April 10, 2006 | Mama Smith

lamentations

Leading up to Easter, I’ve been going through the readings in our Lutheran prayer book, For All the Saints. Starting today, the excerpts from the book of Lamentations began. An extremely raw and somewhat morbid book portraying the destruction of the once beautiful, powerful Jerusalem. I get the feeling someone is running their fingernails down a chalkboard as I read it. Brokeness, weeping, regrets fill the first few chapters.

Per traditional Roman Catholic liturgy, this book is read during Holy Week. I never knew that until this year. How painfully fitting. A week leading up to the cross. A week of sitting on the horrible reality that all of humanity is broken, weeping and in need of a Savior to take on our mess, be “crushed for our inquities” and bring us back into relationship with Him.

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. -Is.53.5

Wow. Some verses you hear all your life, but they never cease to knock you on your face again with an aching awe to really know this Savior whose love is a mighty ocean sweeping over us.

I want that Love for myself. For Matthew. For our tiny son, Brighton. But I so often try to get in the way of that. I want to protect Matthew from rejection, lonliness, being hurt by life and others. In essence, I want to be his savior. I want him to know MY love. I want to protect Brighton from feeling sick, bumping his head, being sad, being influenced down the road by the world, friends, media. I want to be his savior, protector, grid through which he views life.

This desire in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. But when I look at why I want these things or to be this for these men in my life, mixed in with the good and pure, there is a definite overdesire to step into a role of control and react to life out of fear and protection.

I want to love these men. I want to be their wife and mother in the way Christ calls me to. But more often than I’d like to admit, that means stepping out of the way. Partnering with them as they face the flaming arrows of life, letting Christ fight for them and be their Savior, Rescuer, Protector, TRUE Hiding Place and Rest. And to accept the role I am offered of partner and nurturer along the way.

Written on my white board is a phrase I am faced with every morning, “Lead them to Christ, not to yourself”. I hate trite phrases. But this reminder I need more than once a day.

Realizing again this week how sweet and deep and overwhelming is the love of Christ, I wonder why I’d ever want anything less for them and myself. To become drunk in the ocean of “how wide and and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” Amy’s love is a puny raindrop in comparison.