A Bruised Reed

Breakfast in bed—that staple of Mother's Day, the inconvenience we endure to show our kids we appreciate their appreciating us. So far I've escaped. First the kids were to young to think of it. Then they just hadn't thought of it yet; but yesterday my youngest child informed me I was to stay in bed. It had come to this. I was overhearing tall tales of the fabulous breakfast to be prepared for me. Unfortunately, I know how late this child likes to sleep; and on Sunday I prefer to get up early and read a little Scripture with a cup of coffee. Knowing how late she likes to sleep I took my Bible to bed with me. I set my one-cup coffee maker ready to go nearby and went to bed. I awoke to the sound of....nothing. No alarm. In fact, no time showed on the clock at all. Electricity was out. So I went in search of a battery-operated clock. There was plenty of time for a chapter of Scripture. Coffeemaker wouldn't work, so I boiled water for tea on the gas stove. Couldn't go back to bed. I needed daylight with which to read, so I found a window, settled in with tea and some good reading and waited.

One thing I'm pleased my daughter is learning is to relish a good day. The thing she hasn't learned yet is that things don't have to be perfect for you to have a great day. She woke up with an awful sense of a day gone awry. She wailed on about how it was a terrible, bad day. How can you make toast without a toaster? And toast, practically speaking, is really the extent of her culinary skills when she's on her own. And furthermore, what's breakfast in bed without bed? So I laid back on the sofa and told her that what I could really use is a granola bar. I mean, what's in granola if it's not oatmeal (porridge for the British readers)? And how about a banana and an orange to go with my granola bar and tea? So she scurried around, happily fetching items for a makeshift breakfast.

How did the tradition of breakfast in bed for Mother's Day get started? I don't know, although I suppose I could Google it. I remember feeble attempts to create a feast for my own mom, and maybe she made breakfast for HER mom. I don't know. Funny how traditions grow and change, sweeping us along as a generation marches through its allotted time, departing and making room for the next.


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Lately I've gotten on this weird kick—odd facts from the Bible. There really is some interesting stuff in there that people overlook. For instance, anybody who's spent much time around the Bible knows that people lived almost a thousand years before the great flood; and even after the flood people were living a good deal longer than we live. Five hundred years Shem lived after the flood. And they kept living that way, five hundred years or so apiece, until this guy named Peleg came along and at that point lifespans were cut down to a trifling 200 years. Don't know what that's all about. But it's there for anybody to read, and people read it all the time as they go through Genesis. The thing is, though (and this is where it REALLY gets weird), we tend to read this stuff as the short-lived vapor people we are. Most of us will probably get to see our grandkids. Some lucky people will see great-grandkids, but it's very unlikely that you will see your great-great grandkids.

But if you get to live 500 years and you have your first child at around 30 (which seems to have been the norm back then), then when your great-great grandson comes along, you get to be there to celebrate. In fact, you'll be there when HIS son comes along, which is exactly what happened to Shem. In fact, Shem's great-great-great grandson Peleg started the trend for a shorter life, living a mere 200 years and then dying. After that Shem lived a bunch of years celebrating the births of his descendants and mourning their deaths, because he lived on and on, a relic of the pre-flood times enduring in a broken world.

So it was a whole different kind of world right after the flood. The patriarchs, as we call them, Abraham and Isaac, happened to be on earth at the same time as a guy who was here before the flood. People wonder where the Jewish people would have learned the story of the world's origins, but the answer is right there in scripture if you do the math. Going by the time line you read in Genesis 11, Noah himself would have been around about 50 years after his righteous descendant, our own Father Abraham, was born. Did they know each other? We don't know. Could they speak the same language after the tower of Babel? In fact, since apparently Noah and Shem were probably around in the time of the tower of Babel, what language did they come out speaking? If Noah spoke the language of the line of Shem, he could have passed on some good life lessons and Godly heritage to Abraham and his family. What a weird world to have lived in, where Abraham shared the earth with many of his post-flood ancestors.

I've also been reading bits of the Apocryphal books. My church tradition does not view them as inspired Word of God. Neither do I, but I'm reading them to know what people were reading and being influenced by when they were writing down scripture. I imagine there were some very good and some very bad non-inspired books out there, just like there are today.

Jude quoted the apocryphal book of Enoch, by the way. Doesn't mean Enoch is inspired, although the particular passage Jude quoted is apparently inspired, just by virtue of the fact that it's in the Bible now.

Still, I was surprised when our pastor quoted an apocryphal book last week. Something about a physical description of Paul. He explained that this particular piece of literature was written early in the 2nd century AD, so it's quite possible that this was an accurate description of somebody's memory of what Paul actually looked like. Well, that was interesting. Maybe it was an accurate description and maybe it was not. The “maybe it was” made it worth a listen, so I listened.

According to this writer, Paul was short. (Hmmm. I can relate to that.) Hair was scanty. (So is my husband's.) Legs were a little crooked. (Bowlegged guy, sounds like.) Knees projecting. (Bummer—bowlegged and knock-kneed. Makes you wonder if he got through rabbinical school without having “kick me” scrolls taped to his back.) Large eyes. Okay. His eyebrows met. (EWWWW....unibrow! Guess razors weren't in fashion yet.)

But one thing he had going for him in this – um – “challenging” description was this: “full of grace.”
So this is the guy who tried to kill all the Christians until he got knocked down and found Christ—and found a purpose. He was constantly getting beat up and thrown in prison. In spite of all this he started churches all over most of the known world. He also had some kind of “thorn in the flesh,” which every theologian has tried to decipher. What was it? A bad joint? Walking from town to town with knee problems could have been his thorn. I've even heard people suggest a nagging wife. Something bothered him enough that he kept asking God to remove it. And instead of taking it away, God said, “My grace is sufficient.” Not exactly the happy ending one looks for in a good story.

It's plausible that the thorn might have been his looks. I mean, it can be hard to have a commanding presence with a strong handicap in the looks department. It's unfortunate but it's true. So if that's the thorn, here's a cool scenario my pastor played out:

You have a guy starting out life short, bowlegged, knock-kneed, bulgy eyes and with one big eyebrow. He finds Christ. He proceeds to change the world, because that was his destiny and his calling, to drive right through the personal challenge he faced.

So after he finds Christ, what do you have? A guy short, bowlegged, knock-kneed, bulgy eyes, now he's gone bald, unibrow.......and FULL OF GRACE. And it was enough. It was enough to change the world, to expand Christianity into the Gentile world, and write many of the books of the New Testament.

While this sermon was going on, I was relating in all kinds of ways. Wow. Thorn in the flesh. Needing something. Asking God for that something. That something is not here. So what do I have? GRACE. I was so into the message that I didn't stop to think about what my thorn in the flesh was. But at some point I stopped to wonder why this particular message was hitting me so profoundly. What was that thorn? OH Yeeees.....my daughter's crossed eye.

I have asked and asked. I have asked from the bottom of my heart. I have asked in effectual, fervent prayer. I have asked regularly. It improves slowly, but still when I get up in the morning and wake her up, she looks at me—and it's still there.

This is not my thorn, I know. It's hers. But since I'm asking in faith, and I haven't received my answer yet, in a way this IS my thorn. And I do ask in faith when I ask. I believe He plans to heal her.

In the meantime, “full of grace.” What is the good that is here, and might NOT be here were it not for the crossed eyes? Hmmm.

When my daughter was in kindergarten she was quite possibly the most popular child in her class. She was the only one who could turn a real cartwheel and do a back flip. She was the only girl who could hand-walk the monkey bars from one end of the play equipment to the other. She could run faster than the boys, and at that age they all loved her for it.

You know those snapshot memories you have that stay with you? Well, I have a memory of walking past the lunchroom during lunch hour the day every child in class got an invitation to her birthday party. The class was abuzz with the upcoming social event, and she was surrounded by red-faced, excited five year olds, one little girl holding court in a fog of popularity. The words floated out into the hall where I was walking by: “I invited ALL my best friends.” And the kindergarten class cheered.

Then at the beginning of her next school year the eye started to cross. We got her under an eye doctor's care and found glasses to be completely ineffective. Surgery was suggested. We've settled into a plan of eye exercises combined with diet and rest, and in the end if she still needs it she'll get the surgery. In the meantime we pray every day and wait for God to reach past the doctors and touch her wandering eye. She never does cartwheels on the playground anymore. She has no depth perception and is prone to falling. She sometimes sees double, and because her eye turns in she has almost no peripheral vision on that side. And, of course, she's fallen out of favor with her class.

As I've said, we have her do these eye exercises. In one of them she puts on these 3D glasses, one lens red and the other green. Then she is supposed to color with a red crayon. If she only uses her strong eye (covered by a red lens), she can't see what she's coloring at all. If she switches and uses her wandering eye she will see what she's coloring, but it will be black. If she uses both eyes together she will see red. This exercise seems to be the most effective one the doctor gave her and so she does this one every day. At first she thought it was great fun to color every day, but it didn't take too long for her to tire of it. So a battle of the wills ensued. Then I realized—hey! Every computer has a paint program. Why don't we let her color on the computer? That made all the difference—for a while. Then she tired of THAT game and the fight was on again.

That was before I got the bright idea of reading to her. So now every day she paints for a while and I read to her from an interesting story book. Then when I finish a chapter I try to get her to stop painting while she begs me to keep reading. Sometimes I comply. Sometimes instead we talk about what's going on in her eight year old life. We've come into some nice bonding times talking while she paints red on the computer.

I've watched her deepen as a person while we talk about the playground politics which plague the lives of little girls. She's fallen out of favor, of course. It happened quickly and without much fanfare when she turned up at school with glasses and a crossed eye. Kids just kind of gravitated to the next girl on the totem pole. But you know, I've watched her deepen as a person while she learns to navigate life from ground level. Some of the politics are pretty tough this year and she watches her friends fall into and out of favor with the popular girl. And my daughter is just kind of quietly there for them when they fall out of favor. Part of me says she would never have been that mean if she had stayed popular, but who knows? I'm glad she's been spared that possibility.

So she's been graced to deepen as a person, and her mom...

I never knew anything but an adversarial relationship with my own mom. We make peace when we visit these days, but there were some hate-filled years when I was young. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. So part of me has waited for the day when my girls turn on me and start the hate cycle for another generation. I've tried to make things better for them by being reasonable but firm, and by being a friend, but part of me waits for the rejection I heaped on my own mom.

Fortunately, there's grace. Grace for my mom and for me as we rebuild things, and grace for my own girls. Sometimes my older daughter joins us and we sit on the floor and all talk while the youngest does her exercises, and we're building something special. Maybe it will last. Maybe it won't, but they'll remember and cherish it, I hope. It's a grace. A grace that maybe would not have been there if my daughter had not been tied to a computer doing boring eye exercises.

So this morning I laid back on the sofa, playing the part of the mom of leisure while the little one scurried about bringing me fruit and granola. I looked at her eye and it still turned in. I will still pray. Firmly, insistently, and with faith I will pray. But for today she's still a little clumsy, sometimes sees double and the poor kid has no peripheral vision. And for today, we are full of grace.


“Isa 42:3 A bruised reed will he not break, and a dimly burning wick will he not quench...”