Diamonds at the Grocery Store

She has packed three tiny plastic jewels. They are her treasures and today, I’m not sure why she eagerly puts them in her pocket to bring to the grocery store.

We aren’t out of the car for even 5 seconds before she’s shouting at a young couple walking toward the megolith American foodstore.

“EXCUSE ME!” she shouts and I frantically try to stop her from embarrassing us both.

“Sweetheart wha--”

“This is for you,” she says, and places one of her small jewels in the man’s hand. “To make you happy. Merry Christmas!”

And the three of us adults stop in our tracks. He is bumbling with words. The young woman at his side squeals a little with joy.

“Are you sure?” he says, rolling the small plastic faux-diamond in his hand. “You want to give this to me?”

“Yes, sweetie,” I lean toward her and say a little quieter. “Are you sure you want to give those away?”

She nods fiercely, “YES. I have three to give away today.”

----

We are in the grocery store and she is all sniper-eyes. She’s looking for the right recipient. A grandmother with her young grandson rolls by us next to the watermelon.

“EXCUSE ME!” my daughter shouts again and the woman looks startled with the tiny shout. My girl proceeds to hand her a jewel and the same conversation commences.

“Oh wow, I don’t even --” she begins to say.

“Have a good day!” my girl says and hops along next to me again. "Merry Christmas!"

----

An elderly woman is hunched over the fresh bread, her long coat sweeps the floor as she surveys each bag. Her hair is snowy white against the backdrop of all this mayhem.

“Excuse me,” my little says. The woman does not respond.

“Excuse me….” she tries again and now reaches toward her slightly bent arm. “EXCUSE ME.”

(She’s still learning the art of gentility.)

“Here,” she hands her the last of the diamonds. The last of her pocketed treasure. The woman is startled, overwhelmed with the beauty of the moment, speechless. 

“What’s this for?”

M pauses, “For you! Merry Christmas.” The woman stood still, unmoved and watched as my girl danced away.

Her joy was spread. Her love lavished.

----

I am overwhelmed at global tragedy. Thousands dying at the hand of nature. At shocking news articles of sweat factories and the clothes they make so we can bargain shop. I’m sick to my stomach with pictures of children who are forgotten, abused, left to die. I’m knee-broken at the stories of women who are raped, abused, sold, shamed. The men who sell, the men who use, the men who are abused. The endless ticker tape of hate, judgement, injustice, arrogance. School shootings, domestic assaults, street wars, car accidents that steal the lives of children, and so on and so on and so on.

You know, right? You know it too? That sickening drone of the real world that spins everywhere around us, in us, below us.

I sit at our table and I’m wrecked and I cannot do a thing. I say it, “What can we possibly do about any of this?”

I cannot do much. Our bank account balance runs continually low. My ability to change the world from my small cedar-sided house seems very unlikely. Seems insignificant. Seems pointless. Until I look at my daughter.

----

I might not know how to end child slavery.

But I know how to love a child. I know how to look her in the face and say “Fight for good.” I know how wrap her hair in braids and push her toward kindness, compassion and unmerited grace. I know how to teach her that speaking up for those with no voice is better than staying silent.

I might not know how to end racism.

But I know how to speak truth. I can make our home and our table diverse. I can make her world bigger and change the way we speak, the way she speaks, and not keep silent. I can foster relationships and understanding across the street, across the block and into the heart of the city. I can show her that treasure hoarded is no treasure at all. The best kind of treasure becomes more valuable when you give it away.

I don’t know how to end homelessness.

But I can give my child a home, so that she’ll grow to understand the value of love, safety and shelter. That in her heart she’ll understand the weight of what it means for those who have no one, nothing left. That she’ll understand we are not entitled or enlightened, but just profoundly fortunate in this season to have food, clothes, a roof.

I don’t know how to fix the brokenness.

But I can carry a broken heart here — with her, with myself. I can show her how Jesus sits with the broken and busted up. How he extends grace and teaches freedom from sin. How he loves without judgement and still inspires everyone who follows him to lead a life marked by obedience and grace.

I may not know how to change the world but I can show her how to love the ones who live in it. And maybe that’s a good place to start.

---

She has pocketed three more jewels today, and she’s decided it’s better to give than receive. “People in this world need people who love them,” she tells me at bedtime last night. “We need to pray that they have people to love them.”

Yes, indeed, this is a good place to start.

Why Love is Powerful

We've been talking about love a lot lately.

Love between a man and a woman.
Love that makes marriage.
Love between mom and daughter.
Love between doll and girl.
Love that sent Jesus, and love that killed Jesus, and love that raised Him.

All kinds of love.

Yesterday we waited in the lobby for friends to pick us up. She hopped on the marble steps, and her voice echoed in the cavernous, empty room.

"I love my mom," she sang. "I love my mom and my mom loves me."

She continued, "I don't know why my mom loves me. Maybe because I'm sweet. Maybe because I'm nice. Maybe because I make her laugh. My mom loves me, but I don't know why."

I watched her sing and hop, and tiptoe around marble swirls. I listened to her song, and wanted to explain to her that I love her for a million reasons.

But really, I love her for no reason at all. 

I always think it's funny to hear couples say to one another, "Tell me why you love me." As if the purest and sweetest love could be made greater by knowing the source or impetus. We want to make love bigger and stronger by things we do or the way we look.

But, isn't the best kind of love given because you have done nothing to earn it or deserve it? Love that takes you in and calls you its own, simply because it knows no other way to respond around you.

I love my daughter because she is my daughter. And when she isn't sweet, or funny, or when her hair is bedraggled and knotted, I still love her. No less. I can give her a million reasons why I love her. And sometimes, I have no reason at all. I simply just do.

And yet, how quickly I find myself bowing a quivering chin and asking Heaven if His love will still be towards and for me. If it's strong enough to hold me. I am a child, spinning in a cavernous room, trying to figure out why God might love me.

When he might have a million reasons to love me, but really, He needs no reason at all. I find more comfort in a love that saves me and pursues because I didn't do anything, more than a love that finds me worthy. I wake every morning loving my daughter because she's my daughter. If I flip the script, and realize that every morning, I'm loved because I'm a daughter, my heart responds and is filled because of it.

The best love is the kind that is given without merit, and with this truth sinking in, my heart groans like an old ship tossed about on a wild sea, at the mercy of something that will beautifully, powerfully, one day, swallow me whole.

True love is life-giving and almost begs to know the lover more than the love. If the love is unconditional, then please, let me know the Giver.

The Things Treasured and the Things Not Remembered

We crunched along the shoreline as the sun warmed up the earth. She in her princess sundress and I clutching my early morning sunrise coffee, we walked slow with eyes to the ground. The day was still young, just like her, and at that stage, everything is worth discovering. The ocean had carried in the sea of shells while we slept and from where we stood at 7 a.m., the sand was a mosaic of white, blue, black and coral. We side-stepped ghost crabs and walked slow into the foamy surf to see what we can find.

She picks up a small white shell. It is nothing special. Nothing more than an ordinary white shell. A quick search on Google turns up an ordinary name... "Common," it says.

She stoops, picks it up and asks the name.

"I don't know," I shrug. "Just a white shell."

Her interest wanes and she drops it back to her feet. It did not make it into her empty bucket. That place is reserved for the special. The set aside. The chosen ones.

Shell after shell I am empty for names and none of them are collected, and I'm realizing why with each ordinary step through the early morning surf. As she turns another white shell from the shoreline, she looks up at me rather disappointed, "This one?"

She places it in my hands and I stare for a moment. It's white edges are slightly painted with the orange. I gasped. "Oh wow! What a find. That is a white beaded rose pepper!"

Her eyes, widened. Her hands quickly reached for the shell in my palm and it was dropped carefully  into the pink bucket. "Let's find more!"

She delivered a small shell with a blue stripe. "Well, that is a sailor stripe shell."
Into the bucket.
"That is a tiger shell."
Into the bucket.
"That is a surf apricot shell."
Into the bucket.

It seems so obvious to me now. Things become valuable when you give them a name. When you turn the ordinary into precious. When you call something boring by a name of its own. When you choose something from the dirt, wash it in the water and call it by a name. It's a treasure.

And it's no secret that lately I feel like I'm overlooked. Easily forgotten. Easily set aside. I tell my sister that my worst fear is that I missed all the good God had for me, and now I am set in some alternate universe. Everything is good, but not as it should be. Everything is just right, but somewhere across the water, I can see that I missed it all. That maybe God is keeping things from me to prove that He can do just that. Withhold.

Last night, we sit in her bed and the shells are waiting in the bucket for a home. By light of a nightlight, she asked me where God is.
"I can't see him," she said. 
"Can you see the stars right now?" I ask.
She craned her head up toward the ceiling, shaking it quickly. "No, I can't."
"But you know they're there, right?"
She nodded, smiling. (Stars — something for which we both share a mutual love.)
"So just because you can't see God, it doesn't mean He's not still there."
"God is up in the stars?" she gasped. "And in my heart?"
I nodded, "He's everywhere." I proceed to whisper into her sleepy ear all the things that God says to her.  That He loves her. That she's beautiful. That He's proud of her.

And she smiles, "And God's not angry anymore."

I don't know how or why she understands some of these things. But that one goes to my heart. That sliver of truth seems to make its way through my tired flesh, hard heart, deaf ears and straight into my marrow where it sits and ruminates.

That He's not angry anymore. Christ took His wrath. For me. For us. There is not a bucket of anger and disappointment waiting for me at the next turn. Troubles in my life are not because He has been waiting to "teach me a hard lesson". No, no. It's all love. Every drop of it all. 

I've been at the shore lately, wondering why something so big would even care to carry me at all. Isn't he weary that I have not produced as I ought to? That I am nothing more than brittle bone and empty cargo? And isn't he so disappointed that I'm not the daughter He once hoped I would be?

And then I feel him turning me. Under stars, the sea of night. By the shore, the sea of salt. He's taking my half-hearted prayers and my worst fears, and washing me. Giving me new names. I've been turned up from the dirt, washed in the water, and called by a name I'm certain I did not and do not deserve.

But that's not why He treasures us. Not because we are anything special. Not because we do things right. Not even because we cleaned ourselves up.

No. He loves when we're hidden. He seeks when we're lost. He finds us when we're missing, turns us and gasps at the beauty that only he can see.

He is not angry anymore.

"O Savior, I am like that empty shell, Thou art the Sea to me." (Amy Carmichael)

firsts

The realization.

85% of my friends are married. They were my friends when I was married.

So when I asked, "What are you doing on the 14th?" the breathless silence was sucked out of the room.

Sometimes going through a divorce feels like a death.

For an entire year, you experience the "first" everything all over again. (As if the cold breeze on your empty ring finger wasn't a daily reminder.)

First Christmas.

First Birthday.

First Valentines Day. (Just give me my cookie dough and I'll see you on Tuesday, mmkay?)

And there seems to be this gaping sinkhole surrounding that area that used to be your marriage. Anything that used to be sacred and special, that was once shared inside those walls, now has tumbled to the bottom of a black pit. To find it again is fruitless. To rebuild on that hole is unwise.

But to find redemption elsewhere is God.

I use "redemption" lightly here, because in my case, I'm not talking of reconciliation.

I'm talking about God taking the broken pieces that scattered in the fall out, and putting them back into the cool mud that spins on the wheel. The shards that are too tiny and sharp to be used again. Breaking them down again. Molding them back together.

I stumbled upon one of these sinkholes today. (They really swallow you up quite quickly if you're not careful.)

Cleaning my apartment, packing up belongings, doing the dishes, and suddenly someone says something or I find something in the piles that makes everything inside of me scream and scratch at this tomb of a world. My heart snaps shut, closing in on everything that was growing, threatening to choke out any further life.

Everything in me, at that moment, wants to wrap my little girl up in my arms and promise to protect until the day I breathe my last. That I'll never again allow pain like that in her life (even though my Father gave me grace and allowed it in mine.)

Like Elizabeth Gilbert said going through a divorce is like "having a really bad car accident every single day for two years."

I don't entirely agree. But somedays, I couldn't agree more.

This is not a bitter diatribe before Valentine's Day.

This is an admonition.

This is me saying, "It's ok if you're not ok yet."

But you and I both know, love is not confined to romance. In fact, the best love exists beyond romance. Even, yes even, in spite of romance.

Love. With your broken pieces. While tip-toeing around your sinkholes.

Love in your imperfections. Without snapping shut. Without strangling fear.
Love your kids. Love your parents.
If you're married, love your spouse.
Love your family. Your friends. Your neighbors.
Your community.

Let love be a seed you plant this year. Stop waiting by the sinkholes in your world for some mysterious flower to suddenly burst from the abyss.

Instead, look for the soil of redemption. And there, plant love with tears and bloodied fingernails.

I will meet you at the river, where there we'll wash our hands.