The irony of my life is that four to five months ago I was
reading books about marriage. Then I got unengaged. Now—and I just have to
laugh—I am reading books about parenting.
Don’t worry. Breathe easy. I’m not pregnant. And the books
I’m reading are really more about leadership, discipleship, shepherding, and
mentoring. I’m reading to decipher this nearly invisible line between
boundaries and control. Because that’s my weak spot—control. And I just came
out of an environment where that was the theme song. And I desperately don’t
want it to repeat its theme even subtly buried in the score of my own musical performance.
Yet sometimes I sit there, trying desperately to puzzle it out and can’t quite
figure the most life-giving thing to do. Is this a moment for silence or input,
grace or boundary, comfort or feedback? A mentor told me last week (laughing as
she did so) that God would continue to put circumstances into my life where I
couldn’t control. And He is. In the artistry of His severe mercy that is
exactly what He is doing.
I don’t have any children. But I do have these girls—these
women—living with me who are mine to love, mine to lay my life down for in
friendship, laughter, and midnight bouts of tears. Mine to serve and brainstorm
with, to tackle a high school diploma (and party till there’s serious lack of
sleep when that sealed document arrives in hand) with, to go down a river with,
to set up a house with, to ask questions, and get to do life with.
And when I say mine,
you must cancel out all connotations of possession or rights or control. And
you must add in the connotations of family, loyalty, and being honored to
serve. They are mine and I am theirs because they have made me laugh, and
watched me break up with a man I thought I loved, and held my hand as I
grieved, and created dance parties where the required attire was donated
grandmother-issue purple pants, and tag-teamed the death of a possum in the hen
house, and not hated me when I pushed them away, when I forgot to read them
bedtime stories or make dinner or help them fix a dress because I was too busy
swearing at God. We are each other’s because God saw fit to pull us together
from unlikely corners of the country with our threads of broken stories and
weave us together into a rag-tag kind of extra-special family.
And I’m not in this family because I deserve it or because I
know what I’m doing or because I have something inspirational to offer them.
They are mine because—for some crazy reason or another—they have chosen to
trust me and want to spend some life with me. And I them. And I am blessed.
Yet with that kind of blessing also comes pain. The pain of
the possibility of watching them get hurt. That’s where it becomes easy to
control. Because here’s what happens in my brain. There’s this person I love. I
live with them. I watch them. I see pain within them. They make a decision or
lifestyle choice because of that pain and my brain throws up a red-alert, like
a flashing red light attached to an annoyingly loud buzzer that goes off in a
factory when there’s danger. And my brain’s first reaction is to try to get
that buzzer to shut up. Enter control. Oh wait. STOP. Wrong story. That’s a story
where fear gets the upper hand, where I stop loving and start valuing results
over people. Been there. Experienced that. No thank you.
REWIND. Enter perfect love. The kind I don’t possess, but
the kind God does, the One who has every detail of the universe balanced on the
tip of His eyelash. He’s got this. I just get to rest and watch and be myself
and let others be their selves. I get to get up every morning and ask Him how
He wants me to partner with Him and be surprised at what I receive in return. And
yep, we all stumble over our lines and trip across the stage a time or two or
twenty. But the stage hasn’t moved and the audience of One still awaits. And
every day I have forty-two moments or so when I get to remind myself of all of
this, lay down the stress, and keep enjoying life. Because I have some amazing
people to enjoy life with.
Absolute control is abuse. But so is absolute freedom. And
somewhere in the middle is a perfect cocktail of discipleship, boundaries, and
grace. Somewhere in the middle is family and life and a messy finger-painted
masterpiece of a mysterious story that has me sitting on the edge of my seat as
it unfolds. Somewhere in the middle is a space where I don’t get it perfect,
but I grow and people forgive me, and I learn to navigate it a little bit
better than the last time. And the hand of God’s severe mercy brings a
celebration of joy handed round in goblets fashioned of redemption. Cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment