Love, Life and Tantrums

When my boy gets tired, he becomes inflexible, like many of us do. So I shouldn't have chosen a day when he was tired to announce that he would be wearing new swimming trunks to his lesson that day. All hell broke loose. Screaming, shouting, tears, snot, gagging - the full works. After he calmed down and put on the new trunks, we set off for the pool. There was another tantrum in the changing room about taking his shoes off. And then over the putting on of the swimming cap, which strains our relationship on the best of days. More snot and flailing limbs, whilst other children politely lined up for the lesson.  

As I walked him round to the poolside and handed him into the care of his teacher, the signs were not looking good. The little crumpled brow, the hands drawn nervously up to his chest, the little stutter in his feet, as though they half had a mind of their own and were trying to get back to the changing rooms. I did my best stern face and told him to pull himself together and get on with it. I am weary of having to do this, I thought, to deal with his tantrums and stubbornness. 

Once I got up into the gallery, I was not impressed with what I saw. There was my boy, stubbornly refusing to get into the pool. Feelings of mortification set in. Each time his teacher tried to coax him in, my boy turned his back on her with dramatic flair, and chose to sit facing the wall, knees pressed up against his chest and head down. My mortification turned into exasperation, and then after a further 25 minutes, into anger. I started mentally rehearsing how I would greet him afterwards: Would it be silent disapproval? Let him feel the burning of my anger in the silence of the car ride home? Or the "Get. Into. The. Car...NOW!" routine - with disgust written all over my face and in my tone. I was so angry I wanted to say mean things, words I would have meant in the moment but sorely regretted later. 

I begged God to help me - 'Help me! I want to be compassionate to this boy, but I can't! I want to hurt him, so he will get a taste of my anger and share in the shame he is causing me. And yet deeper still I don't, I don't. Please don't let me hurt him. I gave birth to this child, I love him. Please God, you are going to have to literally put some words into my mouth to speak to him. If you don't I will pour out a torrent of hurtful, angry words on him, and he will be wounded. Please, give me the words to say to him.'

As I watched on, my boy finally made it into the pool. He did a couple of lengths of backstroke, bobbing around as though he's in the Dead Sea, propped up as he is with his 8 armbands (he's nervous of sinking - we're trying to get it down to 6). The lesson over, I went to meet him, unsure about what was going to come out of my mouth, or what look would be on my face.

I wrapped the towel round him and lifted him onto the bench, and my mouth said:

"What do you think I should say to you?"

He looked at me and beamed. "Oh Mummy, I think you should say, 'Well done!'", said my boy.

I think I only managed to say, "Why?"

"Because I got into the pool even though I really really really didn't want to." And he looked up at me, his face full of pride.

For 25 minutes my little boy had been doing battle with his emotions, and after all that time he won. He overcame, and got into the pool. He had experienced a tremendous victory. And for 25 minutes, I had been fuming, with angry words swirling around in my mind about how he was being pathetic and ridiculous. I thought I knew what was going on, but my boy had just opened a door for me into his heart and mind, and shown me what was really there. 

So, "Yes", I said, "you did. You got into the pool even though you really, really, really didn't want to. Well done." 

"Mummy", he said at bedtime, "You made me happy to today. You said kind words." I felt like my heart might implode. I knew he had expected me to be angry. 

The incident opened my eyes to something. I had forgotten how much each human heart longs for another to share in its emotions, just to be there side by side, without judgement. It made me want to do this again, to just sit with my boy and feel what he is feeling, before I start teaching and problem-solving. What a profoundly beautiful thing, for the experienced adult to relinquish the position of power and 'knowing', and to go down to the level of a child, following the lead of an inexperienced little person. 

Why does this stir me so deeply? Because I experienced something that afternoon that led to love and led to life. There is something paradoxical and topsy turvy about the big powerful ones who know, being led by the little, weak ones who don't know, just sitting and feeling what they feel. Not asserting, dominating, judging; not an insistence on their own way, but listening, empathising, being fully available. 

I know I am close to the ways of God when I get ambushed by a topsy turvy way of doing things. After all, this is a God who likes to be found in earth, not heaven. A God who hides but calls out unceasingly. A God who would rather camp out with people than live alone in palaces in the sky. A God who won't be drawn to engage in strong-armed, domineering tactics of power, but instead sits with us, listening, refusing to judge. Like my boy, we thought he was going to be angry with us, but he wasn't. We thought he was going to judge us, but he didn't - he brought life and love instead. He doesn't steam roll over life, but dwells within it, like yeast in a dough: Rising, rising, rising, bringing life and love from the inside, wherever we will let it, like in the boiling hot changing room of a swimming pool, on a Thursday afternoon. 

The day I stopped believing

If you go to the back of a church, you may well find a little pamphlet with a picture of a man standing on the edge of an abyss. Not because the service will leave you wanting to jump off a cliff (although some have left me pretty close), but because the abyss-man picture is an attempt at explaining the mystery of faith. In these pictures, there are usually two cliffs, with helpful labels on each cliff reading MAN and GOD.

Something like this:

(God gets the chair, because he's... God.)

Some pamphlets, depending on the skill of the artist, will also show you a cross joining one cliff to the other, making a bridge for abyss-man to cross over. Look, there he goes!

This one just sticks to the basics...

...while this one involves some serious artwork:

There's a cliff picture for everyone!

I grew up seeing these kinds of images. You don't have to look too hard in a church to find them. From being small, I understood that I was that little clip-art guy, standing on the edge of a cliff, separated from my God. Yes, the explanation goes that the cross of Jesus becomes the way to find God, but at the heart of the picture is a terrible separation. Like a child who has lost its mother, a part of my heart has stayed frozen in terror. The soothing explanations that the cross has made a way, have not entirely brought me comfort. The separation anxiety has not been banished. Like childhood monsters rustling in your wardrobe at night, a fear lurks. It is the fear of being alone.

I know many Christians who remember the time they prayed a prayer, asking Jesus to come and
live in their hearts. A kind of invite for Jesus to take up tenancy in a heart-for-rent. I think I prayed a prayer like this before I even reached double figures. I also know many Christians who feel enough anxiety to have prayed this several times, 'just to make sure'. You never do know with tenants - they might not like the conditions and move out, unbeknown to you.

And so, sometime between Autumn and Spring, I became an unbeliever.

I do not believe these pamphlets any more.

Because the truth, oh the truth, the truth is beautiful. You can't stick truth in a clip-art picture, although truth may choose to be found there, if she desires. Truth makes herself known to you
in ways that only you can understand and know, like the secret-code notes we passed to each other when we were small. Truth speaks to the one-year old you, the seven-year old you, the thirty-four year old you, the sixty-two year old you. Truth has been speaking, and sometimes singing, your whole life long. Sometimes loudly, mostly quietly.

I asked God to show me where he had been my whole life. He showed me my Grandad's sausagey fingers, holding my hands and drawing invisible drawings onto my palms as he talked about geometry, and other things I didn't understand. In this man, who gave me his hands and his time, I saw God. He showed me a walk I took to a motorway bridge with the love of my life, at 19 years old. We were so in love, even a walk to a concrete bridge was full of romance. In this teenager, walking with me over scrubby fields, I saw God. He was there too. I heard the whisper of truth, that he was there all along, in these people. God made human.

And then, unexpectedly, I saw more.

In the deepest part of a human being is God. In the deepest parts of who we are, is everything that is loving, giving, good, true, marvellous, joyful, hilarious, forceful, creative, adventurous, tender,
wondering, gentle, strong, energetic, curious, alive. It is here that you swap secret-code notes with the universe, when starry nights tell you you are alive in a deeper way than you knew. We see glimpses
of this deep-self, but this part of us needs to be stirred to life, woken up, called out from under all the
dust and the dirt and the wounds and the grief. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Spring has come!

There never was a separation between my God and I. From before the dawn of time, the Spirit of Life has been in the breath of humanity, in the breath and bones and blood of me. Not even death can separate us. How could it? We are one. There was no cliff. It was just a bad dream. In the warm light of day I see things as they really are, and fear slips away.

But I saw something else. It turned out there was a sort of abyss. But not between me and God. No. The abyss was within me.


More on that next time!