Placing our Impossibles into the Lap of God

 

 

My boy rounded the corner looking for me. I was walking our neighborhood, one round circle after another, working out some thought or other. It was a slow summer evening and the light was falling fast.

 

He fit his smaller hand in mine. He had come in search of me.

 

“Do you want to walk with me, Buddy?” “Oh, mom, you’re my favorite.”

 

I adore this kid.  Unapologetically

 

We turned off the sidewalks onto the dyke beside the pond and slowly walked toward the gate at the boundary of our neighborhood talking about our day. “What was your favorite part of today, Buddy?”  We chatted back and forth until the fireflies started blinking their magic, our first firefly hunt of the summer.

 

And the same boy who cupped the magic of blinking light in his hands is lying compulsively.

 

And I know it’s the human condition but as I flip through the books I can’t find the right parenting recipe for this one because a lie is like a truth that has slipped through your fingers. Most of the time you have an intuition but can’t put your finger on what’s off.

 

I’m utterly discouraged. He’s discouraged.  Our trust has been broken, a rickety bridge missing boards. (If you have true wisdom on this, do let me know.)

 

So I’m bringing my boy and my broken heart to our lectio divina on Psalm 130 this morning. (Find the lectio divina at the bottom of this post)

 

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord hear my voice!”

 

“If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand.”

 

“I wait for the Lord. My soul waits. and in his word I hope.”

 

“O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.”

 

“And He will redeem [my boy] from all his iniquities.”

 

And with every repetition of these words in our lectio divina, I’m praying a little louder, with a little more authenticity. I’m setting my hope in the lap of God, one repetition around these verses after another.

 

 

The gift of praying the Psalms is that it teaches us stiff-upper-lip Westerners to locate the pain and bring it out in the light of God.  We carry around a complicated bag of emotions and often only bring out the “acceptable” ones, the feelings which have been brushed off, cleaned off, and zipped into a starched Sunday dress.

 

Did you know that there are more lament psalms than praise psalms?

 

The psalmists become our teacher, taking us by the hand into the Presence of God. We are invited to bring not just our cleaned off shiny selves, but our messy, our pain-raked, our hard. We are invited to bring it all, the light blinking beautiful and the festering wounds into the Presence of God.

 

And that’s what I’m doing this morning praying Psalm 130. I’m bringing my boy. I’m bringing my imperfect parenting and begging for God’s resurrection power to fill the gaping holes.

 

And I’m bringing my hope that he’ll learn to hunt and hold onto the beauty of truth the way he cups fireflies.

 

Where do you find yourself discouraged and needing hope, my friend? Do you have an “Impossible case?” Let this lectio divina on Psalm 130 become a doorway to prayer:

 

 

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