42\u00a0<\/sup>\u201cHe saved others,\u201d they said, \u201cbut he can\u2019t save himself! He\u2019s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe\u00a0in him.”<\/strong><\/h2>\nWe are knee-deep in the season of Lent\u2026that time of giving over our wants in order to experience the waiting, the little tugging of emptiness not filled, that is so necessary to turn the dial of our minds and bodies to God\u2019s tune.<\/p>\n
I spent the very first Lent season after Charlie was born in the NICU. That was also where I had my first Mother\u2019s Day. Those were the delicate days, where it felt like Charlie\u2019s existence rested on a pane of glass that had cracked down the middle. One wayward step would send us crashing through into a place so dark I could not let myself look.<\/p>\n
I did not give up anything that year\u2014not caffeine or chocolate or Netflix or phone time. I had given up my son into the hands of the God and the experts and that would have to be enough. I was in that place of waiting which makes you feel both untethered and also bent down by the weight of it all\u2014a lead balloon.<\/p>\n
I watched others do for him what I so desperately wanted to do as his mother, namely, mother him. They also did what he could not do for himself\u2014they helped him breathe, sleep, wake, eat\u2026live.<\/p>\n
In July of 1949, C.S. Lewis writes a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves, in which he explains the pain of committing his brother to a hospital in Oxford for treatment for alcoholism:<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t imagine I doubt for a moment that what God sends us must be sent in love and will all be for the best if we have grace to use it so. My\u00a0mind<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t waver on this point; my\u00a0feelings<\/em>\u00a0sometimes do. That\u2019s why it does me good to hear what I believe repeated in your voice\u2014it being the rule of the universe that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves and one can paddle every canoe\u00a0except<\/em>\u00a0one\u2019s own. That is why Christ\u2019s suffering\u00a0for us<\/em>\u00a0is not a mere theological dodge but the supreme case of the law that governs the whole world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis is what Lent and tragedy and all the hard things do: they cut us adrift and then force us to wait for rescue. And the waiting gives our feelings a chance to catch up with wisdom, which is over in the wings with all the force of the Gospel behind it.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t imagine I doubt for a moment that what God sends us must be sent in love and will all be for the best if we have grace to use it so. My\u00a0mind<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t waver on this point; my\u00a0feelings<\/em>\u00a0sometimes do. That\u2019s why it does me good to hear what I believe repeated in your voice\u2014it being the rule of the universe that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves and one can paddle every canoe\u00a0except<\/em>\u00a0one\u2019s own. That is why Christ\u2019s suffering\u00a0for us<\/em>\u00a0is not a mere theological dodge but the supreme case of the law that governs the whole world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is what Lent and tragedy and all the hard things do: they cut us adrift and then force us to wait for rescue. And the waiting gives our feelings a chance to catch up with wisdom, which is over in the wings with all the force of the Gospel behind it.<\/p>\n
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