Being a parent is terrifying. I used to live in so much fear
that something awful would happen to my kids. Every news story was a one-way
ticket to the Land of What-If. And it was a land I visited often. It was a land in which I held duel
citizenship.
I’d wake in the night and hover over their beds with my hand
gently resting on their chest, making sure my imagined horrors had not spilled
over into reality and, in fact, stopped their lungs from rising. Every time we
were in public places, I scouted out the exits and planned my escape from
attackers. Every stranger could have been a kidnapper, every bump or bruise
could have been the first sign of a dire diagnoses, every moment of calling
their name and not getting an immediate response could have been the moment
that everything changed for the worse.
I remember after the Sandy Hook school shooting, I checked
my boys out early. They were in kindergarten and first grade, the same ages of
the children slain by the shooter. We laid in bed and watched movies all
afternoon. We ate ice cream for dinner. They thought it was the best day ever
and I hid my tears as not to change their mind.
School shootings were added to the looming list of threats,
alongside the rest of the possibilities that might snatch them away from me.
This list was a vague and nearly palpable thing, whispering daily its intention
of proving me in my worries right. I loved my sons so much that it seemed only
right to worry with the same fervor. It felt like love to worry like that, even
though it killed my joy.
A few months after Sandy Hook, in April of 2014, a tornado tore through Central
Arkansas. It missed our house by about three miles, but it did not miss my
friend April’s house. My sons slept peacefully that night as I laid awake in horror.
The next day we told them that their best friends were dead, and the Land of
What-If was no longer some imaginary and vague place. It became an inescapable
reality.
It took a few days for God to break in. I was so mad at Him. His character was
standing trial and I was judge, jury and executioner. Then I visited April in
the hospital, and in her brokenness and newfound childlessness, she proclaimed
the goodness of God to me and it sent me reeling. I simply could not process
her faith. That night I laid awake again, this time not in horror but in a weak
and flickering hope that maybe my fear could be overcome.
The next morning, from the end of my kitchen table, while I breastfed my son
Ezra, I wrote a blog post about a tornado and a mother that knew the goodness
of God. It went viral. So much so that four years later, it still receives a
hundred hits a day. Beauty began to emerge from ashes, and I was set on a path
into deep and meaningful relationship with the creator of the universe. God
used a tornado to teach me about His goodness. In the faith of my friend and
her unsurmountable peace, I found freedom from the chains that had bound me my
entire motherhood.
It was in the midst of loss, pain and tragedy that I learned a lesson I had not
been able to grasp before. Gripping my children suffocating tight while fear
dictated how I raised them wasn’t changing the fact that our days aren’t
promised. So I decided to be certain in His love and actually, really, fully
live. The opposite of fear isn’t in nonchalance in the face of threats. The
opposite of fear is found in love. That is where bravery and freedom exist. The
knowledge that He is good and trustworthy is the only place unshakable by
What-If.
Last week, while yet another school shooting was still trending in the
headlines and while a tornado watch buzzed on weather channels, we met with a
group of friends in our home. We get together weekly, a living room expression
of church and community, and we teach our children to worship and to know
Jesus. That night we sat before them, us completely aware of the state of
disarray of our broken world, them completely oblivious to it. And we taught
them about the bible story of Jesus washing the feet of His disciples.
We didn’t expect it to be profound. We anticipated something of a zoo, one with
seventeen children and several pitchers of water. As the story unfolded and we
talked about what love looks like, the children settled. They began engaging in
conversation, and when we asked who would like to help wash their friend’s
feet, hands went up, some quickly, some apprehensively. Within minutes, even
the hands that hadn’t gone up at all had taken part. Before we knew it,
everyone was washing feet, praying over each other and receiving the same.
We wept that night as our babies carried out an act of love they were only
beginning to grasp. It may not seem like
much, a handful of families in a living room doing something so menial as foot
washing, but it stood for something incredible. It stood for the belief that
the bad things happening in the world do not measure the goodness of God. It
was a picture that grace means having the ability to navigate through
brokenness with love and the ability to still have hope.
My heart still breaks at the headlines. I am not under the
delusion that I am immune from tragedy. I know that I can follow the traffic
laws, and make my sons wear their helmets and follow every precaution to keep
them safe, but ultimately I cannot protect them from the world. So I have
decided to trust the heart and intentions of God, and to find my assurance in
the promise of eternity. No matter what, He is good and He loves my boys more
than I do.
So I will love them with a worry-free ferocity. They will never learn fear from
me. It is my earnest hope that when tragedy brushes them in this life, they
will be the ones that respond in certainty to God’s goodness. That on the
foundation of His love and mine, they might be the ones that loose the chains
of fear off their fellows by their own fearlessness.
Maybe, just maybe, they could be the ones to bring a little
healing to this broken world. Maybe they could live as duel citizens to a
different Land of What-if, one where only one question was begged, “What if the
world knew that God really is, always and undeniably, good?
