What is it about kids that just renovates your heart?You think you've reached a capacity, that you couldn't possibly love any bigger, and then another one moves in and, well wouldn't you know, there's lots of room!
I've been thinking about this a lot in these last days of preparation for spending three months away from home, at home with 26 kids who have found room in their hearts for me. And even in using the word 'home' twice in that sentence, I understand what is implied. That my heart has at least two homes.
The crazy thing about it, one home doesn't diminish the heart-space for the other. Just as loving one child doesn't 'use up' love meant for another, or being part of one family doesn't push out the space for being part of the other, there always seems to be more than enough room.
It's part of my motherhood story that what I had deeply longed for was a large family. Didn't happen, not out of my own body. And our two adult children are amazing and I'm proud of them both, and the partners they've chosen, and I'm glad for the way of being family we have become. But there was a time, a long time actually, when I felt unfinished. Eventually I was able to let that go and embrace a new thing, a new way of nurturing, through the opportunities I have been given to serve as a pastor.
And I love what I'm allowed to be and do among my phenomenal faith community. But it's also part of my pastor story that there have been difficult, desolate chapters. Times of unmitigated stress and anguish, of grief and bewilderment.
And then, after a while, more children did arrive. Three in the astonishing gifts of grandchildren. And then, who knew!, twenty six more in the gifts of reclaimed treasures half way around the world.
So I look up now, and wonder, where did all these amazing children come from?I am reminded of a similar question put into the mouths of a displaced people by a prophet, long, long ago.
"But Zion said, 'The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.'
"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has born?
Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands....
Your sons hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart form you.
As surely as I live," declares the LORD, "you will wear them all as ornaments; you will put them on, like a bride.
"Though you were ruined and made desolate and your land laid waste,
now you will be too small for your people....
The children born during your bereavement will yet say in your hearing,
'This place is too small for us; give us more space to live in.'
Then you will say in your heart,
'Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected.
Who brought these up? I was left all alone, but these - where have they come from?"
Isaiah 49:14-21
It was in the middle of some of those dark and bewildering times that these words first captured my heart and gave me some hope to wonder on. Being careful not to take this outside the realm of the prophet's original intent - there was an original audience for this after all - there still seemed so much that described my feelings and circumstance at the time. And in the text God does seem to want to bring reassurance to a discouraged people.
At the time, being a typical pastor focused on church growth, I wanted these words in Isaiah to be some sort of reassurance about Sunday morning attendance at Highview. I now see how small a dream that was.Because hearts and imaginations and dreams and God's ways are far bigger than the limits of my self. We love because He first loved us, it says. And our capacity, apparently, can grow to the degree we let go and let Him do whatever His expansive heart desires.
I expect more expanding renovations will happen for me while I am away. They are sometimes painful and messy, so I should expect that too. But in the right Hands, the finished product is always a beautiful thing.
