Merry Christmas and happy birthday! A toast to those of you who, like me, share the great fortune and greater misfortune of being born on December 25th. A great fortune, I say, because your birthday will almost definitely fall on a public holiday. But a greater misfortune because everyone will be too busy celebrating Christmas to take any notice of you. You will probably get one “big” combined present instead of two. And I can’t tell you the untold damage my parents caused when they refused to hold a birthday party for me on the grounds that “nobody will come”. I have known fellow Christmas day babies who have selected another date as their birthday for the only purpose of, well, actually enjoying one.
As I sit here recalling my misspent birthdays, it occurs to me that this conflict is an apt allegory of my daily and lifelong battle with Jesus – for glory. My birthday is my special day. Far be it for me to have to share it with anyone, let alone someone who will take all the attention away from me! And so I am like the child who sulks and throws tantrums because of all the adulation he should be getting but ain’t.
It is easy to praise God. Words are cheap. It costs nothing to pay God lip service upon the podium of our self-declared victory. When we blithely say, “praise God”, how much of it is a secret rejoicing in ourselves? Perhaps congratulating ourselves on a decision wisely made? Boasting, not of God’s goodness, but our faithfulness?
The test comes when there is only place for one of you: who then will have pride of place? Will I happily take obscurity and lowliness so that God may be exalted? Jesus says that those who pray and give and fast to be praised by men have already received their reward in full; but those who do so in secret will be rewarded by the Father (Matthew 6). Surely, this is powerful motivation to labour in secret!
A birthday seems such a trifling thing to give away, and still, I struggle. It betrays a niggling desire to keep a little glory for myself, a desire that is perhaps in all of us but only made apparent when we are asked to relinquish it. Only then do we realize how deep our pride runs. How ME is imprinted in my every thought.
When I was little, growing up in a non-Christian family, I used to think (in the magic thinking way of little children) that I ought to be a Christian because I was born on Christmas Day. And in some strange, ironic way, I think that has become true. Because Jesus’ birth has brought me the promise of new birth; His life is credited as mine; his glory, also mine to boast of. So now each Christmas, I am chastened with the reminder that my life is indeed hid with Christ, that I must become lesser and He, greater, and that my utmost joy is for Him, not I, to have every and all the praise and adoration and glory He deserves.
Happy Birthday, Jesus.
Originally posted on our family website, February 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Dedicating Karsten
In the very early days after Karsten was born, my father-in-law was joking around with me, as he often does, analysing, complimenting, imaging the future Karsten, and offhandedly, he said “maybe he’ll become a missionary.”
My heart sank when I heard that. Here was my baby, weeks old, and I’ve waited months, in some way my whole life, to have him. How can I, right there and then, bear the thought of him leaving? How can you wish that upon a new parent? I admit I was a bit offended.
As the days and weeks and months passed, as I struggled to settle him to sleep, as his individuality became more and more apparent, I slowly realise that he isn’t, and will never be mine to own and govern. Maybe it grew out of exasperation at the thousand uncontrollable aspects of parenting. If nothing can be guaranteed at 8 months, how much less so at 18, 28, 38?
The only thing that is certain is that while I am fallible, there is someone who I can absolutely entrust my baby to – my Father in Heaven. And that is, first and last, a great relief.
All pressure to “make” your child believe falls away. I recently learnt that a friend’s daughter who is not yet four, has confessed that Jesus as her saviour. Hallelujah! I am happy for her and her godly parents. But then I started panicking that I have fewer than three and a half years before Karsten turns four and, would that be sufficient time for me to win him? Kirby pulled me right up - It is God, and God alone, who can save. Who am I to bend the will of a child into compliant assent? Pray for them! Testify to them! Love them! That is all a mother can do. Then I check myself again. “All”?! That is the most wonderful thing a mother can do!
If God is holding Karsten in the palm of His hand, if He is cradling him in the crook of his arm, where else has he to go? I will gladly have him serve the Lord all the days of his life. If God calls him to serve overseas, I could not be happier. It will hurt, but already I see that being a parent involves unspeakable joys and pain. People talk about "sacrificing" for God. Well as far as possessions go, your child is the dearest thing you can “give up”. That is, after all what God the Father experienced when He sent His only begotten Son into this world to save it from sin. How deep the Father’s love for us indeed!
Karsten was never to begin with, and will never be, mine to possess. But I hope he will be God’s everlasting possession. And this must be the calling of all Christian parents. Our children are given to us for a season to nurture, teach, cherish, enjoy, love, but may they never be bonded to us, but to Christ.
I hope and pray that Karsten grows up to love his parents. I love him oh so much. But I hope and pray that he loves Jesus more. I remember my mother-in-law saying once, “when he believes, that is your job done.” Is my calling as mother that simple?
I become more convinced when I think of Karsten’s conception, gestation and birth. No step, no detail had not been graced by the sovereign hand of God. Our obstetrician called Karsten a miracle baby. What a testimony Karsten will one day, God willing, come to understand and tell as his own! I pray that He who began a good work in us will carry it on to the day of completion.
Looking after an infant has been consuming and exhausting and I never had the time I imagined I would have to sit down and think through systematically the implications of dedication. But clarity suddenly emerged from the confusion tonight whilst I was doing the dishes. I want to dedicate Karsten to the Lord. I need to. I must. What else is there to do?
26 May 2010
Originally posted on our family website, July 2010
Resigned
I surprised myself with the quiver in my lip and the thumping of my chest when it came time to say goodbye. Desmond seemed distracted; Rowie warm but unfazed. I walked down the corridor, past faces I had lied to only minutes before, still busily oblivious to what has just occurred. “When are you coming back?” I responded, “My leave runs out in August but still not sure”, with the casual smile of someone who says goodbye expecting to say hello again soon. I thought, bemusedly and sadly, so this is what it feels like to leave secretly, without saying goodbye. I wish I could and I believe that they, in a different place, would wish too.
As I sat in the foyer feeding Karsten, gathering my belongings and my thoughts, I lingered a little longer than necessary just to catch a glimpse of faces, for sentimental reasons. I caught sight of Michael, the registration clerk, walking off to Court to file documents. I called out “Michael!” I had probably the longest personal conversation with him in my four years in litigation. Our past relationship has been limited to, “Can you please file this before the registry closes? ... It’s urgent... oh wait, I just noticed a mistake, can you hang on?” I found out today he arrived in Australia ten years ago, got this one-week contract through an agency and ended up staying on account of a massive case. I felt pathetic. I felt like the lonesome soul about to jump in front of a train and the last conversation he has is with the poor unsuspecting station attendant. And for once, the roles were reversed. He was in a rush, and I had all the time in the world.
I walked down King Street. I toyed with the idea of buying something from that ridiculously overpriced gift shop as a souvenir. Past that little lane where Kirby has picked me up countless times. It is funny how the MLC tower, by all counts and certainly, in my mind, the best location in town, had first been unknown to me (as a student), then intimidating to me (as a wannabe), then inviting to me (as a clerk), then wearisome to me (after KLC), then amusing to me (as others clamour to be here), at times repulsive to me (at 2:00am in the morning), at times my respite (en route to the domain for my lunchtime walks). I owned these steps, I belonged to them, and they to me; I was entitled to them, they felt natural to me. But I have to relinquish them now. No longer can I say, “This is my part of town” or from some trendy bar “I work just up the road”.
The Simon and Garfunkel song “Overs” play in my head. It’s over before it’s over, but the overing is not over. And then the end came so suddenly. I hadn’t even planned to do it today. I fool myself with the thought that they're acting cool to cover their disappointment. More soberly, I’m relieved I can move on. I made this decision years ago, but in some ways I am not yet ready to end it. I had never got my one day to pray over it, cry over it, gloat over it, wash my hands of it, talk about it, make peace with it. But the time is right. I had left it just long enough. As it were, I am creeping out just before the crack of dawn to savour alone the sweetness and forget the sadness of, in a way, my first love. It will always be my first job, with all its titillating hopes and youthful regrets. A job well done. Goodbye.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Every eye shall see him
The guest on Margaret Throsby’s morning interview the other day was a psychologist by the name of Paul Ekman who specialises in the study of “micro-expressions”. The theory goes that the human face, far from being a mask behind which you can hide your true feelings, in fact reveals your deepest emotions, even if those expressions last only for a 1/25th second and are imperceptible to all save the rare few who can or have been trained to detect them.
So it is true again. The face is the person. And faces are the primary way we know each other.
Which brings me to my question: have you ever imagined what God looks like? In the Old Testament, the Israelites were forbidden from making images of God lest they idolize the image rather than the living God. But what of the monoliths in our mind? Should we curb our imagination too for fear it will lead us into sin?
Are we left, like the orphan Judy Abbott who catches a glimpse of the shadow of her parting benefactor – a long legged man – at the beginning of the novel and proceeds to write hundreds of letters to her beloved, “Daddy Long Legs”?
Not so, for we have much more. We know His name – LORD – not invented by man but declared by God himself. We know that, for a time, He took on flesh and became a human, specifically, a Jewish man in the first century. And we know his name, Jesus. We have His words. We know His face is no longer hidden from us in anger. And we know with certain hope that, though we see in part, then we shall see face to face.
So, when I close my eyes, clasp my hands, bow my head, and pray to Him, what do I see? Most of the time, it is a sea of black against my own self-conscious voice. But sometimes, not often enough, I imagine His countenance, benevolent and lovely, and majestic.
Who do you see?
"And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” Job 19:26-27a
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