Father's Day

Today was nothing out of the ordinary. I drove to the city to babysit, something I do 2-3 times a week, if not more. But what is usually episodes of Curious George and toy trucks turned into “can we do a craft for Father’s Day?”

You see, I was already struggling. As hard as it is for me to admit that, I was/am. Every year the week of Father’s Day rolls around and I go into this funk. I become so unresponsive, unreceptive, and uninterested in almost anything. I grow numb. It lasts a couple days and then I am fine, but it happens, and I never say anything to anybody. So when two kids ask you to help them make a Father’s Day present it is a painful shot to a wound that has already been wide open this week.

I am trying to be as honest. Honest not only to whomever might read this, but honest with myself. Somewhere along the way I adopted this visual in my head: I am standing at a stop sign, and to the left is the road named “I am okay” and to the right is the road “I am not okay”. There is no middle ground; I have to choose and once I do I tell myself that I have to stay on that road. I tell myself that it’s a one way, and you can’t ever go the other way.

Loss is painful. Father’s Day is the hardest day of the year for me. When a six-year-old little boy asks me to help him make a card for his dad it hurts. For too long people have made this bold assertion that “time heals things.” I do not believe that. Jesus heals things, and the concept of time does not apply to Jesus, so it is not time that we need, it is just Him.

But yet, I find myself starring at the reflection of myself in the mirror saying, “you have done this before. It has been almost 14 years. Be okay.” And when I start falling into the thought of “maybe I am not okay” I let myself believe the lie that since so much time has passed, if I tell people I am struggling they will think I am just doing it for sympathy, or for attention. I create these expectations for myself that people need me to talk about the goodness of the Lord on the days that are obviously hard. Which do not get me wrong, Jesus is still good. I still believe that, but it does not negate the fact sometimes you want to wish away where you are at. It does not negate the fact that no matter how much time has passed, you can wake up in the morning wishing it could all be undone. It does not negate the fact that although Jesus so faithfully let drops of healing rain down on you that still have moments where it hurts like hell.

I think that’s where I have gotten it all wrong. You do not have to choose a road. You do not have to be one extreme or the other. You do not have to be fresh off a loss, whatever form that loss might be, to have the right to struggle. Loss breaks you, Jesus pieces the broken things back together, takes the ashes and transforms them into beauty, but loss also leaves an imprint on you. The things that imprint us affect us not just in that moment but forever. You can be okay one second and the next not. You can be spiritually growing, in the word, and actively pursuing the Lord and there is still freedom for you to stop and just be honest. To say to yourself that it hurts, and to say to a hurting world that they are allowed to hurt.

I love the story of Ruth. I love the example she sets for women, but I also love another character in the story, Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, because it addresses this concept of loss. Naomi loses both of her sons and her husband, and she is brutally honest with how she feels (Ruth 1:20-21). She states that the grief she has faced is too great, and she feels forsaken by the Lord. This paints a picture for us today, a picture that says we can be honest.

Ruth 1:14

 "…at this they wept aloud again,"

They wept…. again.

Again.

It doesn’t matter if it is year 20 and you find yourself sitting in your car with tears streaming down your face. It doesn’t matter if it is a normal day and you just have a moment. You have the complete freedom to weep, and then to weep again.

Though there was weeping, the direction in which they wept is what truly matters. Ruth and Naomi wept, but they wept forward. You do not have to choose one road to walk down, you can be not okay, or you can be okay, but you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. You cannot let the weeping stop you - do not let it stop you from continuing to pursue the Lord.

I babysit for the same family every week. I am there so much that I have caught on and can tell what the baby’s cry means. I know when it’s a fake cry. I know when it’s a “I want more food’ cry. I know when it’s a “just pick me up” cry. I think about the fact that a parent knows their child’s cry way better than a babysitter does. A father knows their child’s cry.

A Father knows their child’s cry.

That is the thought that I am pounding into my heart this Father’s Day. The thought that I still have a father who hears me. A father who sees my tears and hears them. A father that knows exactly what they mean and knows exactly what I need.

He will turn your mourning into dancing, but He allows you step off the dance floor. But just know, He never stops playing the music. Tune back in when you are ready. So today, cry all the tears, wipe them, feel them, but don't let them stop you. It is possible to cry and walk at the same time. Walk straight down whatever road you need to be on today. Jesus will meet you right where you are.

xoxo,

A girl who took a dance break today

Get Up.

[Mark 2:1-12]

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. ² They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. ³ Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. ⁴ Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. ⁵ When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

⁶ Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, ⁷ “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

⁸ Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? ⁹ Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? ¹⁰ But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, ¹¹ “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” ¹² He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

If I had to guess, you have heard this story before. You were told how you needed to be a friend that would be willing to carry someone to Jesus, or something along those lines, which is great, but not the angle I am looking at this story today. I have been reading this passage over and over lately and wondering how it could be applicable to not just a room full of high school students, but for those of us who are in an “older” season of life. 

Usually when I write these blog post I take a very personal angle. I somehow tie in what has been going on in my life with the hopes to encourage you, but that is not the route I am going today. I want to challenge you.

Here is the layout. Jesus comes into town and goes to a house, a lot of people believe that this house belonged to Peter. People start showing up. All Jesus did was sit down in a house and people showed up to hear what He had to say. Why? Because when the Lord’s presence is resting in a place, people show up. Because when the Lord’s presence is resting in a place people show up with expectation.

Then the paralyzed man comes on the scene and the first thing Jesus tells the man is “Son, your sins are forgiven.” I found it a little odd at first that the first thing Jesus did was this and not heal his paralysis. If I was this man and was in this situation I would thought that it is great that my sins are forgiven but I came with the hopes to be healed of my paralysis.

You see, the man’s paralysis was the fruit and the man’s sins was the root. How often do we come with Jesus thinking we know what the problem is? Jesus I do not have any friends, Jesus I get in arguments all the time, Jesus I am not content, etc etc. In a way these things serve as our own paralysis and effect our walk with the Lord. We think we know what the problem is and we go to Him and ask for a solution/healing. The paralyzed man went to Jesus thinking that if he could walk again then all would be okay. But Jesus was telling him, you think you know the issue but you do not.

You have to deal with the root before you deal with the fruit.

I think when we come to Jesus with eager expectation and He does not do what we expected, it is because He wants us to have a revelation about who He is. The man came expectant to be healed of his paralysis, and although Jesus did eventually do that, it was not what He did first. He wanted the man to have a revelation. He wanted him to see that He was in fact Lord. That thought challenges/convicts me so much: when I go to Jesus with expectations of what I want Him to do and He does not do it I usually just get mad and miss the fact that He is trying to show me something about Himself.

After Jesus did this, forgave the man his sins, the “teachers of the law” also known as the scribes started calling Jesus a blasphemer, because by forgiving the man’s sins He was calling himself God. When really they were the ones who were blaspheming, by calling him a blasphemer. Not just the scribes, but us too.....we love to attack the things in other people that are actually in us.

Eventually Jesus tells the man “get up and take your mat home.”

This is it.

The man had heard the word spoken. Not only the word, but THE word Himself. When Jesus could have picked him up off the mat and set him on his two feet, He didn’t, but instead He told him to do something. He told him to get up.

I think that is where a lot of us are today. We have heard the word. We do not need another sermon. We do not need another face to face conversation with someone encouraging us through whatever we are struggling with. We do not need another conference. We just need to get up.

Too many of us are laying on our mats waiting for Jesus to pick us up when He told us to get up a long time ago. We have heard the word and we need to respond.

This is what I love though, after all this Jesus tells the man to take his mat with him. If I was this man I would have thought to myself, “nahh Jesus I have had that thing for long enough, I am good without it.” But Jesus told the man to take the mat with him as a reminder of what Jesus had done and as a reminder of what he got up from.

Maybe your mat is depression. Maybe your mat is insecurity. Maybe your mat is loneliness. Maybe your mat is the wrong life style. So many of us want to get up and walk away from our “mat” and never carry it with us again. But Jesus is saying, take it with you. It will serve as representation of me and all that I am able to do.

The story ends with the man getting up and walking home, but I like to think about the events that unfolded after. I imagine that the man goes home, his kids are waiting for him at the door, shouting to their mom to come see. I imagine his wife standing in the doorway seeing her husband walking for the first time and being amazed, and I imagine the man saying to her, “you do not even see the real miracle.”

We have to stop being so concerned with the fruit and look at the root --- Sin.

We have to stop being so set on having whatever it is removed from us as the thing that is the most important.

We have to see that what Jesus does in forgiving our sins is so much greater than any mat He could tell us to get up front.

We have to stop waiting for Jesus to do something that we could have done a long time ago if we would just respond to what He has already said.

Today, let us finally get up from our mats. Let us respond to the word/truth we have already heard. Let us deal with the root and not just the fruit. Let us never forget that Jesus forgiving our sins is the greatest healing that we could ever receive.