A few more lessons from a 2 1/2 year old and the ending to a beautiful story…
I pursue Jack when he doesn’t pursue me.
This was a really hard one for me to live out sometimes. At first it was merely occasionally, but there were a few days in the middle of the month that he just really did not want me much. He preferred others over me regularly, even when I would be around him for good chunks of the day and try to interact with him. He never seemed to want me around for a few days and that was tough. It was like what I had done and was doing didn’t matter, but once again, it reminded me of how I often treat my heavenly Father like that. God constantly pursues me, He constantly pursues all of us, and there are many times that I desert Him and pursue other things for my own “pleasure” and want I think will satisfy me.
In addition, I am always looking for him and love him even when he chooses others. This is very similar to the previous lesson, but it’s a little different in that there are times we don’t pursue God and actively follow Him and then there are times where we are actively defiant and basically tell God to “buzz off”. I can’t imagine what God goes through with 7 billion people in the world, approx 6 billion of whom don’t have a relationship with Him and those who do, many/all of them at various times tell God to “shove it” (before eventually reconciling and returning). We all have our idols, we have things in our life that at times we prefer over God, that we put before Him and it was intriguing to see it allegorically played out in front of me with an almost 3 year old (not that I am God or other people are idols… BUT… God used that relationship to show me those things)
I value all my time with Jack.
I loved spending time with Jack. I loved the other kids, but there was just something about Jack that drew me to Him that made me want to spend every moment with him and just love him unconditionally. Even the staff started calling him my “kid” because I spent so much time with him. In the same way, God values us, He values us because we are His creation and we are made in His image. We are image-bearers of the Most High of the King and Creator of the universe. AND YET, God values every moment we spend with Him. He is always there, always with us, but we often don’t pursue Him or spend time with Him, but the time that we do, whether 1 minute or 1 hour or many hours, God cherishes and values deeply. We are God’s beloved… the church is the bride of Christ. Think about how much a bride is loved, cherished and valued, then magnify that and multiply it by a million, because God loves and cherishes us (His bride) more than we can possibly imagine.
I get messy with Jack and because of him.
This one was a new experience for me. I have never changed a diaper (infants aren’t usually “my people”), but I changed a couple of his, not to mention that most of the time he came to the ministry site without any bottoms on (no diaper, shorts, pants, etc.) and at first I was a little hesitant to hold him and play with him until he had some material covering his bottom, but that eventually changed as my love grew for him. I didn’t care if he was fully clothed or in just a diaper or in only a shirt, I would hold him, play with him, and love him… and that led to getting peed on once (through his shorts) and getting poop on me from a naked booty that I thought was clean (it obviously wasn’t). But in that, it truly showed the love that I had for him because I didn’t care how he was, how messy he was, how dirty he was, what he looked like, I just cared about him and loved him as he was. In the same way, God does that with us and our souls. Our souls are dirty, that are messy, they need cleaning. We have had hurts committed against us and we have committed hurts against others, we are sinful people, but God takes us just as we are in all of our mess and filth and He washes us clean. God just wants us, He will take us as we are and He will change us. That doesn’t mean we are free to do whatever, in that God calls us to grow, but He doesn’t care where we start from, He doesn’t care how dirty we are when He finds us. He just wants us. I wanted Jack that same way. I wanted him. I wanted to love him and make him laugh and laugh and smile and be filled with joy by his laugh and him. And the thing is, God gets into our dirt with us, He gets dirty with us. He comes alongside of us in our filth and walks with us through all of the crap in our lives.
Furthermore, every day (except for one random one) we would pick Jack up and he would be super dirty; he was clean when we dropped him off the day before, but somehow in 12 hrs he would look like he got in a fight with a giant puddle or a chocolate cake or something. He was just super dirty each morning, but then the staff would take him (and the other kids) and they would bathe them and make them clean. It reminded me of how God renews me and cleans me every day, that somehow God cleans me and then I make mistakes and He patiently accepts me back and cleans me again, over and over.
So, many of you might be wondering how this story ends? How was leaving a child you fell in love with and would adopt in a heartbeat?
Well, I actually had an interview about “Jack” 2 weeks before we left and I was discussing during the interview how I had imagined (daydreamed really) vividly a final day full of clouds, darkness, tears, and sorrow. Just something no one really wants to live in, but during the interview I discussed how I believed that God was in control and He was going to redeem this day from the darkness I had originally thought. I just had to trust God that when I left it was going to be good, there would be life and hope and joy, even if I loved Jack so much and might want to still be with him. Well, that day came and I truly lived into that comment about God redeeming the day. I would be so bold as to say it was a self-prophecy of what was going to happen.
(I wrote this the day we left)
I was thinking the night before we left while I was packing and I just felt God saying this is the easiest month to leave and I was really confused at first. This is my first month with kids, with tons of good relationships and one great one and now it’s the easiest place to leave. That’s backwards. But as I was thinking about it God was revealing to me that in past months it has been work that has defined the month and there has always been a deisre to have done more, either work or investing in relationships with contacts or other people. It often wasn’t very hard to leave any of those places and there usually weren’t a ton of good-byes. But, this month was going to be way different and it was going to be good and in God’s goodness it was going to be easy. As I type this having left our ministry site a few hours ago, sure I’m sad we are gone, sure I’m sad there wasn’t more time, I loved our ministry, BUT, I am fully content with what I did this month and how I loved the kids and how they loved me and how God used me and worked through me. Seeds were sown and now all I can do is pray that those seeds are used and cultivated and lives are changed. In that, God has taken what could have been a heavy burden and He has made it light. That doesn’t change the fact that it will be a transition, a sad one at that, to Nepal, but I am excited for what is going to happen going forward. And I like to think that God honored my little self-prophecy a couple weeks ago during an interview because I was talking about how I had envisioned leaving one of the kids who really stole my heart and early in the month I had envisioned just a dark, cloudy, really sad, tear filled day, but in my interview I discussed how it didn’t have to be that way and I believed God was going to redeem that vision I had and He was going to bless me leaving in that I would leave well and know I had done so much to impact this child’s life and now it would be time for me to trust Him to handle the rest. I truly believed this happened for me when we left. There were no tears, no darkness, only joy and laughter and hugs and smiles. That kid is freakin awesome and I will always remember him standing next to the wall by himself, kinda in his own little world and I squated down one last time with arms wide open and said, “Come here ‘Jack'”, and he looked at me, gave a quick glance away, prepared himself, reared back, and then charged into my open arms one final time for a big hug. Truly the joy and love of the Father.
For more on Jack… read my first blog…
http://nicmizeur.theworldrace.org/?filename=humbled-lessons-about-god-from-a-2-12-year-old-pt-1
Or check out my teammate Katy’s blog about Jack…
http://katysteele.theworldrace.org/?filename=confessions-of-a-perfectionist
Or… feel free to contact me and talk about Jack or any other parts of my trip… I would love to chat
