a child's heart

Taking care of a herd of three-year-olds for a group of young moms is something I do the first Friday of the month. This one particular morning I had about 12 little ones all to myself. It wasn't very long into the two and a half hours that I realized I needed some help.

Before I knew it, a little girl I barely knew started taking care of kids who were asking for things. One girl wanted me to take the top off a Play-Doh container while I was already taking off one boy's jacket with another one in line and with a kidlet on my lap. Meredith jumped in and said to her, "I will do it for you." When a girl was kind of sad because she wanted her mommy, Meredith handed over her own dolly and said, "You can hold her." A boy wanted the bathroom, and Meredith said, "I will show him where it is." When two boys were fighting over a car under my radar, she told me about it without alarm, and I got the sense that she was simply trying to help keep order, like There's a potential tsunami going on over there, just so you know. During snack time, she helped pass out the string cheese and fruit while keeping an eye on the still sad girl with the loaner dolly.

My kids were decent little people, but the degree of caring service this tiny child showed just floored me. I felt like she would've gladly given a kidney if anyone had needed it, just reached in and pulled it right out. Or shaved off all her hair for a leukemia patient with a wig need. The depth of her compassion and thoughtfulness was a source of both inspiration and conviction.

I realized that my assumption was that this caliber of virtue was something I might find in an occasional mature believer seasoned by great periods of suffering, divine revelation, and a lifetime of deliberate dying to self. But like the Babe who came silently, unexpectedly, and upside-downedly, this sweet babe did a number on my world in the most ruthlessly loving way--in innocence, absence of self, and total other-centeredness. And I am profoundly grateful.

10-20-30

Tell me you see the heart-shaped cloud. It was a gift to me as I drove home last week.


Where I was 10 years ago:

1998: (38) Lived in a big house 40 minutes from here. The kids were 11, 9, & 4. Kev worked in a school district we'd only dreamed about when we first heard it was being built. I'd found some incredible friends I truly clicked with, and church was a happy place.

20 years ago:

1988: (28) Lived in a tiny, rented house in Tonasket, and we had a one-year-old. Worked with Young Life and their discipleship program. Missed Spokane with its family, friends, and good shopping, but forged friendships we have maintained, been inspired by, and enjoyed to this day.

30 years ago:

1978: (18) Graduated with honors from high school (big deal). Visited the Philippines with my mom for six weeks. Supposed to be two months, but she missed my dad too much. She bawled when we left Spokane; I bawled when we left Manila. The gift with the most lasting impact on my life I think. Indelible images, permanent memories, impacting experiences. International travel has incredible influence on a person's memory. I was young, impressionable, easily influenced, and my gray matter was still soft. It's never like that again.


A dear friend reminded me that life is lived one moment at a time. We are given Time as a way to work out our salvation down here with fear and trembling, with like-minded friends, with all our hopes and failures and stumblings to address. It's in the righthererightnow that we receive the tremendous, mind-blowing gift of Grace. All these moments, all these memories, all this grace... we are soooo blessed. How many of us know, understand, and receive it.....

Jesus loves me, this I know.

nail

The nail on my ring finger ripped backward and sliced down into the quick. Hurt like a freakin’ paper cut! Yeah, that bad!

It was still attached at the not-so-deep side and levitated there above its former home. Owie. I carefully maneuvered the clippers to snip as little skin as possible. Still owie. From that point on, I banged it into everything I touched. You know how it works. Someone will make some good bucks by inventing a bandage that's truly a good fingertip bandage, not something that sits huge atop the end of my digit like a turban.

By evening it was throbbing, and it's still hurting this morning. (And I'm not a whanny. I know what natural birth is--twice over.) I looked at it, studied the unnatural exposure of the delicate tissue that's designed to be covered by a protective shield. It was red at first, but is a bright pink now. Not healed, but the body is doing what it does to get there.

Exposure makes the body vulnerable to attack and pain and further damage. It's the same with my heart. I keep it fairly protected, which is something of a recent revelation to me as I thought I'd evolved further than that in this spiritual, mental, and emotional journey. I am still so afraid to tell people what I really and truly want and need. I have been made fun of, slighted, and ignored because of it in the past. Here's my heart... what will you do...? Gimme that thang--*stomp*. . . See my thinking? that to hurt is BAD and something to be avoided altogether. THAT is not exactly in line with what my Abba purposes, and I am slow to absorb & own it for myself.

What I can do though is listen and pay careful attention to the promptings that tell me to put it out there anyway. Only He knows the perfect when and who and what. For now, He has to speak up, enunciate, and often repeat Himself. Fortunately, this does not bother Him even a tiny smidge. After all, even I show compassion and patience with the mentally impaired. How much more shall He who IS Compassion...

This is not new ground for me. I have been in this place many times. It's probably a good guess to say that most of us live here, even if we're not aware of it. I am made aware of it again now, and it's my most earnest hope and desire to spend and give away whatever He wants from my heart. It's a jar of oil that He created, and He's never disappointed me yet. XO

worship

What must worship be like in Heaven? I wonder if it's going to be vitally, organically different since we will be different. I wonder why I don't know what it will entail, what it'll feel like, what I'll do to be worshiping Him in a world where Time is not experienced like it is here.

I wonder if it's so different that it'd be like trying to explain to a goldfish how to barrel race. Or skydive. Or paint like Monet. Or understand how joy makes us weep. Its imagination is too minuscule. And it lacks the soul space to deal with the depth and width and height of it all.

I wonder if worship there is so exquisite, so perfect, that it would break my heart to know. And my Abba could not do that to me. It must be the most caring and tender thing for Him to do, to have me to wait here and anticipate the participation in a glory that I glimpse now from the stadium of my soul.

I'm fine with being a goldfish, honestly. It's still wondrous to consider though. "I can only imagine." †