I
have asked to be
Where
no storms come,
Where
the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And
out of the swing of the sea.
-Gerard Manly Hopkins
My
hair is in my eyes, my feet are numb with cold, and the tide won’t
stay still. In and out, in and out. I’ve always wanted to catch a
wave, to make it stop its rhythm.
A new
wave’s icy waters spill over my feet—too much! I run back. My
toes are cold now. I bury my hands in my pockets and shut my eyes to
the world. What can I see through this windy hair anyway?
Every
beach is an alter to the sea. But I'm a wimp. I don't want to be on
that alter. I complain about the smallness I feel and how wet I am.
This year I actually put down The Little Princess after two
pages because I knew what would happen. I couldn't stand it. I knew
her dad would leave. I knew
Ms. Minchin would turn into a ice-hearted White Witch. And
that was only a child's story! Obviously, I have a problem with
tension in stories and in my own life.
I
remember looking at the same stars Abraham saw and asking, “Why God?! Why!”
I was staring His promises right in the face and all I could feel was
overwhelmed by His bigness and how much I didn't like the way the
story was going. I was as face-to-face as I could get with God's goodness and I doubted it: "What about her pain? What about their trial? You gave these things - why? Why do You let this happen." The starry sky starred me down.
Little
children leave their sand castles as a sacrifice for Poseidon and he
eats them, slowly but surely, sometimes swallowing all at once. This
bothers me, but not the children at the beach. They forget about
their laborious creations and instead, delight in chasing the waves,
trying to touch and then not be touched by the devouring sea god.
When
we were younger, my sisters and cousins loved to chase the waves, but
I did not like the cold water. I normally stayed behind to keep the
waves away from the fortress. It was an important job. “Stay away!”
I would say, waving my plastic cup, “Or else…I’ll pour you back
into the ocean!” And somehow I believed my methods worked.
*
* *
We've
practiced our hallway behavior quite a bit – the only choices are
to sit crisscross applesauce
or stand straight and tall in line order. But that would be a calm
sea. That's not how God works. Wait for it. Wait for the waves to
come.
Today
in the hall, instead of zen-meditating, crisscross-sitting
little boys, I found two floppy forms
sprawled out on the hall floor like Peter Pan's shadow. Not really
what I expected to see when I turned the corner. Hey, buckaroo. You
know better. Hello? Haven't I trained you to a certain standard?
Don't you know my expectations?
This
fall, the sprinklers had to get blown out at recess - that was God's
story. “Stay away
from the sprinklers.” To some boys that meant, “Stay a few inches
away and feel free to put your hand in the sprinkler.” I waited and
watched. One of them got to sit out a bit, but I was sure the rest
would get the point after this example. I watched and waited. One of
the boys was watching and waiting too. Until he had my eye contact. As
soon as our gaze met, he inched nearer and nearer the spraying
sprinklers, eyes still locked on me. “Watch me. Just. Watch. Me.”
We
practiced obedience. We've run through the consequences. Why isn't
that enough? Why don't all these rules and all this practice fix
the problem? Why won't you – boy, girl,
child - just obey. Like Paul said, “the law
entered that the offense might abound,” (Rom. 5:20). The law does
not save. The rules do not save. The teacher, does not save.
One particular day
after school, I went to the bathroom and closed the stall door behind
me, wanting, hoping I could just weep. A dozen names on the board - a
pain deeper than I had know even for my own sin. Here was the sting,
here was the pain – the sin of others. It is a dagger that
cuts and twists with the turning of the hilt. I never had so strong a
sensation of the grief of sin, or as Paul calls it, “the sting of
death.”
How the Father must
have felt bitter anguish over each of His children's sins, and how
Jesus tasted the venom and swallowed the serpent whole, I cannot
fathom. Here was my taste of the poison. I was pained, weary from
their sin toward each other. I closed the door - I closed out the
children, the problems, and the confusion. I wanted to crouch into a
ball on the cold stone floor and weep, I wanted to enter God's throne
room and show Him my tears. “Listen to me, Dad! Abba, I need You to
hear this! Hear my supplications - see me! See me.”
I could not weep.
Not a tear. Not a sound. Nothing.
For all I had closed
out, I had not counted on what I had closed inside. Myself. There I
was, and there I was because I couldn't do it. And my Maker
left me there without a hearing, without a word on my mouth because I
would not see the log in my own eye. I was pruning
down their selfishness, but unwilling to cut down my own. I expected
God to change these little people, but through me,
according to my standard, and in my time. Right now,
actually.
There was my dixie
cup and the sea, yet I could not see the impossibility, stupidity -
blaspheme - of my solution: I could not save these children, I could
not control them, I could not be rid of my anguish until I realized
it was not up to me. At all.
After all, wasn't it
He who bore the cross and carried our anguish to the grave? Was it
not He who conquered death with life. There is a better Teacher and a
higher law - Grace. “For what the law
could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by
sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh,” (Romans 8:3).
I am completely
inadequate. Like a child on the beach fighting the waves. Like the
disciples with weary eyelids, hungry bellies, no food, and a starving
multitude on their hands, I am inadequate. But He says, “My grace
is sufficient for you. How many loaves do you have?”
I will count the
loaves and give them to my Father. He will break them. He will
feed the multitude.
* * *
I sit
here, where the land meets the sea, battered by the waves, but still
trying to catch them. Not because I can, but because He put me here
near the wind and the waves. I'm trying to be like Noah and like
Sarah, I'm trying to be in the “swing of the sea.”
Often,
I do not see the haven or the heavens. I only see the swell of the
tide as it encroaches on everything I seem to have under control. I
see impossibility, defeat, and the wind whipping my hair over my
eyes. But still, I stay here because I can do nothing without Him and
He has called me here to become a child again by training children to
see Him.
I will
learn to love the repeating rhythm to and from the edge of something
great and terrible, something much bigger than myself. I will frolic
in the icy waters and chase the fingers of the sea, laughing and
falling and laughing. I will play without a care, and forget that my
toes are cold. Laughter will teach me to face the spit and spray of
the seas with joy, for that is what I am here to do. I am here to be
a child and laugh with Jesus at the wind and the waves.
