imperfect prose on thursdays: the one prayer i cannot pray

aiden is talking in full sentences now, so i’m trying to make Jesus a part of our regular vocabulary, and i am putting him to bed, asking him if he knows how much God loves him.

he stretches his arms out wide like a cross. “this much” he whispers. then i ask him where God lives, thinking he’ll point to his heart because we’ve done this before. but he keeps pointing to my eyes. over and over. and i hope it’s because he sees Christ, there.

one night when i was at the wild goose festival, i woke up to a baby crying, and i lay there in my tent, waiting for someone to pick that baby up but no one did, and then i unzipped the door and stood there in a sea of 1,000 coleman pop-ups, hearing this child sobbing and not knowing how to reach her. and finally someone must have picked her up. but that would be my personal hell, right there: hearing a child crying and not being able to comfort him or her.

and maybe this explains the one prayer i cannot pray. the one that surrenders my children.

i don’t know if i could have been abraham on top of that mountain holding a knife to my baby’s neck. no, i’m pretty sure i couldn’t have been. i would have rationalized that God doesn’t ask people to kill innocent children.

in the same breath i know that God asks some hard things of us, and even though he ushers the little children unto him in the new testament, he also allowed kings to murder entire cities full of babies under the age of two. not that it made him happy mind you, but he allowed it.

so i’m scared. i’m scared to say, thy will be done with my children–thy full, and complete will–because what if that means taking them from me? and i know a number of you, my dear readers, have experienced the passing of your child, and i don’t know that i would survive this. i told trent once, i think i would stop breathing.

i’m sure you who’ve lost your children have felt this way too. but somehow, you must keep breathing. i just cannot bring my mind or my prayers to go there. i want to be the one to save that crying child in that sea of tents.

i didn’t know i could love like this, i didn’t know i could protect and nurture and fight for the rights of anyone like this, but this is why we took in joey and jin, and why we offered to take in another woman’s baby at one point (she didn’t take us up on it, which is good, because like my last post stated, i am beyond weary) but don’t show me a suffering child, because i WILL take him or her home.

i ask aiden where God lives and he points to my eyes, and i wonder if it’s because he knows. i see God where i want to see him, but i don’t always let him into the deepest parts of me. into my heart. because then i might have to accept all of him. all of God, with his mystery and his holiness and i prefer thinking of God gathering us close like chicks, as it says in the Psalms, or knowing the number of hairs on our heads, or providing our daily bread.

not allowing his son to die on a cross, alone, for a world that despised him.

every wednesday and thursday, we gather together to celebrate redemption. here are the details:

1. link up a post (old or new) that you feel is ‘broken’ or ‘imperfect’ or somehow redemptive
2. put the ‘imperfect prose’ button at the bottom of your post, so others can find their way back here (see button code in right-hand column of my blog)
3. read other’s prose, and encourage them!

won’t you join us, here? in which we “walk each other home”? (ram dass)