Finding my voice

Depending on what you read, many counselors will say that kids from dysfunctional homes learn two rules. Don't talk and Don't feel. You actually learn all kinds of other rules too, like don't wake up mom on Christmas morning unless you want to get hit! But the "don't talk and don't feel" rules are so broad and all-encompassing that most everything fits underneath those headings.

But think about that for a moment. A child who does not talk or feel. You and I would take that child to a specialist fearful that something terrible had happened to them. I actually had an experience with a child like that a number of years ago. I was delivering pizzas to a trailer with a very messy yard. A petite woman answered the door looking around in a very paranoid manner. She proceeded to pull out a huge wad of cash and pay for the small order. That was my first visit. It was creepy and something wasn't right, but I had seen stuff like that before. On my second visit, however, there was a little girl, no more than 3 years old, standing in the window. Her eyes were vacant and there was no life in her.

Please understand that delivering pizza's might be the closest thing to becoming Santa Claus! Kids loved me when I show up with pizza. They could barely contain themselves. More than once a kid would take the pizza from me and leave me standing at the door waiting for someone to come pay me. But this little girl had no response at all. She was like a ghost. The mother appeared again with the same paranoid look and the same wad of cash. As I left, the little girl put her nose against the window and just stared at me. While I was driving away, I wept bitterly and wasn't sure I could even finish the rest of my shift. Everything in me wanted to bust down the door and just whisk her away for a bath and some ice cream.

If that is my heart for a little girl I don't even know, why is it so hard to give my heart the time and space it needs to learn these two cornerstones of life? Are we even alive if we don't talk or feel? When I meet these people now I see them as asleep. I think many Christians are asleep and have simply traded their non-chrisitan sorrow for christian sorrow. For a long time I think I traded my sorrows for rules and performance. Who does that sound like? I understand why the Pharisees did all they could to hold on to their positions. It made them feel important and safe.

When my kids and I would read through the gospels together during homeschooling, we would always laugh when we saw the Pharisees trying to trick Jesus. Seriously? Trick the creator of the universe? It was ridiculous to us. Jesus had harsh words for the Pharisees but He never just destroyed them. He could have you know. With one word he could have called down a band of angels to wipe out all of them. But He didn't. The fact I even think that way is a tip off to my own Pharisee heart that elevates justice over love. But Jesus even loved the Pharisees. I am thankful for that now.

So only in recent years have I really started to feel and finding my voice is even more new to me. But the process is so messy. Legalism is so clean. I miss it. Legalism allows you to call some people bad and other people good. There is a clear enemy, like the New England Patriots or Michigan or Notre Dame! Ok, ok. But life is messy. Good men preside over evil systems sometimes. Bad men are used by God to advance His cause. The righteous are killed for doing what is right. Legalism can not explain any of these things.

My goal when teaching history to my children was to warn them of over-simplfying the past. Wars are rarely good vs evil. Mankind is so agenda driven and bent on self- protection. That is one of the most beautiful attributes of God to me; His selflessness. It is the part of the gospel that always makes me cry. "While were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God." Why do I fight a love like that?

So back to finding my voice. It's messy. I don't like it. But without my voice who am I? Perhaps that is why I started writing. This seems like a good medium to wrestle with some things. To try out my voice. To see if I really do make sense and have something worth saying. However, if I am made in the image of God, and I am, then it stands to reason, I have something to say. And, if the God of the universe came to earth and died for me, which He did, then it stands to reason, it might even be important.