It doesn’t take much for me to want to walk away from people. People who hurt, that is.

Preserve my own heart? Yes please. Fix my own hurt? Why not?

Sometimes it isn’t a big deal of things when I walk away. It’s just a casual, imperceptible slide. But even so, I often “leave” to protect my own heart. I wrote about leaving on A Deeper Story today.

God WITH Us

We are leavers. Serial leavers.

We leave jobs and churches. We leave homes and neighborhoods. Sometimes we leave children and spouses.

We are blessed with the means to leave most of the time. With cars that start or bank accounts that allow employment switches. We are fortunate to have running shoes to lace up to run out the door when an argument gets too thick to work through.

We leave friends behind. We leave homeless people on the side of the road. We leave someone alone when we know they need human comfort.

We leave when things feel uncomfortable or when we see the promise of something better somewhere else. When it gets too deep or too painful, we skip out.

Most of all we leave to protect our hearts. It isn’t necessarily right but it’s true.

Christ did not leave us. Instead He came…

To read the rest of the article, click here.

It can be scary sitting so close to the edge of the world.

We watched the sun sink, not over the western sea like I’m used to, but over the trees, still to the west, while the clouds were painted pink over the Atlantic.

And then when it got too dark to see faces and the ocean began to retreat with the moon, we sat down in pairs and threes. Silhouettes and silver light. Fine sand on my hands and between my toes.

I told Emily. “Its strange to think that the edge of the country is right here. Right at our fingertips.”

And that the whole big wide sea that stretches all the way from the waves in South Carolina to the coast of Africa is just steps away from us. Yet we laugh, ignore it sometimes, forget it’s there and trust that it won’t rise up to swallow us whole.

We even turn our backs to it because we all think we KNOW it so well. The sea. We are not afraid of it.

We can tell the tide is pulling out. We know we can leave our sandals on the deck and that they will be there when we return. That we can lie down on the blanket and maybe close our eyes. Maybe.

It is good, the sea. But it is not truly safe.

Yes. The sea could actually rise up, with enough storm force or a shaking of the earth and remove us from our places on the sand. It could rise, tide high with a strong moon and do strange and unnatural things with the shore.

It is good. But it is not safe.

Like the sea, our God is one who is good but not entirely “safe.” But unlike the sea, our God is bound by His goodness. He is bound by His love for us. And in that goodness and love, we are held.

And with Him, we can lie down on the sand, eyes closed, and trust that His goodness will carry us.

And maybe, with Him,  it won’t be that scary sitting close to the edge of the world.

photo by Lisa Leonard

How has God been good to you today?

I am faithless.

As unfaithful as a kite: barely tethered to the slippery 5 year old hand that holds the string.

I am faithless and I am bankrupt.

I wander, wild sometimes, with no goal and little belief. I am anything but full of faith. I might be full of doubt or worry or bitterness. But never full of faith.

Charity. Yes. Hope. Yes. But faith? It seems to get the best of me most days.

I am faithless. My words bounce off of one another and make a noise; not the one I set out to make {melody is what I’m going for} but instead it’s just a pile of sounds, one on top of the other crushing one another with the weight.

When I pray for healing I shake my head. “I don’t even know what I’m doing,” I say as we lay hands on her shoulders and pray words and don’t even believe what I am saying.

I don’t even know how to pray half the time. And I don’t even believe, most of the time, that You will answer.

Because of your faith. Over and over in the Bible. Because of your faith. What if I don’t have any?

But even in the faithlessness, there is still something: some insignificant piece of wonder, of question.

Can I trust you? {I can barely say it out loud}

That “something” is there in the inconstant, quickly whispered prayers in a moment of terror or frustration. That faith rears a tiny, measly head when I step on to a plane to travel 3000 miles away from every last person I love. It is there when I kiss nine-year-old cheeks before bedtime with a Jesus-Bless-Your-Sleep sigh on my lips.

There is faith when I assume the sun will set in the west and a moon will rise to meet it.

You have done things that make it hard for me to look away. You have done things that make it necessary for me to believe. Maybe You have done these things that I might believe.

I am faithless, but even there You have given me the strength for a small bit of something. {Can we even call it faith?}. It doesn’t move mountains {yet} but might if I let it.

I will continue to whisper the faithless prayers, perhaps even whisper them to the wind, but I know You will hear them even there.

Have you ever seen God answer prayers that were prayed without much faith? Do you believe faith is necessary for God to answer prayers? Do you, like me, feel often bereft of faith?

You should have seen me right before our mini-getaway last weekend: I was haggard, bloated, teary-eyed and greasy-haired. I was a mother.

But then we took a four day break, and I felt better immediately.

Not because I wanted to get away from my children. Not at all. I was just tired of disciplining.

I was exhausted from constantly being the firm hand, the solid wall, the immovable fortress of behavior in this home. I didn’t want to send anyone else to their room or put anyone else on the “naughty” step. I was tired of making my seven-year-old earn her video game time and enforce reluctant apologies from my three-year-old. I didn’t feel like bringing my want-to-yell voice carefully down to a calm and patient request for obedience.

Tired of staying sharp to the emotional ups and downs of my oldest.
Tired of grasping defiant wrists to hoist my youngest away from the playground when it’s time to go.
Tired of walking away from tantrums.
Tired of watching any and all forms of discipline fall into the oubliette of childhood.

I wasn’t weary of my children. I was weary of disciplining.

And when I realized that, then I cried.

[And most women will agree with me that a good cry fixes a lot of things.]

Does God ever get tired of being the firm fortress like I do? And I’m not even that solid; I jiggle and waver at the slightest change in plans. Does He ever lie down exhausted because He’s just had too much of me? I’ve ignored Him and spat on his attention for the last time. Does He burst into tears because I never seem to get it right? Are my emotional sweeps too great for Him to be comfortable with me?

Does He just need a break?

No.

Never.

Even when I choose to walk away from His gentleness or His good plans for me He still pursues me. He doesn’t need a break, He doesn’t melt into tears of frustration, He doesn’t need a nap. He just is. His love never wanes for me or needs a boost of adrenaline. He never needs a shot or four of espresso to make it through the afternoon.

And He disciplines me in firm kindness like the perfect mother I am not.

At the playground yesterday afternoon, Naomi climbed up to the tallest castle tower of the play structure and in her loudest three-year-old voice, begged the rest of the kids to rescue her.

Anyone?

Any takers?

Crickets…

Ahem, let me try that again.

“Save me!! I’m a princess. In a tower. Save me!!”

The sound of shovels digging in playground sand, kids shouting to each other on the basketball court, gravel crunching as bicycles ride by. Silence. Nobody to save her.

She wanted to play a game that no one else was willing to play. And at the very least, her own imagination was so supple and deep, that no other sub ten-year-old was willing to enter her save-the-princess-in-the-tower world.

Her feelings weren’t hurt. Nobody came to her rescue so she slid down the nearest slide and started digging in the dirt. No harm, no foul and very quickly forgotten.

She didn’t really need saving. But if she did, if she’d fallen and hurt herself, I would have been there in an instant, ready to help. Ready to comfort and to aid.

The thing is, we serve a God who is always ready. He doesn’t ignore our “save me” pleas from the tallest tower. He certainly does not go about playing basketball or riding bikes when someone is in need. He responds quickly.

He stops what He is doing. He listens. And He saves.

Even the three-year-old in the princess tower who just wants her voice to be heard.

He loves to do it.

Somehow my three year old got about a cup of garden bed soil and accidentally dumped it on the carpet in my bedroom.

Without even telling me, she ran down the stairs and found the broom and dustpan. From upstairs I yelled down to her to ask her what she was doing. CLEANING UP THE MESS, MAMA! Never good to hear. Especially when you don’t know what mess she’s talking about.

My youngest is learning to pray.

We pray with her, specifically, in the evenings before I turn out her lights. But she is also learning by watching her sister, her Sunday School teachers, listening to me pray over meals and in the car before I drop her sister off at school.

But I have never, not once prayed to the cat. And neither has my husband or older daughter.

Naomi seems to have, like many verbal three year olds, a slight problem with prepositions. She cannot, at least in prayer, differentiate between “for” and “to”.

So her prayer (to the Christian God, let’s make sure we are all on the same page) sounds something like this:

“Dewwr God,

I pway to Mimi, Papa Rob and to Mamma and Papa. I pway to Hopey and Rosie (the cat) and to Mommy and Daddy. I pway to Chi Chi and to Madelyn and Jordan and Josiah.

AAAmen.”

I don’t know of any Christian tradition, Protestant or Catholic, that advocates prayer to living people (although saintly and righteous) or housebound cats.

Then again, she might be making a three-year-old style statement about society.

Or maybe she’s still just figuring it all out that although it does matter who we pray to, words don’t matter nearly as much as attitude.