Clean

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A year ago we were experiencing our last normal weekend and we didn’t realize it.

That is the thought I could not push from my head this morning as I sat in the back of our empty sanctuary, listening to our Pastor preach on John 2 13-22 – the passage where Jesus cleanses the Temple, pouring out the coins of the money-changers and throwing over their tables.

Bet they didn’t see that coming.

This morning’s message was titled “A Clean Sweep”, and it got me thinking about how we never see a true clean sweep coming. This is the time of year when people start to open their windows and try to rid the house of the extra weight of winter; we get rid of the things we have outgrown physically and emotionally and do it all in the name of “spring cleaning” – a fabulous thing to do.

There has certainly been a lot of literal cleaning over the last year, so says how infrequently I can buy antibacterial wipes at Costco these days.

But what about the cleanses we don’t have any control over? What about the things that come through suddenly and bring us to our knees, giving us no time to pick and choose what we hold on to?

We don’t usually think of those things as cleaning. We think of them as disasters and they almost certainly are.

But it is an interesting thought to explore, maybe. Because life is nothing if not cyclical, with endings and beginnings often pushed up so tight against each other it can be hard to tell them apart.

It is easy to miss the beginning when you are in the throws of mourning the end, but if you look closely you just might recognize it.

Something that is clean isn’t barren, even though they may look the same from a distance. Something that is clean is full of opportunity for an intentional regrowth. Something that is clean is at the beginning; ready to start again.

Laugh

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Laughter is the best medicine; I firmly believe that if some humor can be found in a situation it can save the day. In my relationships, in my house, in the classroom – I have long operated under the opinion that if I could get someone laughing, I could turn anything around.

Some people tell me I’m funny; I don’t know about that 😉 But I’m funny enough that this strategy has served me pretty well. We laugh a lot over here, and its a total blessing.

I have been thinking today about the way that Laughter comes up in the Bible. It is mentioned quite a few times and is an expression of everything from arrogance and pride to joy and exaltation. My mind immediately went to this – one of my favorite Biblical laughs:

11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.

12 Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?

13 And the Lord said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old?

14 Is any thing too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.

15 Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.

Genesis 18: 11-15

As a person who indulges in a fair amount of gallows humor myself, I have always really enjoyed the brutally honest – and terribly sarcastic – laugh that Sarah has when she hears this news. I know this laugh. Struggling to get and stay pregnant made Sarah one of the most relatable characters in the Bible for me. At every bump in our road someone was sure to tell me that I needed to have faith and that God would make a way for us. So truly – I know this laugh specifically.

But then, most of this blog is a love letter to the child I didn’t think would ever happen. So truly, I know her joy as well.

It is so easy to forget that we don’t know as much as we think we do. I laughed last week when Danny’s case manager told me everything was under control and he was going to be fine at school. I have dedicated the last 11 years to understanding Danny and nothing that I have learned allowed me to dream that “fine” would be possible. And then, delivered as promised, two perfectly adequate – if not wonderful – days in middle school rounded out his week.

I laughed 6 years ago when Steve suggested I start leading the pastoral prayer at the contemporary service; told him that there was absolutely no way I should be doing that even if I could. I did it; begrudgingly at first, then dutifully, then joyfully. As I stood in the service praying for his healing the Sunday before he died, I understood maybe for the first time what a gift he had given me.

I have laughed nearly every time that someone has suggested that our lives are going to get back to normal on the other side of all this chaos. I have prayed for it, I have enjoyed signs of gradual (even significant) improvement, I have reveled in the pandemic specific things we have learned about how to live the best life possible moving forward.

And still, I laugh.

Because I learn and scheme and research and observe, but forget to ask the most important question:

“Is any thing too hard for the Lord?”

Heart

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It has been a long week. All day long I have been looking for some kind of inspiration on this prompt and the only thing that has come to my mind is the hymn Near to the Heart of God.

There is a place of quiet rest,
near to the heart of God,
a place where sin cannot molest,
near to the heart of God.

Refrain:
O Jesus, blest Redeemer,
sent from the heart of God,
hold us, who wait before thee,
near to the heart of God.

2 There is a place of comfort sweet,
near to the heart of God,
a place where we our Savior meet,
near to the heart of God. [Refrain]

3 There is a place of full release,
near to the heart of God,
a place where all is joy and peace,
near to the heart of God. [Refrain]

Cleland Boyd McAfee

I was planning to just leave it at that. Sometimes someone has already said it well enough, and there isn’t anything to add.

But then I picked up the boys from school. I used one of my token 3 questions to ask Danny “How was English?”

To my surprise and delight, he turned to me and his face lit up. “It was great!” He told me that when he had finished his work, he took a break and drew a picture, “about how nice it is that Mrs. N helps me.”

And in that moment I was overwhelmed with gratitude. For his teacher, always, but also for the understanding that as we love and are loved here in these numbered days, we are never far from the heart of God.

Broken

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Today Danny headed off to his first day of Middle School v2.0, which is to say he went to the building itself for school for the first time.

If I am being completely honest, I didn’t see it coming. When we headed into the second semester still seeing high numbers of the virus, I truly thought he would be participating in distance learning for the entirety of his 6th grade year. I had made my peace with that, had even started to prefer it. After all, I know more about what is happening in his world right now than I have since he was 3 years old. (Danny has always lacked the functional language to really tell us what happens at school, and I can only count on asking about 3 specific questions before “he doesn’t know” how his day was and he did “nothing” in all of his classes.)

But however it came to be, today we found ourselves coming full circle. It has been one week short of a year since I had to bring him home early from school out of an abundance of caution; he wasn’t so terribly ill, its just that there was this virus going around…

The next time he would set foot on those school grounds was to get his picture taken for his 5th grade promotion. The last time would be a month later, when we picked up his yearbook.

And then today; a shiny new backpack, a chrome book full of stickers, and his middle school hoodie. My precious vessel, once again out at sea.

Now begins the complicated work of finding the end of the line; hunting through the weeds of what I have not been able to hold together at home to find the place where the thread was severed nearly a year ago and tie it off. Maybe they will find it, but maybe they wont.

This isn’t the first time in his education that the thin line holding him in the space between thriving and deteriorating has broken. It has happened for many reasons, some that were in our control and many more that were not. And at every breaking point I have been filled with despair about what we would lose; what hard fought academic or behavioral gain was going to slip through the cracks while we tried to piece it back together. It isn’t an unreasonable fear; we’ve seen it happen. Data is the devil we know.

However, as sure as I am that important things have been lost, I am equally certain that we will find a way. We may not be able to finish the path we were on but soon enough we will start to see a new one come into focus. The collaborative effort of Danny has always been this way; broken, brilliant pieces, mended together to form the person he will become.

He is a mosaic of unconventional materials; a second grade musical, a fire alarm, a book worth reading, a field trip riding in the “good” busses.

The love of a teacher. And another. And another.

The dedication of a school that sought him through the wilderness.

A year at home with Mom.

His own stubborn grit.

He is a beautiful, unfinished piece of stained glass. And all of the difficult things shine such beauty on us now, we can never take a broken piece for granted.