writing – walkwithme413

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.”

Pick me up, our toddler girl gestures with chubby arms aloft.

Pick me up, Jesus, because I’m just not sure I can do this again.

Yet I have to believe that You believe I can.

Ten

On the evening of our final end-of-year meetings, our school community gathers to celebrate. It’s been a sweet year, one marked by fewer, smaller conflicts, where our credo We will know your boys and love your boys rang spectacularly true.

I looked forward every day to seeing my students, trying to teach them skills, sharing laughs at table, cheering them on.

That night, our Head of School shares a list of milestones, and my name is read (along with his own) to commemorate 10 years of service to our school. It is, of course, cliche to say It does not seem possible, and yet, here I am.

Ten years.

Though my brain ages, I am able to command it yet to think about those first few months, ten years ago.

Shattered raw from my son’s accident, I moved into the space he had inhabited only years earlier. It was grace to be able to work alongside his former teachers, gaze at his old team photos, find his name etched in pencil on the bottom of a drawer (naughty boy).

Say his name to those who knew him.

If I were to do the math, in those ten years, I have taught hundreds of students, known thousands more.

They are men now, boys no more.

Forever 22, my son will never meet these brothers of his. Never rove his old haunts, stand at fence on the new turf field, give an alumni tie to the next class of boy.

On this day, the 28th of May, the wind swirls as I write. Seeds soar through the air outside. Papers blow to the floor.

It feels like change.

What is ahead, I cannot know.

This world – this shining, heavy, glorious world – is not my home.

It was never his.

If we are lucky, alert, we may catch a glimpse of what is to come.

Not ten years, but an eternity.

He’s waiting there now.

Good Girl

I didn’t want to write this post.

In fact, I’ve been waiting the last few weeks, hoping, praying that I wouldn’t have to, wouldn’t feel that I must.

But no amount of walking the neighborhood, no matter how loudly I call her name or how many times I look at the door, scour the woods, despite the signs I tacked to telephone poles or the pictures I posted on Facebook, the chasing down of false leads or speaking to strangers, I have to finally admit: she’s gone.

My sweet, constant, loud, fuzzy sidekick has disappeared.

Yes, I know – she’s just a cat, a pet and not a child. That is a truth I wish I didn’t know as well as I do.

And yet…

I got my good girl the summer of another disappearance, the summer the one I had trusted with my heart broke covenant and walked away.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, the tiny kitten we invited into our home would become a timekeeper for whenever I thought back to that awful summer.

How old is she?

How long have I been alone?

Children aged and flew; I sold our too-big house, got a job, came to terms, felt the wounds slowly scab.

Through it all, at the end of the day, there was always one face waiting for me when I opened the door.

She moused the house and chased chipmunks in the yard. Hid under the bed when the grands came to visit, destroyed more couches than I care to admit, woke me up when I wanted to sleep. She insisted I brush her by falling underfoot, endured the scissors when her long fur clumped. Her favorite perch was atop the couch, eye-level with me as I watched or read, absent-mindedly scratching her ears as she purred. She was a sucker for an empty box.

She was a good girl.

I try not to think about the scratch marks I find on the porch stairs, the lone tuft of fur.

What took you? You must have been so scared.

I try not to look at her silly toys.

The treats she no longer needs.

Yes, I know.

I know she was just a pet.

But she was my pet, the one live thing that has kept company with me all these years.

She was a love. My good good girl.

Home

Today, on my son’s would-be 30th birthday, I pull out the photo albums and invite in the grief.

It doesn’t sting as it once did, nearly eight years after he’s been gone, though the ache is still sharp.

Not kitchen-shears sharp, capable of precise severing, leaving edges crisp and clean; no, perhaps more like a pair of training scissors in the hand of a toddler, tearing and catching indiscriminately as it kidnaps the day.

I gaze at the years gone by and lament all the photos we will never take.

There is a limited number of pictures to sit with, and the inventory will never change.

Of course, our lives go on, as they must. Baby showers, new employment, holidays, and mountains climbed.

All the while, he’s still stuck, smiling out from the old gloss and reminding us of the power of a heart given over to love.

There’s housekeeping to be done here, stewarding those things he’s left behind.

I was reminded earlier this week, walking back from study hall under a misty moon, of the power of home. The air held little bite, but it was dark as I approached my empty house. I had been gone all day, busy with my fleet of middle school boys, and had not left on any lights. Body and mind were tired, ready to shift from duty to ease.