Now. Here. This

For the second time, I owe the title of a blogpost to Father Gregory Boyle. Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship is the latest collection of stories from his work with Homeboy Industries, the largest gang rehabilitation programme in the world. It is a beautiful and challenging read. In one particular chapter, Boyle speaks about the necessity of embracing the current moment, rather than always rushing on to the next one.

This is something that I am astonishingly bad at.

I live in the next moment almost all of the time. I am always waiting for a time that isn’t now for something to happen that hasn’t happened yet: for my daughter to sleep through the night, for the day when I’m not tired, for a job I really love that gives me meaning and purpose. I am constantly on the lookout for the thing that will complete me, or at least bring a greater sense of satisfaction than I currently have.

That isn’t to say that I’m not happy – there is so much in my life that I have to rejoice in –but I am restless. Part of this restlessness is, I’m sure, due to life stage. The transition from working full time to full time mumming it has not been an easy one for me, and I find it hard to dwell happily in the present moment when the present moment often consists of mundanity, tantrums and various bodily functions. But, I do not think restlessness is only due to life with two small children. It is a way of thinking, and a way of life, that I seem unable to shake off.

And yet these past few weeks I have been trying. I have been choosing to dwell in the present moment and to celebrate it rather than holding out for a future moment that might never happen. This does not come easily to me, but children are great teachers (or at least Jesus seemed to think so) and I have been letting my two year old school me in the art of being fully here. 

On Monday we walked to the library. This should take 15 minutes, 10 if you walk at my usual hurried pace, but I had let Sarah walk and so we were not going to get there any time soon. Sarah, like most two year olds, stops for every, single thing that interests her: tree, leaf, flower, crack in pavement, lamp post. Everything. Each thing is to be seen and held and marvelled at. And most of the time, this does my head in because, most of the time, I have somewhere else I think I need to be, some other moment I am trying to rush off to. But Sarah does not live life like this. She lives life in the present. And to her, most of the time, the present is a thing of glory and of wonder.

During our overly long walk to the library I was about to lose my rag when I spotted a sign in a window that said, “Live the life you love.” And in that moment, God spoke to me gently and reversed the words, “No. Love the life you live.” For many of us, we do not choose the life that we have. We do not choose the family or postcode we are born into. We do not choose our circumstances or opportunities. It is an impossibility – as much as the world might tell us otherwise – to simply start living a life that we love, to have the dream job, and salary, and family. Thus, to have the life we always wanted to live - that we would love to live – is beyond us. And yet, what is not beyond us is to choose to be present in the life that we have, the life that we are already living, and celebrate the joy of it, savouring every pink tinged leaf, and white striped feather.

Boyle puts it this way, “If your anchor is not centred in today, then you’ll blink and miss the delight of this very moment.” This is not to say, of course, that there aren’t some moments which are not delightful, that there aren’t seasons of pain and sorrow, but it is to say that the present is a moment in which to seek joy, rather than assuming that it is only available in the future. The present is also a moment in which we can choose whether or not to acknowledge God. Whether or not to embrace his presence and his goodness. Whether or not to tilt our faces upwards to the sun and say thank you.

On that afternoon wander in the vague direction of the library with the autumn sun golden above the rooftops, I was able – as I so often am not – to do this: to stop and look back towards Sarah, with her hands and pockets crammed full of coloured leaves, and love the life I was living and the gifts I had been given. To love that moment, and to live fully inside it, without waiting for something better to eclipse it. 

Here.

Now.

This.

The Father's Sadness

For the past few weeks, I have lamented the loss of intimacy in my relationship with Jesus. I have been starved of conversation with him and yet, incapable and – if I’m honest – unwilling, to do anything that might change that.

This week I ended up in a teary puddle on the floor after waging a war of wills with my toddler. In that place of desperation, Jesus spoke. Or, perhaps more accurately, I was forced into a place where I could hear him speaking.

Sarah has hit the terrible twos with a vengeance. She is brilliant. Remarkably bright, funny, thoughtful, compassionate. But with the iron stubbornness of a donkey. I doubt it is possible to meet a more will-full toddler. Unless, of course, you knew me as a child. It had been a week of tantrums and, on Wednesday, it all came to a head in my attempt to put her down for a nap. I’d been wrestling with something flu-ish all week and was definitely not at the top of my parenting game, but her outright defiance and mean spiritedness floored me (metaphorically and literally) and we both ended up in an angry, crying heap on her bedroom floor.

Sarah had been screaming at the top of her lungs for over half an hour but when I cried she suddenly stopped, came over, looked directly at me and said, Mummy, you sad? It took a serious amount of will power not to throw a sarcastic comment back in her little, scrunched up face, but instead I nodded and we sat together for a while being sad. And, as we did, God spoke. This is what I feel like. This is what sin makes me feel.

A few minutes later, with Sarah now sleeping, I came downstairs and ended up in another teary mess. When Sarah doesn’t listen to me, the jumble of emotions is difficult to disentangle: I am cross at her defiance, frustrated by my failure to implement a successful parenting strategy but, most of all, I am sad. I am sad that we’re not friends. I am sad that our relationship deteriorates so quickly. I am sad that we both say, and feel things, about the other that aren’t true. I am sad that she stops looking at me as her mother and sees me as some kind of opponent. My insides feel red, and raw and bruised, like someone is squeezing the life out of some organs, or turning my skin inside out. The grief and anger is physical.

And this is how God feels.

All. The. Time.

On a cosmic scale, God is sad. He is saddened by the fractured relationship between Him and his children, by the faces of children that no longer view him as a loving father but as an opponent. As someone to be resisted and ignored, to be defied and shunned. Parenting is emotional business, but the depth of my emotions is nothing compared to that of God the Father.  

But, not only is God’s sadness so much greater than mine, it is purer too. In parenting my children, my motives are skewed. I like to think that my parenting of them is intended for their good (and, in the most part, it sincerely is) but there is something else going on too: when Sarah defies me – especially if that defiance happens to be in public – my response to her is for her good (I want to discipline her well and put good boundaries in place so that she grows up to be the kind of person who accepts responsibility for her actions) but it is also about what I perceive to be good for me: I don’t want to lose face. I don’t want to be embarrassed by my daughter. I want others to think that I have this parenting malarkey nailed. There is a muddying of motive that means that, hard as I try, I make the wrong parenting decisions. I respond in the wrong way.

God is not like this. He is perfectly pure. In his parenting of us, He always acts for our flourishing. The boundaries that God puts in place are not there to satisfy him, or to make Him look good; they are there for us; they are there to ensure that we become the people we are intended to be, that we live the life that is fully life (1 Timothy 6:19) in communion with others and the planet.

As I sat on the floor of my living room, still sad because of Sarah, but now also sad because I felt like God had given me a taste of his own sadness, the sorrow that he carries when his children opt out of relationship with him, I told Him that I didn’t have what was necessary to be Sarah’s Mum – that I couldn’t parent her in the way that she needed, that I couldn’t guarantee that my choices and decisions were always going to be for her good. And, again, God spoke and he said two things. Firstly, that he made me to be Sarah’s Mum, and, secondly, that I was equipped for the job.  

In that moment I was reassured by the first, but unsure of the second. I had never felt less equipped to be Sarah’s mum. God directed me to 2 Peter 1:3-4. “His divine power has given us everything we need for a Godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us through his own goodness and glory. Through these he has given us His very great and precious promises so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

And the word that caught my attention was “knowledge.” The way to get what I need, the way to be equipped is to know the one who equips. I do not have what is necessary to be a mum in and of myself but I know the one who does. I am not enough. He is. My natural tendency, in moments like Wednesday, is to wallow in my own inadequacy. To lament my parenting failures. To resolve to do better next time. But that is the wrong approach. I am more inadequate than I think I am. My heart and motives are more skewed than I think they are. (Jeremiah 17:9) And whilst that seems pretty good cause to wallow, it will get me nowhere. Instead God tells me to look at him. To look at his goodness and his glory. To look at the tender, beautiful perfection of his parenting. And to embrace the reality that he has joined me to himself.

In the Greek, the word for “participate” in verse 4 means one who mutually belongs or shares in something. I am a shareholder in the perfect parenting resources of the heavenly Father. Everything that the Father has he shares with me. (Luke 15:31) But access to such a gift comes only through looking to Him rather than to myself. Through knowing, and trusting, that he is acting for my good, and the good of my children, even when I don't. 

Sarah do it herself

I hear these words several hundred times every day. They are my toddler's absolute favourite sentence, and sentiment. She is beautifully, terrifyingly independent and refuses help at anything and everything - things she could perhaps do on her own and things she definitely can't. There is something wonderfully endearing about her perseverance, but I am also endlessly frustrated by it. Sometimes, Sarah is so cross at her inability to do something that she grits her teeth and screams at the top of her lungs. And no amount of offering by me to intervene in the situation will do.

Sarah do it herself.

In these moments, I try to remain calm and repeat quietly that I want to help; that there is nothing wrong with needing help; that it isn't possible to go through life without relying on other people. But occasionally - especially when what Sarah is attempting to do is impossible for any 2 year old no matter how determined - I find myself wanting to shout right back into her red, angry, little face. Just let me help you. I want to help you.

But. No. Sarah do it herself.

In one such moment a couple of weeks ago, I felt the gentle (rather violent) nudge of the Holy Spirit. Ehem. This is just how I feel. I want to help you. Just let me help you.
But. No. Nic do it herself.

This morning was a case in point. Last night I left my coat in the boot of the car. In the pocket of my coat was my house keys and the car keys. And so, this morning, just after announcing to both my girls that we were off to the library I realised that everything we needed to do that (pram, sling, coats, changing bag) was in the boot of the car along with what was needed to open the boot of the car. Life fail. Not only were these things necessary for a now-postponed library trip, but they were also pretty necessary to just get through the rest of the day with two under two - especially because, by this point, the youngest had been crying intermittently for an hour. It wasn't long before Sarah and I joined her.

The day was not going well.

But. Nic do it herself. And so, instead of thinking about how I might ask someone else to help me in this slightly ludicrous situation I summoned up all reserves of gumption and determined that it was going to be fine: we could definitely get ourselves (admittedly kicking and screaming) through the day without any help from anyone else. Thank you very much.

A few minutes later I spoke to my husband on the phone, who had his key and therefore the needed mechanism to get into the car and resolve all problems, who calmly, and simply, suggested that one of our many friends could drive to his work (only 5 minutes away) and pick up the key to give to me. Such is my obsession with self-sufficiency (I wonder where my toddler gets it from) that this very simple plan had not even occurred to me. Nic do it herself, remember?

There is something deep within me that is terrified of asking for help. Some fear of losing face, of admitting that, actually, things are a bit tough and I could do with an extra pair of hands, of allowing myself to acknowledge that, perhaps, I am not coping as well as I might. I don't think I am the only one who thinks this way.

And the problem is that such a way of thinking is kind of antithetical to a faith that is built on trusting. That is built upon the foundation of dependence, of admitting that I need help, that I cannot do this life on my own and was never meant to. Our society idolises Independence and self-sufficiency.

Jesus doesn't.

My friend Taryn - a beautiful singer-songwriter - puts in rather wonderfully in one of her songs.

Oh, my soul, get over yourself
Let it go, admit that you don't have it all together
Cast your burden over a cliff
Let your fists unclench, your heart beat light as a feather
Light as a feather

I'm leaning, oh, I'm leaning on you
Leaning, oh, my striving days are through
Looks like I'll be leaning for a while
Yeah this independence has gone out of style.

And so as I aim to teach my daughter that self-sufficiency ain't all it's cracked up to be, I shall try and learn that lesson for myself: Nic, ask for help because He wants to help you; He is waiting to help you.

This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it..."

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you...

How gracious he will be when you cry for help! 

As soon as he hears, he will answer you. (Isaiah 30:15, 18, 19)