The Boy Who Cried Truth
Things feel a little messy over here. And I’m not saying that just because Benjamin pooped on my jeans this morning.
Rugby games and outreach opportunities are being cancelled because of a rise in gang violence. We’ve had to hire anotherlawyer to the Ladd Family Lawyer Team (ridiculous, I know) to protect us from a reckless landlord. Everyone in the house (except Chris) is breaking out because of hormones. And no one has legal recognition in South Africa (except Chris again). My fingerprints were rejected TWICE by the FBI while I’ve been trying to get paperwork taken care of for our immigration lawyer.
Can we all just take a minute and ask: How can your fingerprints get rejected!?! …TWICE. That seems contrary to what they teach you in Sunday School andscience class. On my third attempt to submit, the “professional fingerprinter” looked at the three sets of my prints he had just taken and said, “Wow. Look at all those deep lines on your prints. I’ve never seen anything like it. That’s very hard to read.” I maturely responded by shouting (to the demise of my sleeping baby), “I’M MANGLED!”
The black and white proof of those cracks tearing through my unique identity design felt a little too real. Life can actually feel mangling when you stare at the cracks – the tiny little errors of life that really just graze the greater design.
We had a particularly mangling week during Lifa’s school holiday. Assuming the fetal position and eating chocolate in the closet is far less effective with a baby attached to you, so I chose a second option: Load ‘em up and get ‘em out! It’s winter in Cape Town, so we put on all the layers, packed up the stroller, wrapped up the baby, and headed out to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.
As soon as we arrived, Benjamin had a poop explosion (yes, there is a noticeable trend), and I broke a cold sweat as soon as we reached our first incline. (The parking lot.) But we were OUT. In the AIR. And it was BEAUTIFUL. I desperately needed to take in a world outside of my own little cracks that were starting to feel like crises. So I started “Mom walking” straight up to the mountain. Lifa nervously giggled, jogging to keep up. And we were off!
We broke in our new stroller on gravel trails, water crossings, and a proper Mom-pace. (I was having heart palpitations and loving/wheezing every second of it.) We left behind the trials, trouble and even tween-aged everythings in the shadow of Table Mountain.
Lifa’s imagination kicked into overdrive and wonder consumed him. He transformed into a wolf, scaling rocks and howling. He made up songs, jokes, and told stories about his wolf pack. “It’s almost like I can see Jesus up there at the top. He’s got a pack of wolves around him, and he’s holding Baby Benjamin. Because, you know Mom, that’s what the Bible says children. Jesus loves them and holds them.” I agreed completely, and he raced up to the next adventure. The next time he whooshed past me, Lifa said, “I can almost hear the rocks singing to Jesus. Because, you know Mom, the Bible says that, if we don’t sing praise to Him, the rocks will.”
I wanted to mark that moment forever. Right in the middle of the mangled and the mountain was an 11-year old wolf-child howling out Truth. I wish the landscape of my life always looked like Kirstenbosch. But when the rest of real life happens and I feel like I’ve done it all wrong, I will go back to that particular moment when I realized that, no matter how much I’ve screwed up in parenting, Jesus is what comes out of my son. I’m sure I have given him all kinds of issues, but I’ve also given him a foundation of Truth. I’ve equipped him with the Sword of the Spirit, and he knows he is held by Jesus.
It’s taken me about 100 sit-downs to try to write this blog. There’s been a fussy baby, a moody broody big boy, and a smidgen of kitchen stress in the Ladd house today. So, today especially, I’m going to try to focus on the prints of Truth I’ve left on Lifa’s life. And not dwell on all the ridges, rejections and cracks that run through the rest of my life. God’s grace is bigger than the mangles and even the mountains.
Let’s let what comes out of us be Truth and love today.
