The days are long, but the summers around here are short and this one is gone. We were a month late in planting the garden this spring because of morning sickness and all sorts of I-couldn’t-even, so here in the middle of September we finally have zucchini blossoms galore…and three miniscule zucchinis, smaller than my pinky finger.
Did we miss out on the growing season? Yes, and no. We did what we could. There’s always next year. And we grew plenty, just not veggies.
My belly is growing. People seem skeptical when I tell them Kavanagh’s not due until December – the other day I almost knocked myself over just trying to put my socks on while standing up.
Oh My Soul, the book I started four or five years ago and spent the last four or five months finishing, launches October 16th. The Kindle edition just came available for preorder, and the paperback and hardback should follow next week.
(And now it makes sense that so many people teased us about having twins earlier in the summer because, yes, all these babies – it’s just that some of these babies were books.)
We’re ordering school materials, and to Chamberlain’s delight she discovered only three assignments left in her math book and I completely forgot to order the next level, leaving her math-less for a minimum of three weeks until the next ones ship up here. But I made a quick phone call to our umbrella school, and to my delight, we discovered they had an entire set on hand and we won’t miss a beat. Sorry, kiddo.
So much of what we do is not on an academic plan. Reagan’s language arts involves reading story books and picture books, and I document that it’s for “learning sentence structure and speaking in full sentences” but it’s also for understanding the relationships between birds and trees and seasons, how people interact with each other, and constant repetition of simple concepts we take for granted that fall through the holes in her memory.
Andrey has art on his curriculum, and the materials include cross stitch – not because he loves it (though he doesn’t hate it), but because it is good practice at following instructions and obeying, and gives an almost immediate reward or consequence for whether or not he does so. Botched string and knots to untangle are a remarkable illustration of not following directions; clean stitches that match the picture are clear rewards for obeying.
A few nights ago we talked with a new friend who worries that certain choices he made before he was following Jesus were the wrong ones – and he wasn’t talking about the easy, cut-and-dry kinds of choices. These were the kind with no obvious answer, the kind that people still struggle with even after surrendering to Jesus. They were the kind that force us to lean in hard and listen close, and even after the choice is made we wonder what would’ve happened if we’d chosen differently.
Did he miss out on the growing season? Yes, and no. He didn’t have the intimacy with God to move forward confidently when he had to make the call. But is he growing in that intimacy now, and losing no time in his forward progress? Sure looks like it.
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.– Psalm 32:1-2, ESV
God is above time, and yet still in time, and on time, and never wasting time. He knows our weakness and where we’ve dug in our heels against correction, and where we’ve been moldable and allowed Him to move us. He’s not a parent like me, looking at a child still dealing with the same stuff from years ago and shaking my head, desperately wanting to say, If you had dealt with this earlier instead of shoving it under the rug – which has long outgrown the ability to hide the pile of detritus underneath it – you wouldn’t be dealing with it now, and the last several years would’ve been more pleasant for yourself, and for all of us.
I’ve been in Psalms. It’s a long book, I’m only forty-some chapters in out of 150, so I’ll be here a while. But last week I was in Psalm 32, and I keep going back to it.
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long. (verse 3)
For when I pushed things under the rug and refused to deal with my issues, refused to repent, to apologize, to make amends, to acknowledge the truth of my actions, I diminished into an ever-shrinking ball until sparks shot out of me from the friction of my choices.
And I’ve been here, too; I’ve dug in my heels and been the stubbornest of sinners. Maturity isn’t shown by perfection, but by the ability to recognize sin and turn from it earlier than we were willing to before.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. (verse 4)
He wouldn’t let me get away with it; He loved me too much to leave me shrinking and imploding. He held my feet to His fire, and when I burned myself with my own behavior He gave me reason to move. And now as parents, He’s teaching us to hold our kids’ feet to the fire, too.
I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. (verse 5)
The pain forced me to admit reality. When I confessed and repented of the ways that had never worked for me, His light broke through and irrigated the stench of infection. Fear, doubt, shame, despair, vanished when I agreed with Him.
Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him. (verse 6)
We don’t have to drown in the fire of our choices; we can yield to His presence before we’re in over our heads. He pulls us out when we admit our need for Him and our inability to save ourselves.
There is no shame in the turning, only in our insistence to keep drowning – to stay tied to the millstone while sinking, to stay behind the gravestone He wants to move out of our way.
Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”
Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”
– John 11:38-40, ESV
Martha is just like us. We look at our hard hearts, our hard situations, our hard children, and we ask, Do You not know how impossible this is?
Don’t you know that we’re out of time?
Are You not aware of how deep this hole is that we’ve dug for ourselves?
Do you not see how his heart is like that stone?
Do You not know that her brain was repeatedly blanched with alcohol while she was in utero and the damage to her memory, speech, cognition, and intellectual and social maturity are said to be incurable?
And He answers, Have you heard of what I can do with stones?
Did you forget that I am above time, outside of time, but never out of time?
Do you not yet know that I’m in the business of doing the impossible?
In spite of everything in her past and every diagnosis against her, Reagan is learning to read.
You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance.– Psalm 32:7, ESV
He is the shelter, the Savior, and the celebration. And He tells us, Hey Love, the impossible is what I do.
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