Love Lay Down

I used to think that superheroes wore capes. I used to think that success meant that you were better at something than everyone else. And I used to think that love meant making one big sacrifice instead of a thousand little ones.

But I was wrong.

“Mamaaaaaaa…”

I close my eyes and mouth the words even as they reached my ears.

“Can I have a snack?”

Are we serious. It’s not as if you haven’t eaten once every 27 minutes of this very day.

“Mamaaaa…Averi Kate pooped on the floor.”

Really.

“Mamaaaa…”

There is that. And there is the newborn cry that I don’t have in my house right now, but don’t think for a moment that I’ve forgotten the absolute desperation of wanting to roll over in bed and pretend like I didn’t hear it.

And then there is the clashing of the grown up wills. The urge to burn all the random, half-rolled up socks that I find in every crevice of the house. The compulsion to have the last word in every argument. The tendency to hold every unfulfilled desire against the man who cannot possibly meet them, as hard as he might try.

There is that. And then there is the feeling of being overwhelmed but not knowing why, because the most dramatic thing I did today was to prepare 1.2 million snacks.

And then there is this.

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

And in that sentence I find visions of martyrs, of soldiers who die for their neighbors’ freedom, of a Savior who drank the very cup of God’s wrath in my place.

And I think about the snotty noses and hungry tummies and bills and socks in my house and I think, I’m not there.

But then I keep reading, and I watch as the Son of God takes off His robe and bends down and washes the feet of His friends. His friends who don’t get it, His friends who will forsake Him and deny Him and betray Him. Who don’t appreciate the big sacrifice He’s going to make or the little one He’s making right now.

And then I see that laying down one’s life for one’s friends is completely relevant to my life right now.

To lay down my life is to lay down my rights, my pride, my wishes, to serve someone else. And it might culminate in one dramatic moment but more likely it will happen in a thousand moments every day. But the only way I can succeed in laying down my life is to look to the One who defined what love is, to be filled with the vision of Him, and to allow Him to shift my heart’s allegiance from pleasing myself to laying my desires at His feet.

So when I hear the call…

“Mamaaaa…”

Love lay down your life.

When I’m sick of doing dishes and laundry and cleaning up the same messes I cleaned up an hour ago…

Love lay down your life.

When I want the last word because I know I am right…

Love lay down your life.

Because I serve a Savior who already walked that road, and who is crafting a good work in me, and who is ready to show me that the only way to find my life is to lose it…

Love lay down your life.

*****

This is no call to self-fulfillment

Guarding self interest

Or raising self-esteem

Our God, He is a suffering servant

Who bears our burdens

And washes our feet

So love lay down

Love lay down

Love lay down your life

This is no ordinary kingdom

The first are last and

The weak are made strong

And in the moment we surrender

We find it’s sweeter

Than when we held on

Love lay down

Love lay down

Love lay down your life

So in the middle of the fight

Or in the middle of the night

The need is calling

Love lay down your life

And in your everyday

The bleak and the mundane

The need is just the same

Love lay down your life

When the sacrifice is great

I hear You calling out my name

Take up your cross and follow

Love lay down your life

And when we cannot bear the cost

We will behold You on the cross

Your love will never call us

To go where You have

Not already been

So make us one in Your suffering

That we might know You

And come to understand

That love lays down

Love lay down

Love lay down your life

The Value of a Life

I walked into the hospital room with two giggly girls hanging on my legs and saw her lying there.

“Hi Grandma, how are you feeling?”

She stared at me blankly, her finger tapping her chin. Always, always tapping her chin.

“The girls and I wanted to come see you. Do you remember my girls?”

Nothing.

“Are you feeling okay today?”

A pause, and then…“Yeah anaummumushiminishumish…”

“I know. I know.”

What is the value of a life?

I’ll tell you what it is not.

The value of a life is not the level of contribution it can make to society. It is not the amount of productivity it can achieve. It is not the sum of money or power or talents it possesses. The value of a life is not in its achievements or even its potential.

Because the value of a life is not centered on the life itself. It is centered on the Life-Giver.

Elohim.

The Creator.

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

A newborn baby, red and screaming and full of the breath of life. A curly headed toddler with her hand stuck in the toilet and full of grace and wonder. A child running through a field, full of reckless amazement and pleasure and youth. A teenager discovering how to navigate this life and full of questions and potential.  Moms and dads and businessmen and women, teachers, public servants, leaders, artists, all reflecting aspects of the image of the One who formed them from the dust and breathed life into them.

A baby yet unformed and maybe even unwanted but covered with the fingerprints of a loving Creator. A mentally challenged adult who will never be able to live on his own. The triathlete who wrecked his bike and is now a quadriplegic. My grandmother, 20 years down a road we call Alzheimer’s, unable to talk coherently or stand up and walk or even swallow her own spit, lying in a hospital bed with her finger tapping her chin and her eyes hazing over. All reflecting the great glory and grace and infinite love – the image of the One who formed them from the dust and breathed life into them.

My grandma used to cook the best macaroni and cheese in the entire universe, and I am not even stretching that truth. She was a nurse who took care of others and raised the man who taught me what it means to walk with God. She was full of potential and service and productivity and she made a difference.

And she breathed because the Life-Giver breathed into her.

And she still breathes that holy breath of life.

And I left that hospital room with the firmest conviction that my grandmother is just as valuable today as she has ever been.

Mean Mommy

I was mean mommy today.

My allergies decided they have been on vacation too long so, hello, they’re back. My babe decided to bust her lip on the dining room floor. And spill an unidentified black substance on my closet floor. And eat playdough. My big girl asked 1400 questions instead of her usual 800 today. And argued with every single thing I said.

I was tired. And frustrated. And sneezy.

And…Fail. Short words, irrational expectations of a three and one year old, “I’ve had it” attitude. The mommy threw the tantrums today.

.

I just wanted to get to bedtime. No, to get past bedtime.

And so I walked into her room, after a failed attempt to get her to sleep by driving 20 extra minutes on the way home from church, my feet dragging, hopeless, wishing for once in her life she would actually be ready to just lay her head down and go to sleep.

“Mama, guess what I am gonna say.”

Another demand, I am sure. “Oh, probably that you’re ready for me to sing a song.” As if it were a punishment, not an incredible blessing, to sing truth over my daughter at night.

“Okay but what else?”

Impatient sigh. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

She leaned her head into mine and whispered, “I love you, Mama.”

Stop. I didn’t deserve that. I was mean mommy today. I melted into her and whispered, broken, “I love you too.”

Oh but it didn’t stop there.

She rubbed her sweet hands on my back. “Is that pretty, Mama?”

Yes, baby. It’s beautiful.

She said, “I love you every day, Mama.”

Every day? Really?

“I love you very much and very much and very much and very much and very much…”

Showers. Showers of love.

“Why? Why do you love me so much?”

She cocked her head in a what-a-silly-question kind of way. “Because you’re my mama.”

I heard my Savior through the lips of my three year old tonight. At the end of my rope, self-condemned, and knowing that those who are in the flesh cannot please the Lord, I had forgotten the next line…

However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.

And the first line…

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And my Creator, through the lips of His created, whispered to my soul…

I love you.

I am undone.

I love you every day.

Oh God. Even on my mean days? Even when I am ashamed to stand before You?

I love you more than you can comprehend.

It’s so lavish, this love. It’s all around me. I don’t deserve it…

I love you…

Why, God? Why do You love me so much?

Because I made you.

Because my Son took your shame. 

Because you have embraced my Son. 

Because you are mine.

Lift Up Your Eyes

August 2005. New Orleans.

“Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” Psalm 34:19

I sat in a pew in the chapel and let those words roll over me. I heard power and confidence and promise in the voice of the big black preacher, as he emphasized every word. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all!” 

Amen. Yes. I agree with that.

I want to go to that man’s church, I thought. And I planned to, when my then-boyfriend came to visit from Georgia in just a couple of weeks, on Labor Day weekend. We would go together.

But Labor Day found me not there but in Georgia. Because my dorm room wasn’t dry anymore, it was under water. Because a hurricane swept through New Orleans and a hurricane swept through my life.

And the whole rest of that year becomes another story for a different day. But 8 years later I look back and I am still in awe of God’s providence in teaching us truth and then teaching us truth. In letting us hear something and say Amen, yes, I agree with that, and then in letting us live it and wrestle with it and get neck deep in it, until the very deepest part of us cries, Amen, yes, I agree with that.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous.

This is no prosperity gospel. This life that we live, it is dirty and messy. And sometimes the affliction is a hurricane. But sometimes it is a drought. Sometimes it is a tear-your-robe-and-put-ashes-on-your-head tragedy, and sometimes it is a bury-your-face-in-a-pillow-and-cry-because-you-just-stuck-your-bare-hand-in-a-poopy-toilet-to-retrieve-the-medicine-bottles-your-3-year-old-dropped-in-and-this-is-what-your-life-has-come-down-to moment. That might have actually happened. Yesterday.

These afflictions, they might be heavy or they might be mundane. But they are many.

BUT.

But the Lord delivers him out of them all.

When my Daddy left me in New Orleans by myself, all 22 years old and just a little girl, when he couldn’t say any more words for the lump in his throat and the tears in his eyes, he pressed a small wooden cross into my hand. I watched him walk away and then I turned the cross over, and through my own tears I saw in his handwriting, the reference Psalm 121.

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
 Behold, He who keeps Israel Will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in From this time forth and forever.

Words that my daddy taught me in the car as he drove me to school when I was a little girl. Words that my Father taught me when He lovingly stripped me bare. Words that remind me that His presence is my portion. These afflictions, they are not forever. And they are not meaningless. 

Lift up your eyes.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.