I comment to the Hero Hubs on the couch next to me — maybe that little one playing by the coffee table who’s acting up so much really just wants to be noticed? Just needs to know she’s loved? Her toes are always on the line, just barely on the right side of everything she’s told to do or not to do.
He invites her to come closer and she stretches her four-year-old frame out, she looks so tall, her head in his lap, blonde ponytail stretched to one side, the willing recipient of a little back rub. After a moment or two, he asks her to sit up in his lap. He looks her in the eyes and tells her how much we both love her. How special we think she is. How precious she is to us.
I watch all this unfold, watch as he holds her close, and the whisper in my mind is: “Mother and Daughter. I’m going to fail at this thing. So many times.”
Years ago, I sat at a tiny table cupping a coffee between my palms, across from a friend who was a mentor, a gift to my soul, in my earliest years of seeking to truly walk with Jesus. I asked her to please keep mentoring me, to look at my life and be honest about what she saw, to keep pointing me to Jesus.
It was less about being hungry for God, and more about being eager never to make mistakes.
She knew, somehow, (probably because I talk so much I said it aloud) and as gently and genuinely as she could, she looked across the table and told me the truth:
You are going to make mistakes.
I wanted to ask her to hush… like Bugs Bunny in an old cartoon, long ears laid back flat against his head, backing up, and shaking in a soft pleading voice facing the barrel of Elmer Fudd’s shotgun he says: Not that… anything but that…
I don’t want to make mistakes.
This week, I pondered when to put the cross out on the front door. This big burlap and blue and white fabric cross my Mom gave me usually makes an appearance in the Spring. At the beginning of Lent? At the beginning of the Holy Week? On Maundy Thursday or Good Friday? I didn’t mean to have a theological conversation inside my own head about something as simple as this, but these things just happen sometimes.
Eventually it struck me: the cross is always. And the cross is for always.
And this is the thing I don’t like about parenthood, the thing I don’t like about Christianity as a whole: it’s that I’m going to fail. I am going to make mistakes. I am going to close doors when I should open them. I’m going to raise my voice when I should lower it. My mouth will be wide open when it out to be tightly shut until it is certain what words will come out.
But this is what makes it all so glorious.
Before the kiss of betrayal, before the Last Supper and the Greatest Commandment, before Palm Sunday and the hosannas and cheers, even before Jesus was tried and tempted in the wilderness those 40 days, there was the Cross. Before the Incarnation, there was the Cross. Even before Creation, yes, before the whole world was spoken into existence, there was the Cross.
When the blood of those lambs was spread on the doorposts at the first Passover — the plan had already been set into motion.
An all-knowing God knew it all along — this is where this whole thing was headed all along.
It’s in our nature, our human nature, to make mistakes, to fail and to fall short.
God wasn’t surprise when He first walked in the Garden and asked Adam and Eve, “Where are you?”
He knows it all. He knew where they were. But He wanted them to know where they were.
The plan of Reconciliation was already set in motion.
And our relationships, these failures? They are opportunities for Reconciliation, both with the God who wants to connect with our souls for always, and with the loved ones we care about and fail.
Jesus went to the first Cross, the Cross that would save us all, the Cross that would make a way for all of us to be reconciled to God.
“Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” {Luke 9:23}
His Cross made our salvation possible, our forgiveness possible, our Reconciliation possible.
Our crosses?
They make us a little more like Jesus, who for the joy set before Him, endured the Cross. {Heb. 12:2} Sometimes our crosses are the pain of admitting we were wrong. Admitting we failed, and saying we are sorry. Sometimes they mean closing tight our lips when we want to say all the wrong things. We deny what we want, and we try to live for what God wants. The world is better for this. And so are we.
As we sit between a Hard-But-Good Friday and the Sunday of life and Resurrection — let the symbolism leave an impression on your soul. If you take up a cross, and die a little to yourself, God has new life for you on the other side.
Every Cross can create a Resurrection.
This is the new life we’re invited to live and it’s in the living of it, that we somehow become the recipients of it.
I die to myself and say I’m sorry to the child I’ve wronged. New life is breathed into our relationship. Broken things are mending.
We forego the thing we want to give to someone who needs. New life is breathed into our soul, and fresh gratitude helps us give thanks for what we have already.
If there are 365 days in the calendar year, there are 365 days that the Cross can hang on the door — and more importantly, teach my soul how to find life that is the realest real.
We need not look afraid at the mistakes we’re going to make, the ways we’re going to mess up as we walk through life as mothers, fathers, employees, friends. Our failures are the reason for the Cross. And on the other side of the Cross, every willing soul can find a Resurrection.
xCC
So absolutely true and wonderful… you never cease to amaze and touch me with your insights and “sharing” of your life lessons and spiritual love.
Thanks again.