paradoxes

Our family returned last night from Joni & Friends Family Retreat in Greenfield, NH. The week--our family vacation for the summer--proved to be our summer (our year's?) highlight. I found that the week was full of paradoxes, and when I think about Christianity, I find those paradoxes there, and this did much to renew my faith again. Let me explain.

Each of our children was assigned a volunteer this week--a teenager or adult who "took charge" of our kids each morning, and for a couple hours in the afternoon, accompanying them to their various activities. For the boys, sports-games-crafts-boating-archery-fishing; for Moriah, daycare and lots of activities (music, reading, play time) there. The volunteer assigned to Orilus was a man named Bob who was born with short arms. Because the volunteers ate meals with our family, we got to know Bob a bit, too. Now picture this: you know Jason, and how driven he is to serve, to do the little things (like getting the food from the kitchen window, clearing plates, wiping the table down). Bob refused to allow Jason to get up from his seat for any "work" during mealtimes. It was painful for Jason (and for me) to watch Bob struggle at times to do what comes easily to us (get a plate off the table, carry the food, serve us, pour our drinks). We wanted so badly to step in and be helpful! But this week I encountered the paradox of Bob over and over in so many people...that weakness is often the greatest service, because it is a greater gift of grace to be served by those who struggle than by those who are able. It made me think of Jesus, of the ways we encounter him as a "suffering servant" in Scripture. I wondered about his own appearance (the Scriptures tell us he wasn't much to look at) and wondered for the first time if he had a disability (did he walk with a limp? have an arm that didn't work well? a backache?). And I thought of myself, of course, and all the "disabilities" I have (my pride probably being my greatest weakness, and my lack of patience and critical spirit and sore back and...). In the end, we are broken people serving as best we can, loving as best we can, and getting to know a Jesus who showed us that suffering, not perfection, is a particular way we encounter God in this life. This week, I began to see that Jesus served us with short arms, following a way that was not easy, so that we could more fully grasp how wide God's arms, perfect and strong, must really be.

Other paradoxes this week? The mixture of tears and laughter. The doubts we shared with other families about our faith and yet...the strength we found in God just by being together. The frustration we share with a Church that doesn't understand us, and the love we felt by being "Church" together and coming to know each other's stories. The people with disabilities who were full of joy and those who were able bodied (one of our own kids an example of this) who were struggling every day just to be kind and have a good attitude. One child confined to a wheelchair who has every reason to be bitter at God, but who finds a way to praise and thank God (at one point, playing a triangle with his feet during a song).

The week's theme this week was a verse from Scripture that talks about God being able to do "immeasurably more" than all we ask or imagine. And I said to Jason before we left that I wondered how this would get translated among a community of disability. Obviously God hadn't done "immeasurably more" for them (for us), right? He didn't heal. He didn't keep our kids from getting a special need, a deformity, a disability. I don't have answers to a lot of the mysteries of God's waiting, or seeming absence, or witheld hand. But this week I saw the theme lived out in other ways...that God is immeasurably more grace, and love, and peace than we need. That he can provide us with friendships--old and new--that are immeasurably more comforting than we expected. That we can hear familiar Scriptures recast in ways that are immeasurably more applicable and needed than we imagined.

I've got a lot of such Scriptures to think about, but one of the greatest I'm going to think a lot about in the coming days is this one...Peter's just been told by Jesus that he is loved, loved, loved (three times). And then Jesus (why is he always so unpredictable?) tells Peter he's going to die a martyr's death on a cross. To which Peter says, what about John (his friend)? And Jesus says, whatever happens to him, even if he never dies, what's it to you? You follow me. And our pastor for the week said this...some of us experience life, and yes, even life with Jesus, as a crucifixion--we feel we are being tortured with tacks, and that nails would even be a reprieve. Others we see around us get a good life (John gets exiled to a beach-y island). "We get the cross, our friends get the beach," Pastor Dave said. Ah, yes, how this has angered me so much this year! How it has hindered me from running my own race of life! Jesus reminded me this week: "What's it to you?! YOU follow me."

So, friends, we are home today with a renewed passion to run the race marked for US. It's been a less predictable, and more suffering-filled life than we thought. But this week confirmed that there are others who are "getting the cross, and not the beach." We are not alone. And we are especially not alone because we are loved by a God who walked the way to a cross--really, truly, in real life--and suffered, and cried, and felt pain. He was disabled for me, He loved me that much.

Is there any greater paradox than that?

new milestones

Moriah started scooting yesterday! She's now mobile in ways other than rolling and pivoting. Watch out!

And she also started using 2 new signs this week..."all done," and "milk."

Seems like since her first birthday she is really changing so quickly!

look what Moriah can do!