I read a story from a beginner’s bible to my son every day.  I assume that he qualifies as such at a little over a year.  I pull it out of his library shelf before our first nap time and, proudly, he repeats a string of “bible, bible, bible”, which continues through most of our story.

Each message is tied with the prettiest bow that you ever did see.  I can hear the victory in every honorable Sunday school teachers voice as they finish the story of Moses who led the people out of the wilderness, without any bickering or starvation.  Adam and Eve were welcome, indefinitely, in that beautiful garden with all of their pets.  David hit that big meanie in the head with a rock and he fell down.

My son’s bible does not say the nasty things, and that is just fine with me, for now.  I want him to relish goodness and victory, not murder.  He can get an ear full of that later.

I sometimes think how these characters would have preferred these gilded endings, too.  Noah was just trying to do what God said; yet, between these bird training expeditions, he was floating…somewhere.

The important point for my little beginner is that faith is a living organism because these stories are about people, you and I.

Some of our stories expound on how pretty the package looks, and thank God for these stories!  Others can tell you about the monotony in a world of water, the smell of animals, and the last friend that was seen alive. We still stop to listen, because faith has written it down.

I learned that this year.  Faith writes the truth, even when it comes with a frowny emoticon.

For now, I will enjoy simple stories with my son.  I will enjoy hearing him repeat “bible”, and watch love for God’s Word root itself deep in his mind and heart.  I will sit and watch the innocence of his faith in wonder, and jealousy.

Then I will do the work of a woman who knows the whole story.  In the same glance, I will observe the nasty and nice, victory and defeat, salvation and death.  I will see that they both live in me.

And, that is ok.

Because Faith lives here, too.

When my son was born, everyone told me that he looked like my husband.  How wonderful to have a son resemble his father!  I can say this to you now, but it became a bit of a competition between my husband and I.  I argued that since I had done the work, I deserved to have our baby look a little like me.

But then it happened.

He started to change!

His eyes were turning lighter, and not my husband’s brand of lighter.  They were turning blue like mine, and then they changed more and were not like mine at all.  They were my sister’s eyes, simply beautiful.

Our son’s eyes have become my picture of God’s goodness.

My sister, Jonean, has walked with the Lord her entire life.  Those eyes have seen utter despair and indescribable joy, more than the average person.  Her life has seen the dreams of a young woman change to an unanticipated, yet hopeful, future.  Most people simply admire Jonean’s relentless forward movement.

Perhaps, this is because of her effortful movement.  Her wheelchair moves at the speed of light, but her Cerebral Palsy slows her tasks considerably.  Jonean has help bathing and eating.  She is rarely alone because she requires an assistant at her disposal. It seems ironic that her place in the world is so lonely in its uniqueness.

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When I hear the word ‘Sabbath’, I cannot help but think of two things, creative work and rest.  Like twins, they sit on a fence perfectly complementing the other.

Creative work is different from our common understanding of work, but I never see God engage in any other kind.  It involves pleasure, choice, delight and that good kind of effort that looks forward to the specific task at hand.

The best example of this is creation.  God showed us what creative work really is when He created the universe.

Pleasure.

Choice.

Delight.

He shows us the difference between this type of work and rest.  He created for six days and He rested for one.  On this one day there was no creation, no choosing to create, no delighting in a particular course of action that gave Him pleasure.  He just rested in the afterglow of His creative work.

So, what if we defined Sabbath as the afterglow of attending to our specific kingdom work?  It is a day of celebration, still wrapped up in pleasure, choice, and delight.

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One night, seventeen years ago, I sat on my college dorm room bed, with a friend of mine, talking about formative moments.  I had already wept through the story of the lost dog that shrank up to me one day during my senior year of high school.  That dog never wandered from my side.  Instead I committed the ultimate act of betrayal by leaving her with my parents as I left for college.  It was one of the greatest tragedies of my life, to that point.

Homesickness was pulling us into the early morning hours with a steady decline in the quality of conversation, but that was the mark of a true friend.  We were in it for the long haul, and I had to bring up that crazy day when I was nine.

I had been away at GA (Girls in Action) camp for a week when I felt the Holy Spirit moving me for the first time.  The feeling can only be described as unavoidable.  It was overwhelming, kind of like anxiety, but happy.  My head was telling me to get to the preacher, as my heart was doing the Cha Cha.  At that altar call, I confessed my belief that Christ was my Savior.

I will never forget the moments after the service ended.  I was giddy.  With the least sophisticated comprehension of biblical transformation, I knew that I had just changed.  I remembered the feeling.  I remembered skipping.  I remembered the event.

I needed to remember this event.

By the time I had reached my senior year of college, this event was catalogued as unexplained phenomena.  My first religion course was “Women in the Bible”, and there I decided that there were too many holes and not enough intelligent evidence to fill them.  I walked away from the church.

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God is not a magician.

These words have not been far from my mind since I heard them in church, four years ago.  It was a message about the human expectation of God.  At this time, I had successfully weathered some difficult family issues, a health issue and some normal relationship difficulties.  I nodded my head knowingly at the speaker’s words and said a silent, “Thank you!”, that I had learned this lesson unknowingly.

Sitting there, I could not know that the years to come would bring an obstacle course of challenges to redefine me.

I was able to listen to that message with confidence and gratitude because I had witnessed the endurance and joy that James touted.  God allowed me to claim victory over event after event that settled on my doorstep.  Huddled into His side, I offered my trust, my future and my present.

And, then I took a breath.
This breath happened somewhere between regaining mobility after back surgery and an amazing pregnancy.  I surveyed all that God had done and I declared it good.  Then, I realized that I, Tracy, was tired of obstacles.

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“I am completely making up this ‘mom thing’”.  I say this over and over, and as much as I wish it was partially untrue, I assure you it is entirely true.  Humbly I admit that I have no idea what I am doing, but I trust my 11 month old teacher.  He is my first, and I am green.  I admit that I have no answers, but I am willing and determined to learn.

Case in point, I have learned that there is a universal “witching hour” for children.  It falls some time between the final nap and dinner.  Moms and dads are tired and have run through all of the scheduled activities for the day, and children are ready to find where the real boundaries lie.  It is a lonely reality when the restlessness begins, as if all of the children of the world were telekinetically joined.  Creepy really.

This, and my belief in fresh air for children, are the reason that I walk with my son in the afternoons. We move off of our street and carefully find our way through the traffic, and on to the park.  Recently, I have become tired of seeing junior high school-ers making out in this “community common space”, and I decided to extend our path through the neighborhoods which skirt the Preserve.

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Well…that is a deep subject.

I recalled my Grandmother’s quirky sayings as I stood rocking my son in my mother’s office, which became the nursery during his first trip away from home.  Comfortable and a little eerie are the qualities that I would assign to this space.  This is the room of sacred memories.

One wall supports stern faces in oval frames.  My great grandmother looks downright unpleasant, although I have heard the opposite at family gatherings.  I see my grandmother and grandfather soon after their marriage, neither of their faces readable.  Perhaps they were happy or ambivalent, no one would know from this view, although another wall reveals them fifty years later beaming at their accomplishment.

My mother sits with her brothers in one frame, a skinny blonde bookended by two protective boys.  Grandmother loved these three, and I am always amused by their resemblance to something out of a Steinbeck novel.

On this day, I stood rocking another link in this chain.  The simple fact that I exist suggests that something these women believed has worked.  Through poverty, finding faith, searching for hope, sickness, age, babies and marriages, they led families through all seasons of life.

Looking at these walls has encouraged me to answer the question that I posed to some high school girls struggling with a call to leadership, “Am I worth emulating?”.

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If you don’t know already, I have an almost seven month old bouncing/crawling/grabbing baby boy.  Currently, most of my days are spent chasing the diaper end of my son.  Similarly, the last six months have been absorbed by his current stage and skill set, whether it be rolling over, sleep schedules or feedings.  We love watching the changes every day brings.

Truth be told, we never miss a thing.  In fact, we just got our first babysitter last week.  My husband and I have adored this little guy so much that we simply stay at home with him or take him out to eat with us.  On one such luncheon, I was sitting next to my hubby in a booth, with one hand rocking the stroller.  My husband was telling me a story about work that was hysterical and I laughed and laughed, to the point that I was getting loud and hot.

After I recovered, I realized how unfamiliar the scenario felt to me.

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I remember the first horror movie that I ever watched.  My sister and I rented The Exorcist, when we were in junior high.  We were so afraid.  We had to keep stopping the movie to get some relief.  I am not sure that we ever finished it.

This was only the first part of a scary story, however.  When my mother found out that we had seen it, we saw part two.

So let’s return to the Israelites.  They are not just scared, they are terrified.  It is in a way that I cannot understand.  Horror movies could not elicit this type of response, because there is some comfort in that pause button.  The imagination is allowed to take a break, even if it is only closing our eyes through all the scary parts.

The same thing happens when we read scripture.  There is privilege in our safe place, specifically on my fluffy couch.  Standing between me and this lesson is 66 books and thousands of years.

Our response would be the same, though.

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When I was in the third grade, I stole chalk.

My reasoning was very simple.  Teachers had better chalk than I, as an unemployed 9 year old still living with her parents, could purchase.  My dream was to be a teacher, and I spent my time away from school trying to get people, and pets, to let me teach them.  I reasoned that teacher-grade chalk was my way to make this dream a reality.

My technique was to back myself against the chalkboard every afternoon as I left, say a hearty good-bye to my teacher, and swipe the newest, longest, whitest piece that I could find.

I was not like any of the vandals that you would see on TV.  I would call my methods, unrefined.  In fact, it was a miracle that I was not caught sooner.  That’s right, I was caught, but let me continue.

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