Lessons from a Little

She came to my daughter’s house late one night, a tiny tugboat of a girl, bird-boned and face-scabbed from some yet-unknown less-than-benign neglect.

I’ve been watching her.

From the very beginning, it seemed her arms, her heart were open to whatever new presented itself. She is fearless, sweet, unabashedly inclined to ask for aid.

She’s not the first foster my daughter’s family has taken in, but she is quickly becoming my favorite.

I sense there is a lot I can learn from her.

Stuck in a washer of injury/rehab/recover/repeat, I understand now why the cycle is called vicious, and I desperately crave an exit.

I have to admit the days since being forced off-trail have not been my best.

Days were spent at a Super 8 willing my legs to heal, ordering takeout and coming to terms.

Once at home, turtling in on myself, indulging in obstructive self-pity, railing at God and whatever this thing is that He thinks He’s doing. Wondering, like Saint Teresa of Avila, if this is how You treat your friends, God, is it no wonder You have so few?

Yikes.

But then – I look at this little and see how unbothered she is by her own novel circumstance. She does not protest the food she is offered, the new crib where she sleeps, or the hours she is asked to spend outside.

She is part of the fabric of this busy family, for now, until her own can mend and take her back.

I recently read how Jesus tells his disciples, his friends, that they must count the cost of following Him: “hold no opinions, make no demands, retain no privileges, abandon all cherished sins, worldly possessions, and secret self-indulgences,” as the footnote in my translation reads.

Without reservation or question? Really?

Impossible.

Yet knowing what weak-willed, selfish creatures we are, unable to say no to ourselves, I am not surprised to turn the page and see the very next parable Jesus tells them.

The lost lamb.

He knows our sheep-nature will lead us to bracken, cliff, and hole; but He chases us anyway, lifts us up anyway, brings us back anyway, to start anew.

O Savior, how do you not weary of us?

Like my small friend, maybe it’s time to quietly pick up my cross.

Open my arms and heart, bravely face the changes I never asked for, temper my rebellious and immoderate spirit, ask for the help my Father is ever poised to give.

If this small slip of a soul can fierce the unknown, and do it with such calm and trust, then so can I.

So can you.

O Captain! my Captain! When will this fearful trip be done?

We cannot know nor see.

And perhaps that is best. Had I known I would be back here, injured and alone, so soon after the last time, I’m not sure I could have borne it. Knowing the work ahead, exacting heart work that, apparently, desperately needed to be done.

As quickly as the trial comes, it may, perhaps, just as swiftly, depart. I think of Paul and Silas in prison, singing and praying an earthquake into being.

Friends, multiplying joy and dividing sorrow.

Prayer, working, as Spurgeon once observed, as “the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence.”