An Act of Faith

It's planting season here in Nebraska. The drive from our house to town is 15 miles one way, and about 11 of those are on gravel roads, so we play a lot of Name That Farm Implement this time of year. My 4-year-old Noah (he's around 2 in this pic) is waaaay better at that game than I am...but then again, at least I'm better than I was when we moved here six years ago!

As I watched the tractors maneuver their huge planters around the fields the other day, I was thinking about how much farming has changed over the years. Granted, my agricultural knowledge is still fairly basic, but even I can see that advances in technology and science have made farming a vastly different enterprise than it was just a generation or two ago.

Then my train of thought meandered even farther back. (Did I mention the drive is 15 miles? Each way? There's only so many times a person can listen to the Frozen soundtrack.) The opening line of the parable of the sower from Matthew 13 came to mind: "A sower went out to sow..." In Jesus' time, there weren't any GPS-guided tractors depositing genetically-engineered seeds in precise rows...just a guy tossing handfuls of grain on the ground. Some went to waste when it fell on the path or the rocks, or the weeds choked it out. But the seed that landed on good soil bore fruit many times over.

Two thousand years ago, planting was an act of faith accompanied by a hell of a lot of hard work. But is it really all that different today? Sure, the mechanics have changed, but we still have no control over the weather (I'm guessing the sower would have been a big fan of crop insurance.) Farmers invest their time, energy, and resources into their enterprise, and then pray like crazy that it's not all for nothing.

Sometimes being a parent feels a lot like farming. You are a Grower of Children, forever planting seeds without knowing when, if, or how they will come to fruition. You read your kids books every night, sneak some broccoli into their mac 'n cheese, pew-wrestle with a wiggly toddler or two for an hour every Sunday, and then sometimes you can’t help wondering, is this really worth it?

But the thing is, we know our kids are Good Soil, right? After all, they aren't just bits and pieces of us--God made them, too. It shouldn't be such a surprise when out of the blue one day, your bedtime bookworm sounds out a sentence on the back of a cereal box. Or your little squirmer starts singing the Alleluia after worship one Sunday (or in Noah's case, "Lamb of God, you take away the songs of the circus"...whatever. Close enough.). Maybe someday they will actually ask for the broccoli...stranger things have happened.

Parenting is an act of faith accompanied by a hell of a lot of hard work. And there are many other Growers of Children--teachers, aunts and uncles, child care providers, pastors, coaches...the list is long--who may or may not be parents themselves, but are planting and nurturing and praying right alongside them.

Listen up, oh ye weary Growers of Children. I've got some Good News for you. Jesus says, "But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields" (Matthew 13:23).

Our little ones are Good Soil. We're doing our best, and God's working on them, too. Someday, those seeds will blossom. And when that day comes, I can guarantee you'll never see anything more beautiful.

"So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up." Galatians 6:9

Worth the Hurt?--My Messy Beautiful

Compassion sucks.

OK, not so much the whole concept, but actually living it…that’s a pain in the you-know-what.

If you can watch Hallmark movies, Sarah McLachlan commercials, and YouTube videos of soldiers meeting their babies for the first time without crying, stop reading right now because this does not apply to you.

But weepy people—listen up! This is for you. If you’ve ever given money you didn’t have to spare because the person asking really believed in the cause, you know what I mean.  If you’ve ever taken the time to ask a frazzled-looking service employee how her day is going (and listened to the answer), you know what I mean. If you’ve ever laid awake in anxious prayer for someone else’s precious child, you know what I mean.

Compassion hurts. It literally means to suffer along with someone. And while tearing up at a cheesy commercial may not be a big deal, feeling deeply for the pain of others is incredibly exhausting. I know because I’m one of those weepy people and sometimes, I get tired of it. I wish, for just a little while, that I could JUST NOT CARE. That I could let other people’s problems actually only be THEIR problems, because clearly I have enough problems of my own, thankyouverymuch.

In the nonprofit world, there’s actually a term called “compassion fatigue.” It means there’s only so much that donors can take before they simply shut down and can’t stomach one more appeal for donations, no matter how urgent the need or how worthy the cause. It’s like when the fourth Girl Scout comes knocking at your door and your freezer still has Thin Mints from last year (ok I know that’s a ridiculous example, but I’ve heard that some people actually don’t eat them all the first week. Whatever.)

When we lived in Ohio while my husband Mike was in seminary, I worked in fundraising for an international health and development organization. The mission of our U.S. office was to connect people and congregations in the States with the work of our partners in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It was good work, and hard work, and holy work. And sometimes, it was downright miserable work. Not the “endless hours in a sweatshop” kind of misery, but the “sweet Lord Jesus, if I hold one more baby who has HIV and TB today, my heart is going to break into a million tiny pieces” kind of misery. When donations were slow or we ran into roadblocks in our work, my coworkers and I were doubly frustrated because not only were we failing at our jobs, but we were hurting along with these people dammit and why can’t we just get the money/supplies/medicine/love where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, is that too much to ask?!?!?! We knew the work was not about us, but sometimes the feet of the ones who walk alongside get tired too.

So many of you know this kind of misery, and you know how much it hurts. But you also know that the broken-openness of that kind of hurting is both excruciating and liberating. When your heart is shattered by overwhelming love, you get the chance to put it back together again in a new way. In the very same moment you are weeping for that sick baby in your arms, you are rejoicing because he just smiled the most dazzling smile and it was JUST FOR YOU. There is beauty in the brokenness. You are continually rewriting your own story with bits of pieces of truth from those you’ve connected with. You are made, and re-made, with increasing capacities for love, and that kindness you give away comes back to you a thousand times over.

In the Christian faith, we remember today as Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified.  Our God, the one who ACTUALLY UNDERSTANDS HOW THE WORLD WORKS, was broken open, pierced through, and humbled to the point of death. This was the way God found to connect with his broken, messed-up people.

When we take time to sit with this story and allow it to break our hearts all over again, we receive a gift: our own story—everything we take to the cross—becomes God’s story. God’s story becomes our story. This is not new news--Mike’s been preaching it ever since the great storyteller Walt Wangerin crafted that beautiful phrasing--but it’s good news.  And that’s enough to make it worth the hurt for me.

This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!