5:38pm Friday, August 7, 2015

I just had a very interesting incident with 6-year-old Gabriela who has not yet been with us a full month. I had taken her, her elder sister Josselyn and 7-year-old Josue on a long walk around our neighborhood delivering plates of chocolate cake with encouraging hand-written notes to our neighbors as a goodwill gesture.

Throughout the admittedly long but not too-long hike around our neighborhood, Gabriela and Josue lagged dangerously behind Josselyn and I (and we were not even holding a quick pace), so I thus had to repeatedly tell them to hurry up only to find them lagging behind again. As Gabriela complained loudly (as is her style) and Josue (who does not talk) simply shuffled in his painstakingly slow manner, I told them lovingly that if they truly were that tired that they couldn’t even walk (but interestingly have enough energy to run and play all day at home and just a couple days prior had gone on a long walk with Darwin without any trouble), then they would go right to bed when we got home at 4:45pm so that they could rest their obviously weary bodies.

That sped them up momentarily, but in the end they meandered along in such a manner that their behavior confirmed that they did, in fact, need to go to bed and rest.

As we walked through our gate about fifteen minutes later, Gabriela assured me loudly and repeatedly that she wouldn’t be going to bed and that all she needed was to rest in the hammock. As I’m shuffling keys and water bottles in my hands, sweat pouring down my temples, and our two new puppies are jumping at our feet her incessant voice continued from a couple yards behind me, so I turned and informed her in an even tone, “If you say one more word about how you’re not going to bed, I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap.”

She definitely heard what I said, and, without skipping a beat, opened her big mouth again to tell me how she was just going to rest in the hammock.

Her elder sister, who’s mostly got the obedience thing down pat, came up to me, concerned, and said, eyes wide, “Gabriela said something else even after you told her not to.” I laughed and said, “I know,” led Gabriela by the hand to the bathroom as we were all crossing the threshold into our home, and I got the bar of pink soap and told her to open her mouth.

Now here’s the interesting part: Gabriela looked suddenly terrified and surprised and began to cry as if the entire situation had taken a drastic, utterly unexpected turn.

Calmly (by God’s grace), I pried her little teeth open and began cleaning it out with soap for the next minute or so while she bawled and screamed.

Hopefully heard above her ruckus, I said calmly, “This is to show you that I will always fulfill my word with you. I warned you that if you said one more word I would wash your mouth out with soap, you did, and now my word is being fulfilled. We can use our mouths to bless others or to curse, annoy and slander. We’re simply cleaning out all the junk that pours out of your mouth so that it flows blessing rather than evil.”

Her well-behaved older sister stood by as a highly interested witness, her eyes twinkling as if she was observing something almost serene. I imagine she was so enamored by the process because up until then in her life she had probably only witnessed (and experienced) parents who let their kids run wild with zero discipline or who react with over-the-top grab-the-kid-and-beat-the-crap-out-of-him-because-the-parent-waited-too-long-and-everything-is-now-out-of-control. I looked at her and asked, “I did warn her this would happen, right?” And Josselyn smiled and assured me that I hadn’t imagined the whole thing and that I had, in fact, given a clear and fair warning.

After the cleansing, with great strife Gabriela washed out her soapy mouth with water, brushed her teeth, and was off to bed (and not the hammock).

But I write all of this not to recount a simple anecdote of our daily life but to show what we can learn about the Eternal through little 6-year-old girls who have yet to have any real understanding of who God is.

I have both read and heard through various sources recently the message that God’s written word (the Bible) in its entirety serves as a general warning (and instruction book, and source of hope, etc) to humankind. Page after page, time period after time period, God – through His prophets, through Christ, through visions, etc – makes it very clear what He expects of us and the eternal consequences of both obedience and disobedience. In other words, if we spend our lives participating in what angers God and then are condemned to Hell and surprised about it, we have no one to blame but ourselves because the warning was put out there clearly enough. (Oh, but how many times have we heard the warning through various sources and turned a deaf ear, preferring to worship ourselves rather than God?)

In a recent Discipleship Group up in the mountains with our faith community, our mentor and dear friend Larry was explaining that from the get-go at the beginning of time God gives a clear, specific warning to Adam and Eve that they can eat out of any of the multitudes of trees except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and that, if they do, there will be severe consequences (that’s the clear, fair warning, like telling someone, “Don’t put your hand in  the beehive, because, if you, you’ll get stung.”). They decide to believe Satan rather than God (common mistake), disobey, eat the fruit, and then experience the consequences (think what happened today with Gabriela).

To the contrary, if God had not given the warning to Adam and Eve, instead staying quiet and allowing them to eat from the forbidden tree without them having any knowledge that it would bring terrible consequences, how unfair God would have been! But God, in His justice and kindness, gave the warning and then left it up to us (I include all of us in there because we would have done the same thing) to decide whether to trust His word, obey and experience abundant life and freedom or to be deceived, disobey, and then suffer terribly for our own foolishness.

So let’s think of God’s Word as a written warning (and if we have no idea what the warning is or what is warns against, let’s open it up and find out before it’s too late!)

Warning: There is a Righteous, Good God who has understandable wrath against fallen humankind for their sin — for having destroyed His good creation and turned their backs on Him — and His perfect justice will be fulfilled in the right moment, condemning all those guilty to eternal punishment. BUT THERE IS AN OUT: Those who believe upon His son, Jesus Christ, as the deliverer of those who recognize their sin – and thus begin living for Him rather than for themselves – will be allowed a free entrance into His glorious, everlasting Kingdom where He Himself is the Good King, and in which there will be no more death, crying or pain. YOU CHOOSE.

Of course there are many, many more details than that, but that is the general, overall warning of Scripture. So if we live our lives in hot pursuit of money or engrossed in sexual sin or serving only ourselves, ignoring God and the warnings He has given us, arrive at the end of our lives, are judged justly and get condemned to the eternal punishment we deserve, how on earth can we say that God is unfair or unjust or we had not been properly warned?

Warning: “Gabriela, if you open you mouth one more time to say that you’re not going to go to bed, I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap.”

Action: She opens her mouth.

Fulfillment of Promised Justice: She gets her mouth washed out with soap but interestingly sees it as unfair.

So in the simple way that I can, via this blog today, I am serving as one of God’s little messengers, reminding all of us that there is a general warning about Life on Earth and that whether we regard or disregard it will ultimately determine our fate. And, as was the case with Adam and Eve long ago and with Gabriela today, we have the power to choose our action, but not the consequence.

At 7:34pm last night the kids came bursting into the living room with a wave of energy that I felt like might push me right over the edge after having finished with dinner clean-up, and suddenly there were five heads in the open doorway with 654 comments and questions for me about who-knows-what. I sat on my bedroom floor under a more-organized-than-it-looks pile of legal documents, folders, reports and photocopies fanning out all around me under the thin light of the headlamp strapped to my head as I stapled, stamped, signed, and organized.

I looked up suddenly at the eager faces before me, unintentionally blaring them in the eyes with the light from my headlamp. The lights had been out all evening, and we had all been squinting in the darkness and shuffling around carefully, sharing the few flashlights we have.

Darwin soon appeared as well, and I reluctantly put aside my half-finished job, carefully pushing the precarious pile out of the way at the foot of our double-sized bed so that we could all meet around the wooden table in our living room and hold the family meeting that Darwin and I had planned with the kids.

With a single red candle placed on the table, mostly spent with drippy wet wax pooling around its base, all seven of us sat/stood around the table to try to figure a lot of things out. Together.

I stood in the same clothes I had put on that morning at 5:00am, talking more than I should, the light of my headlamp helping the little red candle light our corner of the living room. Jason had forgotten to feed the dogs that day. Little Josue had gotten ahold of the jewelry-making supplies and scattered all the beads, twine, etc all about after someone else had carelessly left it out on the living room couch. I had lost my patience with Josue during the bedtime routine when he dumped the entire bucket of Legos on the floor for the second day in a row. Gleny, Jason and Jackeline had staged an apocalyptic nightmare for me as I parked the car in our yard after having been gone for a few hours, greeting me with a barrage of highly exaggerated comments and problems that I had to fix immediately. Our car had logged several miles that day and another tank of gas after chauffeurring Gleny and Jason to and from their new school and Diana to and from her new art school. I had forgotton to buy more Pampers for Josue. Diana felt fed up with having two little sisters who want to copy everything she does.

What started with frustrations and complaints ended with asking forgiveness and granting it. Then we all stood, joining our hands to form one body, and we gave thanks to God. We reminded ourselves that God’s Word says that we must place all of our worries, our stress, in God’s hands because He cares for us. And it is our task to believe Him and do so. At the close of the prayer, I wearily — and without any real expectation — asked the children to pray for me in their free time if they feel led to do so. My insomnia has been creeping back, and for the past four or five weeks I’ve only been able to sleep about three to four hours per night. Darwin and I then took each child individually into our embrace and reminded them how much we love them.

This morning at 6:23am, teeth brushed, uniforms in place and ready for a new day, Gleny asked from the backseat of our cab-and-a-half truck while we drove down the highway, “Mom, how did you sleep last night?” I smiled at her very thoughtful question, and answered sincerely, “Actually, last night I slept the entire night for the first time in a long time. I think I got almost seven hours of sleep!” As I continued driving, peering through the heavy rain beating down on the windowsheild, she answered from directly behind me, “All three of us girls prayed for you last night,” and I felt my heart sink into my chest, heavy with joy. Then Diana, her elder sister by blood, chimed in, “Yeah. In our room we have a new system with Jackeline of taking turns each night to pray for you so that you are able to sleep.”

And with that the Lord granted me a deeper sense of rest than anything a good night’s sleep can provide. He is knitting us, as different as we are and as uncomfortable and demanding as the process can be, into one body. His body.

My new six-year-old son did. Poop in the Burger King playground, that is. We were on Day Three of our parents-to-five-children adventure, and after going to a couple used clothing shops for our two newest arrivals I took the kids to a special treat that we´ve only done one other time — lunch at Burger King and time to play in the big playground inside.

Darwin was on a ´date´ with our eldest daughter that day, so I was with the four youngest ones and everything was going along perfectly. I sat in the playground room, distracted from reading my book as various little people continually stuck their heads out of the big play structure calling my name to look and wave.

And then something strange happened. Jackeline, our new eleven-year-old daughter, came over to me and said plainly, ¨Josue pooped in his pants.¨ I was sort of dumb-struck and could only think to ask, ¨Does this happen frequently?¨ Her response: yes.

I put on my metaphorical ¨momma¨ pants and said, ¨Ok, I´ll take care of this. You just keep playing. Have fun!¨ and then looked down and his big grin and smelly pants and asked myself, ¨What now?¨

The only logical solution seemed to be to walk him to the women´s bathroom (he´s a bit too burly to carry) and try to clean him up in one of the really small stalls. I did so, leaving a sporadic trail of smeary poo from the playplace to the bathroom as the poop continued to drip down his pantsleg and onto the shiny tile floor. Not to mention the little pile of wet poo he left on the site of the crime within the playplace, which I didn´t notice until returning with him from the bathroom.

So anyways, him and I squeeze into one of the two stalls in the women´s bathroom, and after stripping him of his clothes I sit him on the toilet because there was hardly enough room for one person, let along two, to stand. Seeing as his legs were smeared with poop, the act of sitting him on the toilet then transfered — or maybe even multiplied, who knows — a large quantity of the sticky substance onto the priorly squeaky-clean toilet seat. Poop was everywhere!

The whole experience seemed quite surreal, like I was watching in on someone else´s life without getting stressed or grossed out (or vomiting), and I realized in that moment the reality of the ¨unexplainable peace¨ that is available to us through Jesus Christ. I began to laugh out loud in that little Burger King bathroom stall, uncontrollably joyful as I said out loud various times to no one in particular, ¨God is enough! God is sufficient!¨

So many times we think we need God plus something else to make us happy. Maybe God plus our days off or God plus a comfortable income or God plus kids who behave well and don´t poop in the Burger King playground. I realized in that moment that God alone — Who He is, His promises to us, His justice, love and mercy — is all that we need. He is enough. Add or subtract anything else — displeasing circumstances, a restful vacation, a bad night´s sleep, a great relationship — and nothing truly changes. If we cannot find contentment in God through Christ, we cannot find it in anything else.

So there I stood, hunched over the poopy little boy in the Burger King bathroom, laughing like a mom who has done delirious, and declaring for all other bathroom patrons to hear, ¨God is sufficient! He is enough!¨ I think for the first time I actually understood how to be patient — serenely so — in a truly sticky situation, to rest in God´s grace rather than in my own power or agreeable circumstances.

Then a long and somewhat clumsy series of events led us to the car to get out the new clothes we had just bought for him, return to the bathroom, and then walk hand-in-hand back through the restaurant towards the play area as several customers commented out loud on how bad the restaurant smelled. I think all of the restaurant´s janitors were called to the scene, because we passed by more than a couple moppers and disinfecters hard at work to recover the glistening floor that my beautiful son had spoiled. I had to hold in a giggle and resisted the temptation to laugh out loud and say, ¨It was us! My son is the one who pooped on your floor! But God is sufficient!¨

When we got home that evening, Darwin and I were talking and I told him, ¨I bought this little backpack for Josue, because from now on whenever we go out with him we are going to need to take an extra pair of clothes, because anything can happen.¨ He looked at me somewhat confused and I laughed, saying, ¨It´s a long story. But God is enough.¨