Give me Jesus

God, I'm exhausted. 

You know what this week has thrown at me and it's no surprise that I'm ready to call it a day. I'm tired and tearful and probably hormonal and at least I know that you're the one person who won't roll their eyes and put all this angst down to hormones; you invented them. You know what they can do to a person. 

Lord, it's been a crap week. Not to put too fine a point on it. Sorry.

I haven't even got the energy to tell you all about it - but that's alright because you know already. You were there. You think I can handle it. You're probably right, I suppose - what choice do I have? But I'm going to need some help. 

I came across this picture on the Internet. I love it. It's a beautiful picture of a sunrise and the caption is:

'In the morning, when I rise, give me Jesus.'

It turns out that it's a quote from a traditional spiritual song that I don't know which was famously arranged by a lady called Alma Blackmon. The words are very simple, and beautiful and the refrain: 

'You can have all this world

Just give me Jesus'.

That's about it. 

There have been a handful of times in my life, Lord God, when I've run out of... well, everything. Energy, ideas, patience, peace of mind. This week is pretty much one of those times. Bad news has piled on top of bad news and anxiety and worry linked arms and barged their way back into my head where they set up camp and made themselves comfortable. Fear crept in quietly and ominously and now huddles with them round the camp fire and depression and defeat are waiting in the shadows for an invitation. 

Give me Jesus. 

Lord, give me Jesus when I rise, and before that, when I lie in bed and stab at the snooze button and try to stay asleep because it's easier being asleep than awake. Give me Jesus when I come downstairs and start to nag the children about eating breakfast, brushing hair, brushing teeth, getting dressed, finding bookbags and finding shoes. 

Give me Jesus on the school run. Give me Jesus as I walk away into the grown-up bit of day which this week hasn't been a whole lot of fun. As I spend time with people I love, give me Jesus so that they can see Him, not me. 

Give me Jesus as I collect the kids and make tea. Give me Jesus as I run baths and find pyjamas. Give me Jesus as I put them to bed and then do it all over again. And again. 

Lord, Give me Jesus. You can have all this world, just give me Jesus. 

Lord, you can have all this world. I don't want it at the moment. It's a world full of broken marriages and pain and illness and hospitals and doctors and X rays and bad news and low self esteem and tears and waiting on hard chairs and lying awake at night not-knowing and filling the gaps with imagination that just loves to paint everything bleak and grim. 

It's a world full of shadows that are so dark that sometimes it's hard to see you.

It's a world where you are visible in the huge extravagant beauty of the first poppy blooming in my garden and in the promise of the flowers on the tomato plants and in the baby radishes peeping potential above the soil. It's a world of purply-grey stormy skies and lashing rain then watery sunshine and subtle rainbows and the smell of wet dusty ground. 

It's a world where those that have eyes to see and ears to hear can find you all everywhere - and all that's just lovely and great but right now it's not enough, Father God. I don't want to discern you in subtleties, I want to run actually, not figuratively, into your real, solid, faithful arms and feel the weight and strength of your embrace. To let my legs go as wobbly as they feel and let you pick me up effortlessly and hold me close like a little girl. 

Daddy, I'm tired.

I don't want to be strong. I want to give up. I want to stay asleep. 

I don't want to keep trying to communicate when I don't have words. I don't want to persevere with the goals you've set me, I want to sit down and not move. I don't want to make decisions and I don't want to explain bad things to small children and I just don't want to do any of it any more. 

I don't want to run the race, I'm tired and I want to rest. 

You can have all this world. Just give me Jesus. 

Amen. Just...amen.

Do what you do

Dear God.

Everyone has something to say about what's happened in Oklahoma. The way a tornado flattened an area miles wide with so little warning that some people didn't have time to find a safe place, not that there were any if  The way some were safe in a vault at the bank, customers huddling with staff. The way a lovely old lady wept in thanksgiving when her little dog scrambled out of the wreckage of her home. 

The way schools was destroyed and children were trapped and crushed and drowned. 

In the world of social media everyone has something to say. I suppose I do, too, because I sort out my feelings when I write them down, and after half an hour reading about this disaster on the internet news I'm a bit of a mess of feelings. I haven't got anything to say that is helpful, or wise; I wonder if there's anything that anyone can say that helps. 

Nobody told me when I was expecting my first baby that I would one day only have to think of another mother an ocean away one day and find tears running down my face. Nobody told me that a picture of a mother desperately waiting for news would break my heart. 

I've always been a bit of a softie, and I know that even before my babies came along I'd have watched this footage with horror and shock, but when I went into a hospital as somebody's daughter and came out somebody's mother, something shifted. Suddenly there was a little life - and nineteen months later another little life - more precious to me than mine. 

There were mothers and fathers standing in rubble as the emergency services lifted debris, waiting to know if their child would come home that night. Someone with a megaphone started shouting the names of the kids who were alright, who still had breath in their body to say who they were. Imagine waiting to hear your baby's name, waiting and waiting as people around knelt in relief and scooped up their battered, wounded but living-and-breathing child and your little just didn't come out?  

They must have been so frightened, those little boys and girls. They must have cried and shouted for their mummy or their daddy and they didn't come. 

Oh, God. 

The other night my little girl Katy was so tired that she thought of something that upset her and she thought of it so much that she dissolved into tears and she couldn't get herself right again until we'd cuddled and snuggled for a long time. Other people's mummies were to go on a school trip with them next month but I wouldn't be going. Lots of reasons for this, (the main one being that I didn't want to go; I didn't sign up to go) but Katy suddenly, surprisingly, decided that the most important thing in the world was that I would be with her when she went on the school trip. Alas, too late. The class teacher had been inundated with offers of parent helpers (why? I don't understand it) and so it was too late. Katy, for reasons that escape me, inconsolable. She so, so wanted me to be there. 

And this is only a school trip. I felt so guilty. Guilt that I wouldn't be with her on a lovely school visit. That I should be there for her. That in not being there I was letting her down. 

How much more could a heart take - not to be there when your little one is terrified in the midst of a hugely powerful hurricane? When the winds are blowing at over two hundred miles an hour and the roof is torn off and the walls are collapsing and cars are flying through the air? When they're lying contorted and hurt under the rubble of a collapsed building?  Gasping for air before unconsciousness and suffocation?

Nobody told me the all-consuming love that I have for my children. Yes, they get me down sometimes. Yes, I find the job of being their mummy relentless and frustrating and overwhelming sometimes - much of the time. But not to be there when they needed me?  

Far away there are mummies and daddies who will somehow have to find out if peace is possible again the other side of something like this. Like the time a man walked into a school and carelessly took the lives of all those small children and their brave teachers. Like the time a huge factory collapsed in Bangladesh and more than a thousand people lost their lives, some of them barely old enough to operate a sewing machine. The time that we saw on our televisions scenes of skeletal mothers and babies in Somalia in the last stages of malnourishment sitting on the parched ground, waiting for death. 

Why do we think that those mothers love their children less than we love ours? 

I breastfed my babies and I had excess milk that I froze for convenience. I eat so many calories that my hips are well padded for carrying my well-fed children. What must it be like to have a baby knowing that you have no way to feed it, to keep it alive?

What must it be like to send my little one to school with a lunchbox with a cheese and ham sandwich (Elizabeth's favourite) and a bag of raisins and a chocolate biscuit. To put a little 'I love you' note in the lunchbox - or that morning was I too busy to write one? - and then to find out that today was the day she wasn't going to come home? 

What must it be like to wait in the twisted remains of a building for news of my whole family and then the building starts to burn?

It's all misplaced, of course, the guilt, but it goes with the territory of motherhood. To protect and nurture and kiss it all better. To be there to make things right when knees are grazed or bullies say the mean things. It's so deeply ingrained in me that to deny me that need to respond is to rob me of something fundamental. I can't imagine the pain that those mothers must be going through. 

Where were you, Lord? I think you must have been there; surely you couldn't have stayed away. I pray that you were there with those little ones as the roof was ripped off. There when the teacher shielded their little bodies from the bullets. There when the factory collapsed like a house of cards. 

There as every mother cradles her baby and feels the raw power of the new love in her heart.

You must be. It comes from you.

Oh, God, what's it all about? I've read blog posts about comfort and about your tears falling as rain. I've read articles about why there's suffering in this broken, dysfunctional, terminal world. I've seen people railing against your injustice and hard-heartedness and others thanking you for your mercy and never-ending love. 

I just can't get the images out of my head. The mothers waiting for news. The sure knowledge that I would a million times rather die with my daughters in my arms than live knowing that they needed me and I wasn't there. 

I haven't anything to say. It makes no sense to me.

Well, I have one thing. I don't understand it one bit, but from the very deepest part of me, all I can say is that I know you, Lord Jesus. 

I know that you are love. You are compassion. You are the healer.  I know that you loved those children of yours in Oklahoma, in Connecticut, in Bangladesh and in Somalia. I know that you loved the five little souls who died in Derby in a house fire set by their own father and the little girl murdered in Wales whose body they have never found...and so on, and so on. 

I know that you care. 

I know that we are not lost. Somehow, and don't ask me how, as we stand in the middle of grief and horror in this beautiful and terrifying world, we aren't consumed, for you stand with us. 

You won't be defeated by evil in any of its forms. 

You say that you can bring good out of the most desperate circumstances, but I'm guessing those mothers don't want to hear that right now. There isn't any good, surely. 

When they wake up tomorrow morning and the next day and the days after that and for just a fraction of a moment they can't remember what immense, towering grief it is that looms over them - Lord, do what you do. Comfort, soothe, protect, heal. 

Loving Lord, do what you do.  

Image credits:

IMGP3231.JPG by spiroll

Katrina_LynnMeadows_2.jpg by msand39

downedtree.jpg by taliesin

all from Morguefile.com. Used with permission.

Lessons in losing

Morning, Lord.

I don't have any deep insights this morning. I just want to get something off my chest.

The other week my two girls took part in a swimming tournament. They go to a swimming club that starts out with basic swimming lessons when they're very young and as they progress they are encouraged to become competitive swimmers at whatever level is appropriate. They both love swimming. I love it less as the lessons are not at particularly convenient times and there's an awful lot of sitting around waiting and finding parking places, but hey, that's what being a mum is all about, isn't it?

So. Last year Elizabeth was the best in a group of learners (immediately after the competition she was moved up two levels to a new group) and she flew in both her races, winning two gold medals. Last year Katy did pretty well in the youngest learner group; she came fourth on her front and fifth on her back using a float. She got medals too; everyone who took part got a medal. At the medal presentation night some days later they were both bursting with pride, and so was I. They took their medals to school to show to the class; their confidence grew and they were happy.

This year was a completely different story. A year older, Lizzie was among the youngest in her group. Her first race was the backstroke, which she likes, though she prefers the freestyle. She was just wonderful and she won her heat. She arrived at the end of the pool first and turned to grin at us in the stands. Her little sister was jumping up and down in delight and shouting 'Lizzie! Lizzie! That's my sister! Hooray for Lizzie!'

Then it all went wrong. Elizabeth climbed out of the pool. She didn't know about the etiquette of staying in the water until everyone had finished; nobody had mentioned it. The man allocated to her lane told her off. I don't know what he said, or the manner in which he said it, but her shoulders were sagging and her face fighting back tears as she rejoined her group on the side of the pool. She stood on her own until her next race, uncertain and self conscious and worrying about whether she should stay or go and get changed, and whether everyone knew that she'd broken the rules and what they would say when they found out. It turns out that the man had told her that she might be disqualified because of her error in the first race but she'd have to wait and see.

The next race was called and this time they were encouraged to dive in if they felt comfortable. The older ones dived, which gave them a headstart straight away. Elizabeth's group have only just started to dive (with varying success) and so she started in the water. She swam both the remaining races carefully and cautiously, leaving no room for criticism of her style or manners.

Subsequent heats of the backstroke told us that Lizzie hadn't won anything, and the news that she had transgressed one of the rules took away any pleasure she might have felt in her heat victory. Now, in her best race, she was so afraid that she might get it wrong again that swam with exaggerated care and cautiousness and came ninth. It was miles slower than her warm up lengths at which point she had felt invincible. In the car on the way home she cried. It took us ages to establish what had gone wrong because she thought she'd done something terrible and was reluctant to tell us.

Katy's tournament, the next day, was even more of a disaster. Her teacher had entered her in the 'unassisted' freestyle and backstroke races and Katy panicked without a float. She swam so, so bravely that it broke my heart, but she came last by a mile. So far behind that she got her own round of applause. She burst into tears as she got out of the pool and cried without stopping until the next race.

'Mummy, I'm not a winner. I never win anything. I'm a loser.'

She actually swam further than she had ever swum before without any assistance, but she was devastated by coming last. I told her over and over how proud I was of her, how wonderfully hard she'd tried but it made no difference. I even asked if she was sure that she wanted to take part in the backstroke race, half hoping that she'd say no so that I could whisk her away, but she wanted to swim again.

The same thing happened.

Oh, Lord. I know that they can't win all the time. I know that they need to learn to lose. I know that I can't save them from every defeat and humiliation and disappointment. I know that this is supposedly how character is built. But I don't like it. I just don't like it.

Both my girls cried on the way home from their swimming tournaments. Last year they were jubilant and encouraged, this year full of self doubt and misery.

So, what, Lord? Am I just an over-protective mother who wants to cushion her daughters through their lives? No doubt that's what I am. Katy was entered in the wrong races and Elizabeth fell foul of a rule she didn't know about. It wasn't fair but there's nothing I could do about it.

There was no joy.

Is your heart so closely linked with mine that yours breaks when mine does? When I watched my girls going through a tough time I longed to take it away for them. I wanted to pick them up in my arms and disappear off to cuddle and whisper them better. I wanted to fight for them; to tell the man with the rules that he might be right, but she's seven years old and she didn't know, and did he realise that he'd crushed her? To say to Katy's swimming teacher that she was out of her depth (in more ways than one) and if only he'd entered her for an easier race she'd have been on top of the world.

Lord, I'm struggling with lessons that need to be learned. My girls learned that life isn't fair, that honest mistakes have consequences and that people are not always kind. All that on top of the lesson that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Katy feels as if she always loses.

You know what? I was so proud of them too. Amid all the hurt and anxiety my heart swelled for both of them. Katy had the option to quit after her first disastrous race and she didn't. Through her tears she said yes, she wanted to try again. Elizabeth didn't run away and hide even though she felt terribly self-conscious and anxious for having broken the rules. She stayed to swim again not knowing if her name would be called or not.

I thought that was amazing. I was very proud. Do you feel like that when your children down here turn up for the next race even though all the fun has gone out of it? When we try something hard and fall flat on our faces, do the angels cheer when we still get up for the next race?

It was a hard weekend. I cried. I cried for Katy's dashed hopes of winning something at last and I cried for Lizzie's confusion and self-doubt as she stood and waited to see if she would be asked to leave the pool. She really thought that they might announce that she was disqualified. She's seven years old. Katy's just five. Oh dear.

Lord, it's hard work being a mummy, sometimes. I love them so much. Is it hard work being a heavenly Daddy? Do you wish you could save me the hard lessons but you know that I need to learn them? Do you wish you could protect me from life's rubbish when you know that it's only when I wade knee-deep through it all that I develop muscles and eventually get to the other side?  You know better than anyone what it's like to watch as your child is treated unfairly, hurt indescribably and rejected completely. Did you want to snatch him up and send a fireball to consume the rest of us?

I don't always think there's a greater good when our children suffer. When kids get ill and die, where's the lesson in that? Sometimes life is just unfair because this world is broken. Feelings get hurt not to build character but just because people don't take enough care. I know that disappointment at a swimming gala is a million miles removed from some of the injustices that life throws at children. I suppose I should be grateful that they only battled with defeat in a swimming race. Help me keep a bit of perspective on it.

Thankyou that you are a God who cares about the little things as well as the earth-shattering. You care if your little ones are crushed by something as everyday as a children's swimming gala and you care about your little ones whose little ones are hurt. Thankyou for not telling me to pull myself together.

Sigh.

So that was it, Lord. I don't know if there's a spiritual lesson embedded in here, but I want to ask you to hold my girls tight and heal any wounds that they carry round with them. Don't let there be damage done to delicate self-esteem. Don't let guilt and failure and defeat get a grip on their hearts. Help me to show them that doing the right thing is more precious than winning. That courage is better than quitting. That turning up when discouraged is brave, and you can't be brave if you're not afraid in the first place.

I'm going to stop rambling now. Patch my Mummy heart back up, Lord; I know that there are going to be plenty more bruises like this.

Your heart must be pretty battered.

You rolled the stone away

I'm hurt and I want to hurt back

I am wounded and I lick my wounds

I am bitter and resentful

and full of anger.

How hard it is to forgive

Even though I am forgiven

I find that I don't want to let go

Of all the bitterness inside.

It's somehow easier to hold the hatred

in my hand and examine it closely

Each day to take it out again 

and turn it over and over

To think and reframe and analyse

To plan the nasty retorts

and counter attacks and volleys

of putdowns and missiles of my own.

But you tell me to lay it down

to put it at your feet 

to give it all to you and back away

leaving it there in front of you.

You want me to be free of the hardness

and hurting and scowling -

the darkness and hatefulness and spite

to let the breeze of your spirit blow through me.

To stop clenching and holding the hurt

to stop brooding and probing

but open my fists and allow you 

to take it from the palm of my hand.

So I lay my anger at your throne

take doubtful steps backwards

but I itch to take it up again

to snatch it back so that I can plot revenge

In words or deeds or thoughts

Just to be even, to stick up for myself

Not to be a victim, hurt, defeated - 

Why do I care so much?

You tell me I am different

I don't need to win.

Leave it with you

The battle is not mine but yours

So here it is.

The hurt and the anger and the resentment

I lay it before you

Have it. Take it away

I don't want it any more

I don't want my hands to be so full of rubbish

that I can't hold the gift you want to give me;

my forgiveness. 

For I need to forgive

as you have forgiven me

and suddenly it is clear

I need to find a way to let it go.

Because you forgave me. 

You died for me when I didn't care

I hurt you far more than I am hurt

Yet you go on forgiving.

So I give up my rage

and you take it from me

I say 'I forgive'

and you help me keep my word.

It turns out I don't miss the hatred

and the bitterness I was gripping

so tightly that my knuckles were white

I don't miss it at all.

Where it was is light and open and bright

in red and orange and yellow and green and blue

instead of black and grey and brown

There's warmth and sun instead of hard and cold.

A small transaction 

And they will never know it

Not that they would understand if they did

Or care the slightest bit.

But for me it is a gift

Another blessing from my God

who teaches me to live my life

differently.

Thankyou for helping me forgive.

It was a big thing for me.

I had no idea how big

but you knew.

Lonely at playtime

Lord, listen.


My little girl Elizabeth has had a bad day, I think. 


Tonight at bedtime she was tired and upset and things were weighing heavily on her little heart I think and so we talked for a while and I tried to make her see how special she is and it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with her if one little boy has decided that he no longer wants to be her friend, and how proud we are that she got her 50m badge at swimming at the weekend even though another child got their 75m; no, it doesn't mean that she's hopeless at swimming.  I'm sure that someone will play with her at playtime tomorrow; they do like her, why would they not?  

It nearly broke my heart. I know she's tired and tearful and I know that I do the same; late at night when I'm tired and overwrought things look worse than they do in the sunshine.  I've just been in to see her and she looks so small and so heartbreakingly beautiful with her little pigtails, her arms wrapped round her cuddly pig.  Katy is asleep with Barney on her face, the lump on her neck sticking out at the side, and Elizabeth is snuggled up with Pig, her lonely and anxious tears dried on her cheeks. 

Lord what a responsibility it is to bring up children.  


I know I can't do it without you; even with your help I feel as if I'm not really holding my end up.  Please show me how to help my little girls to grow in confidence.  Not arrogance, not self-satisfaction, but self esteem.  Show me how to nurture in them a knowledge of how special they are; how unique and gifted. I don't want them to compare themselves with other children any more than is necessary and I don't want them to feel they have to win, to be the best, to get it right every time to be a success.  

And help me not to overreact.  It's parents' evening on Thursday and I don't want to be the Mum who is always fussing. I want my beautiful, vivacious, imaginative, energetic, fun-loving Elizabeth to be equipped to fight her own battles - as far as any five year old might be - and not have her Mummy anxiously consulting the teacher every time something might be amiss.  

I get it so wrong sometimes. I cut one of them off as they try to tell me something when they're eating their dinner and then I realise how important it was to them. Tonight I declared it was a race to see who could get upstairs to bathtime first and Katy stood at the foot of the stairs and howled as she will never in a million years win a race against Lizzie.  She sobbed to me that she was tired of always being last.  


'When I'm five, (sniff) Lizzie will be (sniff) six, won't she?  And when I'm (sniff) seven, she'll (sniff) be eight. I'm always behind.  I'm never fast enough.  I can't ever win anything.'  


When will I learn?  I cuddle her and tell her that it's not always about being fastest or first and so on and so on.  How hard it is being a little sister.  How hard it is being a big sister.  


How hard it is being a Mum. 

Lord Jesus, you were human; you came here and lived as we did.  Did you ever feel inadequate?  I can't imagine it; you are God, after all.  Did you ever feel lonely?  We know that you did.  You were rejected in such devastating terms that I can't compare our small and superficial hurt feelings to your experiences in any way; that line of thought isn't really helping me.

You know my Lizzie.  You know how wonderful she is. You've made her bright with all the gifts that she has; please, Lord Jesus Christ, help her to shine. Help her to understand the wonder of herself so that she isn't cut so deeply by another child's careless rejection, that she has the confidence to walk away if someone is being unkind to her, that she might approach a new friend with her self esteem intact and not worry that she might not be good enough.  


Father, hold my little girl close and assure her of her worth, her loveability.  Am I not doing it well enough? 

I get so cross with her sometimes.  I am not good in the mornings and she is bouncy, excitable, silly.  I would say that more often than not we are cross with each other at breakfast time. I'm irritable.  I'm always snapping at her; clean teeth, brush hair, get dressed, eat breakfast, get books, stop messing about, find shoes, put on coat, why so late to mention that she needs something, don't be silly, walk faster, settle down, quick, quick... 


I leave her at school and then walk home with the same regret and guilt that I feel last thing at night when I go in and see them angelic in sleep - how come I could have been so cross with you such a short time ago?  I am impatient and critical.  Maybe her diffidence and low self esteem is my fault.  Can I have done such damage?  

Lord heal my girls. Heal them of any damage that I have done unwittingly in my heavy handed, clumsy, galumphing parenting. I love them so, so much that I write this with tears in my eyes at the idea that I have sown seeds that might grow into attitudes that might dog them into adulthood.  


You know that I, of all people, find it horrific that I might do that to them. I'm working through some of these things myself at 40 and I am terrified that I see it all in Lizzie aged five. I've wasted years that I don't want her to waste. 

I want her to be comfortable being Lizzie. To be proud of it, not apologetic.  To know that when she's done her best, she's done well, whether she's top of the class or bottom (not that in this day and age they let the children know their rankings in the class).  I want her to be kind, gentle, lighthearted and open minded in her choice of friends and her treatment of them.  I want her to be resilient and secure, not devastated when things go wrong. 

Maybe she's just tired tonight and focusing on the negatives. Maybe I am tired tonight and focusing on the negatives.  

Let my girls sleep in your arms tonight, Father God.  Keep them safe from anything that might harm them physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, or any other way. Heal them of anything that threatens to take root and hurt them, please.  Wash away the wounds and pains of being little and unsure and worried.  Assure them of your love in a way that they can understand, please.  And of mine too. 

Help me to be a better mother to my children. I need more patience, loads loads loads more patience.  I need a stronger grip on what I say and how I say things.  I need to stop and look more and hurry and chivvy less.  I need to let them be little more and stop expecting them to grow up.  One day they will have grown up and then what?

I'm going to go to sleep now and I hope that tomorrow we can all start afresh. Make it alright, Lord. I feel so unequal to the task of being a Mummy right now. Will you do it, please?  Show me really clearly what to do, what to say. Tomorrow, help me put you right in control. Give Lizzie a great day at school and Katy a great day at nursery. 


Build them up and show me how to do it. 


Make them smile. Please. 

Take the tears that have been cried in this house today and turn them into something special.