Chatterbox

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My 3rd grandchild was born 3 months after my husband died. Although Nate knew about the baby’s approaching birth, he never got the chance to meet him. He sure would have gotten a kick out of this little guy though, because Micah holds his own in conversations with adults. Although he’s only two, he’s a regular raconteur.

Tonight was a perfect example. After returning from an afternoon at the beach, Micah and I took a fussy baby Autumn on a walk while their parents organized dinner. I pushed the stroller, and Micah maneuvered a pint-sized scooter as we moved down the quiet road chatting about life.

Micah: Looka dat bike. Two seats! Dat bike has two seats. It has two seats.

Me (cutting in while he’s still talking): Two people can ride together.

Micah: Yeah, two people ride together. They ride together. Two people ride. Dat bike has two seats. It has two seats.

Me (again interrupting): You’re good with that scooter, Micah. You know how to do it.

Micah: Yeah, I’m good wit dat scooter. I’m a good scooter. I’m good. I got a scooter. Sissy got a scooter. It’s Sissy’s scooter. A good scooter. I’m a good scooter.

On and on we conversed, though 95% of the words belonged to him, as if he was on a radio broadcast wanting to fill dead air. While little Autumn cooed at passing trees, the 3 of us walked the neighborhood for 45 minutes, and Micah never once stopped talking.

There’s a parallel here between God and me. Often I start our chats with a “Dear Father…” and don’t stop talking until the “Amen.” It might be 5 minutes or 55, but it’s always yak yak yak. Requests aside, does this sort of lopsided conversation do anything for our relationship? Maybe it’s an example of Ecclesiastes 6:11: “The more the words, the less the meaning.”

But I don’t think so.

I absolutely love it when Micah talks to me. I watch the expressions on his pudgy face, his little boy mouth struggling for words, the hand motions making a point. And when he’s back in Florida, I’ll miss our chats a great deal. But what I’ve just realized is that it’s not really the talking I’ll miss. It’s the talker. And I’m fairly confident it’s much the same with God and me.

No matter what goofy things I say to him, no matter how I struggle with the words, no matter how unbalanced the dialogue, his love for the one doing the non-stop talking is stronger than his love of the conversation.

Sure, he probably wants me to listen more than I do and meditate on what he’s already told me. But when he said he would always love me, he didn’t add, “…unless you talk too much.”

I’ll never stop telling him I’m really happy about that!

“A king wants to hear the truth and will favor those who speak it.” (Proverbs 16:13)

Poisons that Kill

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Modern medicine is a good thing, and part of that is the use of effective drugs. Misuse, however, can get us into trouble.

When my husband’s cancer was rushing through his system, our drug use became prodigious. (“Medicine 101”) Those of us helping him were in a race to stay ahead of his escalating symptoms, and because pancreatic cancer is 100% fatal, we weren’t under the delusion Nate’s prescriptions would heal him. The pills were simply meant to ease his misery: Vicodin, Oxycontin, Ondansetron, Morphine, and others.

During 5 of Nate’s 6 weeks of cancer, he took the pills himself (though we handed them to him), but during the last week, everything changed. He had trouble holding onto the small pills, and sometimes they’d roll off his fingers on the way to his mouth. When that happened, we’d get on all fours around his chair in an effort to find the stray drug. With two young children in the house, one a crawler, our mission to keep an eye on each pill was critical.

One day we lost an oxicontin, the strength of which could kill a toddler. All of us endeavored to find it, literally inspecting every square inch near where Nate had last held it in his hand. We swept, vacuumed, and inspected the vacuum bag contents but failed to find the pill. And until my grandchildren left several weeks later, we lived with uncertainty and a good deal of fear.

All of our lives include scenarios that can turn out to be harmless or deadly. For example, it isn’t difficult to prevent a child from eating moldy food or a friend from running in front of a truck. But what about the out-of-sight dangers like hanging onto unforgiveness or letting anger dominate? Do we tolerate jealousy or let worry control us? Or how about allowing fear to consume us or nurturing our anger? Maybe we have a critical spirit or are permitting bitterness to take root.

Are we as diligent about locating these things in our lives as we might be in searching for a stray Oxycontin pill? If not, it’s probably because we think of hidden poisons as insipid rather than insidious, despite their ability to destroy us just as effectively as a drug overdose or a deadly cancer.

Scripture warns us to watch for these inner poisons, label them honestly, and route them out. And in the empty places they leave behind, God promises to put something new, something good, because he’s not a God of emptiness but of fullness.

As for the wayward Oxycontin pill? A month after my grandchildren left I was brushing dog hair from a heating grate when there it was, nestled snugly against the white grill. How we missed it I’ll never know, but once found, it was thoroughly destroyed.

“The church… is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself.” (Ephesians 1:23)

 

Have we seen that before?

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When Nate died, we had 2 grandchildren, 15 month old Skylar and 10 month old Nicholas. Since then, 4 more little lives have joined our family: Micah, Evelyn, Thomas, and Autumn. Birgitta’s October baby will be a 5th, bringing the total grands to 7.

The oldest of this passel of children is only 3, but a-lotta lively livin’ has been packed into the 2½ years since Nate left us. Because I believe every new life originates with God, I enjoy the thought that somehow our Lord, acting in love, has given Nate knowledge of these 4 little ones.

As I look at their angelic faces, once in a while I get glimpses of my husband. It’s the wonder of ancestry that facial features from a grandpa could reappear in his grandchildren or even in generations not yet born. We see this in something as simple as hair color. Nate and I were surprised when our first child came out with red hair, so we looked for other “carrot-tops” in our family tree. To our surprise they were dotted on both sides, though none in a close generation.

Every physical feature comes from someone else along the genealogy before us, though we may not recognize who or when. Grandpa’s eyes, great-grandma’s smile, auntie’s cheekbones. Yet in God’s unlimited ability to make each individual unlike any other, when he puts the recurring pieces together, each person turns out to be unique.

Far more important than someone’s physical characteristics, however, is the heart, and I don’t mean the lubb-dubb kind. Although most physical hearts look alike, it’s our emotional hearts that God is keenly interested in, and each of those is one-of-a-kind. He’s especially curious about whether or not our hearts beat for him.

If we daily seek after him with a desire to do life his way, the delightful result is that we’ll gradually become more like him. Some of his characteristics will appear in us, similar to the way the physical characteristics of our ancestors pop up one generation to the next.

Folklore tells us there’s one other way to look like someone else: stay married for a long time and you’ll begin to resemble your spouse. Maybe it’s a result of mirroring each other day after day or looking across the table and picking up each other’s mannerisms. Maybe it’s the result of eating the same diet or breathing the same air.

Whatever the reason, in our efforts to become more like Christ, it’s a pretty good idea to “look across the table” each day and see the Lord. If we watch what he does, obey his instructions, and eat a steady diet of his Word, we’re bound to start looking like him.

“We know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him.” (1 John 3:2)