For such a time as this

What do you think you would think of at the end of your life?  I’ve been pondering that lately as my father comes to the end of his life.  I’ve wondered what he thinks about.  I wonder what I would think about.

My husband suggested taking up activities that had been neglected – such as sky diving.  After all, what do you have to lose?  Did I mention that my husband is a genius?  Must have slipped my mind.

I think my thoughts would be in two places – my family and Heaven.  I would be thinking about all I would be leaving behind, the legacy I would want to leave my children, the lessons I would want to teach them.  I would be writing furiously about marriage and life and all the important things, like hunting for rainbows and seeking opportunities to play in puddles in the rain. 

And I would be thinking about my future home.  I imagine I would be thinking of, studying about, and speaking on Heaven.  I’d probably sicken everyone around me with my constant musings and I wouldn’t care!  I’ve learned so much about Heaven this past year that I can’t wait to be there.

My dad had a close call yesterday.  He had a very bad reaction to a chemo treatment and came very close to dying.  I asked him if he was afraid.  He said he wasn’t.  He just prayed and trusted.  That’s good advice.

Is it possible to love one child more than another? 

I have five children.  They are unique, loving, precious to me.  Each has their strengths and their areas of weakness.  I love them so much I can’t imagine not having them in my life.  I didn’t give birth to any of them, but that doesn’t make them any less mine.  One is adopted, the others are step-children – The legal definition has no impact on my love for them.  They are all my children. 

I’m getting the disturbing impression that I am somehow unique in that view.  Other people make distinctions – and it angers me.  There are assumptions, evident in their comments, that cut right through my core: 

• The discounting of my grief at the death of my son last year, because he wasn’t really my son, but only my step-son.  My precious little boy died suddenly and shockingly and I was crushed and broken over it. 
• Well-meaning yet condescending explanations that I couldn’t possibly love my children as much as another mother loves hers because I didn’t given birth to mine.  Being a parent is so much more than gestation.  It’s time and love and sacrifice.  It’s being there no matter what.
• Selfish people accepting one of my children and rejecting the others because of their own prejudice and partiality.  They would dare challenge me to choose one over another?

And this is not from careless, thoughtless strangers. This is from friends and family, people who know me and have witnessed my dedication and devotion to my kids.  When this drivvle comes from strangers I can dismiss it as stupidity.  When it comes from people who should know better, that’s a different matter entirely.

I have tried to be patient and gentle in response recognizing that all this is from ignorance and a very limited understanding of love.  Often I have felt pity more than irritation.  These people just don’t get it.  And they are the poorer for it.

Right now, I feel no patience or gentleness or pity.  I am angry.  I’m hurt.  Why in the world should I have to justify my relationship or my love for my children to people who clearly do not have the capacity to love without condition and without limit?  What hardness of heart would lead someone to make that kind of choice?  Or to expect that anyone else would?

Scripture is full of warnings against partiality – loving one more than another.  Jacob’s partiality to Joseph was the seed for hatred and great hurt:

His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms. (Gen 37:4 NASB)

The brothers conspired to kill him and when that didn’t go over well, they sold him into slavery and told his parents he was dead.  All because their father had a favorite.

We as Christians are also instructed to love one another without bias or partiality (1 Tim 5:21).  God Himself impartialy loves His chosen ones – His children whom He predestined for adoption from before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:5) – We are each His children, co-heirs of the Promise (Rom 8:16-17, Tit 3:7).

I wonder, is it my love for God that makes it impossible for me to understand this?  Frankly, I don’t want to understand.   I don’t want to dwell on how people can think that way.  I just know that I want to protect my children from that as much as possible.  I don’t ever want them to feel the curse of partiality.  I just want them to know that they are LOVED completely, unconditionaly, and always.

Every now and then I ask my husband for a perspective check.  There are times when I don’t trust my own perception of events or circumstances, when I’ve been too long under a cloud, when I’ve felt a sense of heaviness that seems almost endless.  Today was one of those perception check days.  Are things as heavy and dark as they seem to me?

“Yes,” was his answer.

My father is dying.  A year ago we marked the death of my son.  I’ve lost so many friends this past year, people I’ve known and loved for many years, some for just a few years.  I trust absolutely in God and His care and plans, but I have no illusions that life is a fantasy or fairy tale.  It’s hard.  It’s dirty.  It’s painful, with occasional punctuations of joy and celebration.

My heart has been consumed by my own grief and that of those around me.  Loss of health, loss of liberty, loss of life.  I find myself praying constantly, fervently for these people.  I want so much to be with them to comfort and help.  I’ve yet to figure out how to be in two, or three, places at once.  I am not omnipresent – God is.

I want to talk with my father.  I want to understand his courage and his fears as he faces the end of his days.  I want to have important conversations about life – the wisdom of his 80 years – and death.  No matter how much time we have together, I will always want more.  I don’t want to squander or be careless with a single day.

There is another person close to me who is going through a frightening, horribly difficult time.  And it may go on for a long time.  My heart is aching for them as well and my prayers are soaring to Heaven on their behalf.

As I ponder these things, I think I would trade places with either of them.  But God has each of us exactly where He wants us, difficult and distressing as it may be, for our good and for His glory. 

Today I am experiencing the heaviness of loss – past, present, and soon to come.  My time of rest from grief has not yet come. 

I don’t believe that God only gives us what we can handle – Several people said that to me after Nathan’s death.  God gives us much more than we can handle.  His objective is to drive us to our knees, to the end of ourselves.  It’s then that He does His mightiest work. 

God, I am on my knees.  Again.  Do your work in me.