyone Else Knew This Already

That boy I married fell down the stairs this morning. It started off HOLY F*CK and has ended with Are You Kidding? We've just added it to the list of reasons 2011 ought not to be repeated.

We got to spend some time in the ER, with side trips to x-ray and CT (which I will now always affectionately call Land of Pantless Men) and of course see first hand that life is full of Hard for many, and as Hard as this morning was for us, it was Harder Still for several others that passed through my line of sight.

So then we got to talking about degrees of suffering and all those things one talks about having averted the Worst Case while still living in the Pretty Shitty Case.  And as often happens, that boy wondered about why we believe in a God that can't do better than suffering.  And by 'we', well of course, that means me, since I do faith for our family the way he does car care and the recycling.

Anyway, I found myself saying that at least there was no false promise of no suffering in the Christian faith. That every religion was just an attempt by humanity to explain why life sucks and to make it less so.  And as I said, I kind of realized that was probably true.  Right? Isn't that what every belief system is: an effort to make sense of the inevitable painfulness of being?

I think maybe that could be true.  Which makes me a bit more commited to my own little way of understanding the Creator as the promise of presence in the face of All That Should Not Be.  Because the alternatives are things like Try Harder And It Won't Be So Hard, and Too Bad You Suck, Good Luck Out There, and Maybe Next Time Around It Won't Be So Bad.

I mostly just wish that things weren't so hard these days.  We could do with less suffering, and certainly most of the world could too. But barring the end of difficult, I'll take presence. 

Always Presence.

The End

For reasons both obvious and not-so-obvious to me, I've been a bit obsessive lately with the question, What is the point?  Probably a bit about life in general, but a lot about parenting in particular. In the last 24 hours it has begun to bubble over.

First, my Writer Friend wrote a blog post about the wisdom (or not) of letting kids have a vote in this life. It touched a nerve in my Am I Getting This All Wrong joint. I think I want to be authoritative as a parent, except when I want my kids to know their voice matters and has a place in this world.  I think I want to teach and guide my children to be contributing, thoughtful, rule-respecting members of society, except when I want my kids to be true to themselves and blaze their own trail and be the change they want to be in the world and all that hoohah (is my bias showing?). The difficulty is that I can't look back and see a generation that got it right, so it seems predetermined that we'll be failing too, no matter which course we choose.

With that bleakness lurking in my heart, I joined our mom's group this morning and listened to a woman share her story of parenting pain and hurt.  Her daughter is now 23, and they have lived together a lifetime of Not Ideal and What The F*ck.  And yet.  And yet there was beauty and goodness in the mess of it - the daughter penning an essay in her GED class about her adopted self being "the gift they didn't give back".  Good gravy. So broody, dark-hearted one that I am, my question for Bev was this:  After 23 years of all this pain and heartache with no "success" to point to (yet), what would you say the point of all this parenting is for all of us just at the beginning?

She said 'faithfulness'.  I think it was a pretty good answer.

But of course, it wasn't enough answer for me, so I've had to dwell on it all afternoon, and now ignore my own children so that I can write it out.

When I related the morning's story to Scott, what struck me was that there was no Moral to the Story or Tidy Life Lesson to pass along.  There was just the loveliness of making space for a woman to tell her story and hear outloud her own life one more time, so as better to maybe remember bits and pieces of God's own faithfulness to her that in turn is now her faithfulness to her daughter.

And then I thought, well maybe the point of this life for each of us is to live a story (and hopefully tell it a few times) that reminds us of that same thing -  God is faithful.

And then I thought, I wonder if I would parent differently if all I thought I had to remember was that the point is God is Faithful.  Or my more usual, God is With Me.  I wonder if I would work so hard at getting parenting right if I started living in the part where God is okay with the Wrong because it shows off God's Right so much better.

And then I remembered the only part of the Westminster Catechism that I know:  What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Enjoy.  Enjoy!

If this is true, then every time Bev tells her story and reminds herself and those of us listening that God has been faithful, that she has been faithful, she glorifies God.  And then her only job is enjoy God forever!

So this week I'm going to try to wear my Glorifying God Glasses and try if I can see my life - and several lives around me - a bit differently.  What if my story isn't about how I raise Amazing Kids Who Grow Up To Do Amazing Things, but about how I was faithful to them remembering that God was being faithful to me?  and then what if seeing things that way made it way easier to enjoy God forever?

You know what I love about my life of faith? That God always talks in Good News.  If the voice I hear makes it sounds like life is going to be harder and suckier, it's probably my own dark heart whispering to me; however, if it lightens my load and gives me hope for tomorrow and arrives as Good News, maybe it's that wiley Jesus telling me something Heavenly.

So Bev, thanks for the Good News. I'm off to enjoy God forever and try not to worry about the rest so much. At least until the hockey game starts.

Agreeing With Me

This week I took a class on Roberts' Rules of Order.  Mostly as a favour to the other people on the committee I'm on.  It turns out there really are ways to do things like run meetings that are Helpful and Better than me just doing what I want.  I know, I was shocked too.

Also in this class was a fellow citizen who chairs another committee that I'm not on.  He seemed smart and clever enough.  He was wearing an engineers' ring, you know the one they all wear on their pinky? The secret engineering code ring that tells all the other Oddly-Good-At-Math folk out there that they too are Oddly Good At Math.

Of course I had to start musing.  It occured to me that really and truly, the only reason for the ring is to establish solidarity with other ring wearers.  Not unlike gold cross necklaces on women everywhere or those little fish bumpery-sticker things.  Or the Darwin fish for that matter.  All over the place, little hints of clubdom, of groups to belong to.

And then I remembered writing about being pretty hopeful that heaven would be full of Belonging here.  So I went back and read what I wrote and was heartened to know that it was still true.

So now I am thinking about how I can give out Belonging to others because maybe that's a bit of making earth as it is in Heaven.  I don't think I'll be very good at it, but I think it's something I might be willing to learn how to do.  At the very least, I want to get really good at doing it for my kids.  I want our family to be the place they're sure they belong. It's difficult on a day when I've whispered in my daughter's ear as she screamed her way through the park, "You've ruined this whole day!"  But here's hoping that grace prevails and she mostly remembers the part where our home is her Home.  Always.


I'm really glad there's that verse in the bible that says something like Nothing's impossible with God.  Or is that an inspirational poster with a kitten and ball of wool on it ...