I pray, with my favourite Worship song, that Christ be magnified in me.
With the desire for magnification comes a human failing…superstition.
When my daughter gets a new job that seems promising I try to say as little as possible to friends or family in fear of jinxing the situation.
If I don’t mention it,
If I don’t discuss it with Hubs,
If I don’t share the ‘good news’ with friends,
If I don’t plan a visit to see her,
then perhaps it will last;
Very Superstitious.
No Christ in that.
And here comes my justification:
She’d invite me for dinner at the place where she was living,
offer to introduce me to her latest squeeze,
give me her address so I could send cards or parcels,
ask me to read a book to her daycare classroom,
suggest I buy a ticket to go and visit her,
As soon as I did any of these things her situation would change; she’s good at bailing on a dime.
She keeps her possessions down to whatever fits in her car; anything left gets sold or abandoned.
Over the years I’ve learned to help her without adding material goods that hamper her. I pay a phone bill, or buy a Jimmy Johns, or fork over the next month’s rent.
During her most recent crisis she seemed frustrated; she had left her job of 2 years,
“Mum, I just don’t want to be working to pay the bills.”
What is she? A trust fund recipient?
I get it; she wants to be doing something meaningful, not just talking to another voice on a phone in her room…
“I’m lonely,” she said.
She still has bills but, heck, that doesn’t stand in the way of her freedom.
“When something is too good to be true it gets taken away from me so I leave.”
She fails to acknowledge that ‘taken’ may not be an accurate description of what is going on.
I’ve been witness to her moods, her attitude, her impulsive nature.
She thrives on drama.
“When things settle down the routine gets humdrum…how do you and Dad do it?” she asks.
“Life can be predictable…we can’t live in a state of heady excitement all the time. When we settle down we enjoy each other’s company and our lives merge. We get used to the spice,” I say.
“Well, the spicier the better,” she quips, “I can’t do that.”
Obviously, I think.
After a few months she wants to to stir things up, sift her friends, shuffle her prospects and exchange them for the unknown.
In the twinkling of an eye she won’t have just upset the boat, she’ll have sunk it.
The older she gets the further away she drifts both geographically and emotionally until we lose sight of the her she was.
We check in almost daily, but that’s all it is, a check in.
I’m privy to a small part of her life.
Occasionally she’ll be angry, upset, crying, drowning and I’ll be able to get a little more from her,
“I’m not worthy of a better life,” she moans.
‘Worthy’ a vague descriptor.
“What happens is beyond my control,” she states.
‘taken’, ‘worthy’, ‘happens’, ‘beyond’.
“It is what it is,” she gasps between sobs.
She’s fluent in victim-ese.
None of it is her fault.
Her craving for edginess started before she was eighteen.
At sixteen she told my brother that she couldn’t wait to leave home.
To be on her own, make her own choices and not be accountable to anyone.
“What are your plans?” I ask when the crying subsides.
“I don’t have any plans, I just want to get on with life.”
She always paid her own bills, never came back home to live for more than a week or two, until I’d start asking for help around the house, or questions about her job search, then she’d be off..
Now she is thirty-four and has been entrenched in her unstable life for just as long as she lived with us in a boring, secure, predictable lifestyle where nothing earth shattering happened.
Except Mercy Ships, which was cut short because she contracted Malaria.
Transience has become Her Way.
No plans, no future.
Too edgy for me…wildly exciting for her.
We keep her car running because sometimes it’s the only roof she has over her head.
No-one wants their child in a homeless shelter, or jail.
“I don’t want to work at a job just to pay my bills…” she repeated.
Lofty words for someone who doesn’t have a trust fund or a sugar-daddy…or is that us?
“I’ve been here before,” she said combatively this last time round, “I always come through.”
Except this time it really sounded as though she’d hit rock bottom. And the car she was potentially going to make her home was unreliable.
We were led to see a Christmas concert by Mosaix who raise money locally to provide homes for young people who age out of foster care and are forced to live on the streets.
Our oldest daughter may not be an 18 year old but she is still our child, a young person to us.
We book her a long stay hotel, she doesn’t say thank you…she’s lost that skill.
“At least you’re safe and have a roof over your head that you won’t get thrown out of,” I point out.
“I didn’t ask for help…I’ve managed before…I’m always all right,” she insists.
But she’d told me she was lonely and drowning…what else can I do?
Which brings me back to my reluctance to mention events that are praise-worthy during our bible study meetings, just in case I jinx her life.
We’re reading Revelation at church and learned that the citizens of Pergamum, the centre of culture, health and religion under Roman rule, called the Christians in their city,
atheists – because they worshipped their ONE God and turned their backs on the all powerful, pagan gods they worshipped.
and superstitious – because they wouldn’t eat the meats sacrificed to their gods, drink the wine, or associate with the pagan citizens for fear of jinxing their Christian lives and angering their God.
I am superstitious when it comes to bragging about my daughter’s successes.
I am also an atheists when it comes to denying any other god than my ONE true God.
He is not one side of a tossed coin, a ladder not to be walked under, a black cat cutting across my path;
His power to work wonders in my life and my daughter’s life cannot be reduced to a superstitious belief that if I talk about His transforming works they will evaporate…He will be rendered defeated.
How wrong of me.
God sees her potential,
He can shackle her habits,
cull her nagging doubts,
break her strongholds,
challenge her instincts.
She needs to take part in the battle too,
defeat the repeat pattern,
recognise her good fortune,
allow herself to surrender to the Almighty One.
I need to believe in the power of a praying mother
and be courageous enough to give voice to her victories.
I need to believe that her life has prepared her for this moment…in fact I asked her today,
“Does it seem as if you’ve been well prepared for this job?” and she said, “Yes.”
On the day I went to see Mosaix I learned about a job she had just been called back about, weeks after applying…so long ago in fact she didn’t even remember exactly what it was she applied for.
The phone conversation caught her completely off guard,
“I must have answered all the questions correctly because they asked me for an in person interview,” she said, her voice rising in excitement; I could feel her trembling over the phone line.
She outlined the job to us, I listened recognised the parallels with her life.
This was a place for children whose lives were on the edge. There was now a possibility that she could live a vicarious edgy life while making a difference.
She was worried because they told her that she would have to pass a drug test…
She’d been taking medical marijuana for her anxiety, which she’d stopped now…this day
She called her brother and he googled how long it takes to get the drug out of her system…
“A good 30 days” he read, “it lingers in the hair follicles…”
What? I thought, her interview was in a week.
Hubs and I prayed.
She interviewed, had a background check, was asked to provide a high school diploma and any certifications.
A week passed. No drug test ordered.
We prayed.
She interviewed with a board of three…and was nervous; thought she’d come across poorly.
Another week passed.
We prayed.
An email arrived offering her a provisional job dependent on her drug test.
We prayed.
The drug test order arrived. She drank litres of water and fretted. Her home test showed up negative.
The result came back: ‘indeterminate’ – dilute’.
We prayed.
She took it again; 28 days had passed.
Negative. She was in.
Butterflies begin to flutter within me…the Holy Spirit bringing hope.
We have a call ‘out of the blue’
We have a drug test that if conducted at the first or even second interview would almost certainly have been positive.
All her paperwork was finally accepted with a homeschool transcript and a college certification.
References panned out.
Her apartment lease was signed.
She had a new car, insurance coverage and a phone plan.
In a month her life had turned around.
Whether she gives credit to God or us or just quips,
“I always come through.”
I know how involved He was.
I keep all this under wraps because I know how unstable she is.
I know what a game changer surrendering to God is.
I can live with a deep peace.
I’m free.
But still the un-Godly superstitions prevail along with the desire for Christ to be magnified in me.