Keep Running Home
I just had an amazing time with a new friend from the Help Club for Moms. She shared the dream God has put in her heart and how she is taking action. She is bringing heaven to earth in realtime!
Benjamin sat quietly in my life, stealing smiles and charming the heck out of everybody. The MOMENT my friend got out of our car, everything about Benjamin’s life became an emergency-crisis. There was wailing and drama all the way home. (From both of us.)
Chris called me between his meetings to talk about grown-up stuff, only to hear the incessant sounds of the disaster I was managing. Unfortunately, those are the only sounds Chris is hearing lately. It’s all the people outside of our home that get Jammer’s charm!
Lifa was the same when he was a little guy. People knew his dancing and delight, but I knew the feeling of those sweet, little hands turning into warning claws in my quads. Lifa would silently dig his nails into my legs in social settings - a warning and a plea for help. I always took him straight home, where he would promptly fall apart.
It can be draining to be the safe one, the one who always gets the worst of someone. To keep giving them your time, care, compassion, kindness and love, when they’ve spent all of theirs elsewhere. Your kids. Your spouse. Your whoever. The people that feel safe with you often give their best to the world and bring home what’s leftover.
But you know what? I don’t want my boys to bring their emergencies and intimate needs to the world. I want their dirty little fingernails and angry screams aimed at me. I want them to unravel in my arms where they can flail safely and learn the be loved at their worst. I want them to know they can come home in any condition.
They’re going to need that one day. There’s going to be a day where they need to come home to their Father when they’ve hit their worst. There might be a time when they’ve traded in everything good deposited into them for what the world had to offer. There will be broken hearts in this broken world. Everyone sins and falls short of the glory of God. We teach them as much as we can about how to stay on path. But the greatest lesson is to know how to come home.
We can only be rewritten where we have unraveled. When we are finally undone, we can be made new. I want them to do that at home. In their mama’s arms for now, under the banner of DaDa’s love, and, ultimately, in the house of God with His Spirit living inside of them.
Keep running to your mama. Keep running home, boys.
Give me your worst. I’ll hold it, hear it, kiss it when it hurts, and shape it for good as it heals. I’ll give you pillows to throw when you’re angry. I’ll take away the things that aren’t good for you, and let you scream as loud as you need to while you deal with that disappointment.
Keep running home. Always run home.