Back to school last week, and with the return, a new season of life for our family.
Jason’s teaching now at Stoughton High and we are very aware of the miracle this is, finding a job in the current employment climate. The commute is changing our life here on the South Shore—he’s now driving 10-15 minutes each way instead of 45-90 minutes to Lynn. Now I get to see him in the mornings, and he’s here in the afternoons for the boys’ homework marathons…such a wonderful change for our family.
Orilus has begun 7th grade, moving from the upper elementary school in our town to the junior-senior high. He’s made the move in typical Orilus fashion—without fanfare, with an aura of coolness, and with hilarious amounts of entitlement. He’s playing for the JV soccer team there, and for the first time today will be riding the bus with his team to his first game—45 minutes away at a high school near Rhode Island. Mom is trying to breathe as her little boy grows up.
Jackson’s started 6th grade, the top of the heap at the upper elementary school. He’s handled the change to a junior high schedule (changing classes, keeping a binder) in his typical way—lots of anxiety masked with quiet. He’ll be playing some town soccer this fall, and mostly, I think, hanging out with Moriah as much as he can. She is, hands down, the joy of his heart.
The changes for the boys have brought a new and better tenor to our household. Orilus now leaves a ½ hour earlier to walk to school in the mornings, giving me some precious time with Jackson and Moriah and taking away the competitiveness and mean spiritedness that had sometimes crept into a morning-before-school with the boys. Orilus gets home a ½ hour earlier, giving me time to hear about his day and help him organize his binder and homework before he goes out to play before he actually does his homework. When Jackson walks in the door from biking home, Orilus is outside, and I get more time with Jackson to hear about his day, check his homework agenda. I’m feeling like these gifts of time one-on-one with each of them have a lot of potential to help them to settle in to their new routines this year, and to continue to help them to learn how to be family.
I’ve also begun a new schedule this week. Tuesday nights I’m teaching a CAGs (post-master’s) class at UMass Boston. Thursday nights I’m taking a class, returning after a year leave to my doctoral program. Saturday mornings I’m teaching a writing course at Massasoit Community College. That, plus working a few hours a week for my professor (she’s publishing a book this year) and working with Gordon College to launch a new course in urban education…these are my fun projects for the semester. Somehow, I’m going to fit my homework, lecture prep, and work with my professor into Moriah’s life, which so far includes daily therapies of all kinds with me, 3-6 appointments a week, and general joy, laughter, and fun. It’s not a bad life, to be home all day with Moriah and still have time to do things outside of family that I love, too.
Mostly, I’m feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude. A year ago, we were counting Moriah’s respirations per minute, watching her gasp for air, listening to fluid build in her lungs and her heart fail. A year ago, we were anticipating open heart surgery. Thoughts of academia—a return to a career, or to a doctoral program—seemed so far removed that they made me laugh (or cry) bitterly. Last night, driving to UMass, I wanted to pinch myself. To think that such pain brought such joy, that such anxiety planted seeds of peace, that such grief grew into new avenues of work and living and health. A year ago, I would have mocked anyone who told me that God could do such a thing, could make something good out of a year that was suddenly so awful. Last night, I could have pinched myself, it seemed so unbelievable. That’s grace, I suddenly thought. So surreal. So. Grace.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
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?
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?
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