My Heart

 "And in my heart I find a need
Of Him to be my Savior

That He would leave His place on high
And come for sinful man to die
You count it strange so once did I
Before I met my Savior"

-Aaron Shust "My Savior My God"

 

When I was very young, my dad sat with me and explained that I could ask Jesus to live in my heart.  This would make me a Christian.  It was something that Mom, Dad, and my older sister already were.  And it made sense to me at the time to do this thing which was obviously the right thing to do, but for all the wrong reasons.  So I would be like my family.  So I wouldn't go to Hell.  I lived my life as a "Christian" on the outside; I never stole, never killed anyone, got good grades and didn't have sex with any boys.  But on the inside, my heart wasn't really in it.  I hated people, like full-blown if they were injured on the side of the road I would walk right by or maybe even kick them HATRED.  And so I talked about these people with my friends, and we exaggerated things that were true about them to the point that we created almost a legend of false gossip in our high school.  And when I planned for my future, I sat God down and told him what I was going to do and where I was going to go and then gave him the green light to make it happen.

But he didn't.  My life after high school didn't look anything like what I had listed off to God in my Christmas List prayer.  And so I had to wonder, who is this guy?  What do I actually believe about God and heaven and hell and being a Christian?  And there were years when I struggled to figure it out, and I tried letting my outside match my inside and skipped church and failed a class and went to a bar and drank alcohol.  But this didn't get me any closer to feeling like I understood anything.  So my fiance (who soon became my husband) found a church for us to attend together, and we went and we sat with a pastor and we asked questions.  And week after week, he answered my questions.  I began to realize where I had gone off course before, where I had made God in my image, instead of the other way around.  When I was 23, my husband and my pastor baptized me in a lake, and I can honestly say I walked out of the water a new person.  I was now on a mission to change my heart.  I didn't know how exactly, but I realized that gossiping about people had to go.  That was a tricky one.  I borrowed some steps from AA...I stopped reading "gossip" magazines like US Weekly, I stopped hanging out with those friends who loved to talk about other people.  I focused on having conversations about Ideas and Places and Themes and went cold turkey off People.  Once I got the hang of that, I saw other things that I was doing, things that began deep in my heart and welled up out of me, things that someone following God shouldn't do.  I examined the people I hated, and found a new way to see them that was full of love and grace.  I dug deep into my heart and grabbed hold of the secret shame I carried and pulled it into the light and refused to carry it any longer.

And just last night I sat in a church, surrounded by moms who were looking for encouragement and comfort, and I remembered what my dad had taught me all those years ago, about how Jesus lived in my heart.  And maybe its because I'm really getting the hang of this homemaker stuff, but I realized that I hadn't given him a very nice place to live.  He was crowded out by anger and shame and jealousy and hatred.  But letting that go, emptying all that darkness, made room for Him.  I gave Him a place to fill with His love, His peace, His kindness and goodness.  I'd like to think that my outside matches my inside again, that all this light that fills my heart shines out.  I'd like to think that God is giving me the marching orders these days, that what I do and where I go is part of His plan, and that this world is becoming a better place to live because of it.

Waiting

Two years ago, we opened our home.  We made room for another life to join us for however long he needed.  I am ready to do it again.  Its not just the extra bed that is waiting.  I've cleared room in my heart for another child to fill.  While he or she may occupy the extra room for a short time, the love I have will stay as long as my heart is beating.

I don't do this alone.  There is a man who stands beside me.  Although he isn't certain that he is ready, because he tends to worry and think about the worst things that could happen, he agrees none the less that every child deserves a home, a family, and while I wait with my arms wide open, he waits too.  Its why we are a twosome, his fear and my optimism together make us considerate but brave.  It means that we don't jump without looking, that we don't charge ahead without a plan.  We evaluate and discuss and decide together.

We're in a groove now.  This family-of-five thing is running smoothly, with a shampoo-rinse-repeat reliability.  The weeks begin with a full fridge and each day planned out, the laundry sorted and placed in the dressers, the house clean and the grass mowed.  As the days go by, the food gets eaten, the house gets trashed, the clothes are messed and tossed in the waiting machines, the library book pile grows, and always, always, we must be doing something, going somewhere, running running running because these boys are balls of energy that must be constantly engaged in some activity or else they will make up the activity, and there will be cracked eggs on the kitchen floor and flooded basements and footprints on the ceilings and toys down the heating vents.

But every time we add another person to this household, the whole family leaps out of the groove and we have to hold on tight as we figure it out, how does this work now?  It takes months to get back to that well-oiled place of understanding our roles and what needs to be done every day, every week, what can wait?  Its knowing this, that our lives will stall out, go off course, move from order to chaos, that actually makes the waiting bearable.  I can wait for a grumpy husband informing me that there is nothing to wear to work and he needs me to find something in 20 minutes, wait for the children asking for snacks and realizing that the cupboards are empty, wait for the inevitably difficult attempts to leave the house all together.  But, oh, the newness.  The energy that seems to well up from nothing, the excitement and the YES I CAN spirit that have helped me overcome the jarring transition three times now...I know it will be there.  And so I wait.  With open arms.