Be Jesus’ Skin

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said, “I am God’s pencil, a tiny bit of pencil with which He writes what He likes.”

We are all God’s pencils no matter how He chooses to use our gifts and our lives to carry out His will. There have been too many times in my life when I have found myself writing sad stories, grumbling narratives, anxious tales pulled from a heart that was hardening ever so slightly.

My prayers were few and when I did find the time, strength, will, and/or urge to utter them, they’d sound something like this:

Lord, have mercy.

Lord, help my unbelief.

Lord, help me to write beautiful, redemptive stories.

I’m doing better now – life has a way of coming into focus when you hear about someone you love abruptly being stamped with an all too soon expiration date – but not so long ago I remember feeling like the world was an ugly place. I have felt ugly, too, when I’ve considered how I’ve handled some of my uneasy emotions and life’s uncertainties. Or how I can be too self-absorbed or too much of a know-it-all. My greatest goal in life is to build relationships, to be a good wife, mother, friend, and even smiling stranger that might bring a drop of joy to the clerk at the post office or the unfamiliar person walking his dog on my street on some random evening.

There have been too many times when I’ve allowed my heart to grow anxious, twitchy. So many “what ifs” have churned in my mind. Sometimes people annoy me. I wish it weren’t so, but it’s true. People who don’t wave to me when I let them go in traffic. People who cut in line. People who raise their eyebrows when I have all of my kids tagging along with me. When I’m anxious or let little annoyances erode my inner peace, I can get snappy. The kids react by getting all grumpy on me. This makes me more anxious because their lackluster behavior feels like proof that I’m an epic failure as a mom.

Yet, to bring beauty and truth into this misshapen world, we need to imitate the heart of God – a peaceful, gentle, restful, and generous heart.

I hardly ever read blogs anymore, which is mostly a good thing, although I’m sure I miss some gleaming gems out there. I almost missed this one, and it may sound corny, but I feel like the Holy Spirit guided me to read this one. (NOTE: I read this months ago, thought about it, wanted to write about it, drafted this post, and only just recently edited it and now have finally gotten around to publishing it.) I have an extra email account where most of my newsletter subscriptions dump into. Usually, I read the myriad headings and quickly delete. I’ve unsubscribed to most of them, but I still receive Mom Heart and a few days ago I saw the teaser: Beauty, It’s in the Eye of the Beholder. Well, I frequently speak on the topic of beauty, so it seemed like it might be good research to click on this one. So I did. And I read just what I needed to read on this particular day when the size of my family felt like too much.

These words impressed themselves upon my heart:

When we live with our spouse and our children long enough, some days it might be pretty easy to forget that frankly, they are more than a “number.”

Of course we love them and long to do this life well but sometimes it seems too easy to live in a place of going through the motions only to realize that it may have been a few days since you actually looked that little in the eye and said, “What do you need most? “ and mean it.

Oh, It’s hard to do, when it’s melt down number two hundred and breakfast dishes are still staring you down. When schedules run you, and you haven’t really said a proper hello in days to the one you sleep next to. Maybe it’s self-preservation, maybe its selfishness, but these seasons can snatch the humanity right out from under us and we aren’t even sure if love is a verb or what beauty is.

Jesus said to feed His sheep, not count them, but sometimes when I find myself serving the umpteenth snack on any given day, I see the hungry child (and there’s one child in my family who is always hungry) as just a number, another mouth to feed. If I fail to be compassionate and to recognize the dignity in my own child, how can I possibly write a beautiful, redemptive story that touches and inspires beyond the walls of my home?

We need to bring Jesus to others even those we disagree with, those who hurt us or misunderstand us and our beliefs. But we need to love those at home, too. And love them well. I need to love them well with focused attention and a soft heart that yields to grace more than it yields to dire predictions about the state of the world, hopelessness, discouragement, insane to-do lists, the daunting piles of laundry, frustration, exhaustion, or sadness.

Several months ago we were trying to get out of the house. I had to take a potty break before we left and when I walked into the bathroom I found some ickiness. I won’t go into details. All I’ll say is cleaning up the stinky mess helped me to fully live up to my silly “expert in hazardous waste removal” title. All day had been messy. My children weren’t behaving very lovingly toward one another, and I was responding to their less than desirable behavior with less than desirable behavior myself. All day I was on the verge of weeping (or maybe screaming depending on the moment), and I kept thinking, “How can I expect the world to be more loving when I can’t even get myself or the kids to show love to one another?”

Within a few hours of the toxic cleanup, I found myself in a room of mothers who were all just trying to do their best – to love their husbands and children well and to lead a life of faith. I confessed how I was struggling and was immediately lifted up by encouraging words and kind, knowing looks.

Later I received email messages or texts from several of the moms who either gave me a quick pep talk or who simply said they understood all of my feelings.

I’ve been there. I’m walking with you, my dear sister in Christ. You are not alone.

None of us is alone. And we need to make sure others know that.

Earlier that same week my mom called me and I heard the sadness in her voice before she came out with the bad news. Through her tears she told me her big brother, a father of four, including three younger girls adopted from China, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and that his best prognosis, if the tumor was even operable, was a 20 percent survival rate. One day later we learned the tumor was not operable; the cancer had metastasized (marble-sized tumors showed up all over the imaging). The Friday after Thanksgiving he was in the hospital. He never went home. He died in early February. I’ve been pondering this post since then. Yes, there is lots of pondering going on in my heart these days.

One day you’re worried about paying your bills or the dirty dishes piling up in the kitchen sink and the next you wake up to discover your life has been whittled down to a statistic, and the odds aren’t really in your favor.

I talked on the phone with one of my dearest friends the night after I first heard about my uncle’s diagnosis and told her, “Love your family. Cuddle up with those kids of yours. Every day is a gift.” As I wrote about here, this was my uncle’s mantra. His email tagline shared those very same words.

Cliche, yes, but cliches come to life when you’re faced with the inevitably of our mortality, our ultimate badge of humanness.

A neighborhood friend, whom I run with and also share prayer requests with, showed up at my house with a loaf of baked bread that same day. (Thank you again, dear friend.) “It might not help your heart, but it will help your tummy,” she said.

She’s one of those people who lives “love thy neighbor.”

My babysitter was here helping out on the day I heard the news. She knew my husband was on call. She knew I was sad and aching for my mom, my uncle, and his family. So she stayed around even after she was off the clock.

So many people giving the gift of themselves, giving the gift of Christ, being Jesus’ voice and skin and heart.

A priest once heard scripture scholar Alice Camille speak and shared a story she had told of a man who was most likely suffering from a mental illness who entered her home church and began loudly slinging profanity during Mass. During the sign of peace a woman from her church approached the man and embraced him. Several other women followed suit and lovingly touched the man.