Because He came...I didn't have to go

I would have flown across the world for 3 nights this Christmas, probably toting 7 month old Eliza along with me, to be at my grandmother's funeral. My grandma was really special to me and the closure of being at her funeral to honor her and to hear the hope of the gospel for her life and for mine would have been so good. 

No question: because of my love for my grandma the crazy trip would have been worth it.

My daddy and I have always been really close, and being there with and for him, to support him as he grieves the loss of his second mother--the same day he lost his first mother 49 years ago-- was super important to me. 

My love for my daddy absolutely meant the crazy trip would have been worth it.

I didn't even realize the choice had been passively made until Friday afternoon and I was on a run and, doing the math, I knew it was too late. The whole week had been a blur, both here and back home, and the details weren't confirmed until Wednesday...that the service was Saturday. I wasn't going to be able to go. 

If somehow it all hadn't come together in a way that felt out of my control and power, I probably would have seized the moment anyway. I would have paid over $3,000, flown across the world just in time and flown straight back to not miss out too much on time with Hunter's family who are here. I would've made that decision without batting an eye, because finances and difficult logistics aren't the way to make choices like that. My love for my grandma and my daddy means it would have been worth it.

But thank you Jesus that somehow it didn't work. 

I finished my run where I realized it was too late and I freaked out (I had already been crying the second half of the run). I told Hunter I was trying not to blame him but felt mad at him anyway. I felt so, so sad and desperate. I looked at flights even though I knew it was impossible. I started desperately brainstorming what I could do to try to "be there" in a meaningful way (like sending flowers or a thoughtful gift somehow?) 

But there was something about my desperation and anxiety that stopped me. I have come to know this feeling. What I felt was different than only sadness or only disappointment, there was fear. There was shame. 

And those things run deeply in me.

By God's grace I took a deep breath and I stopped and in the middle of my anxiety and sadness I sent a text to some best friends around the world telling them of my sadness and fear, and one wrote back that night:

"questions I would ask you in person over wine and a couch:

How might Jesus be trying to show you more of Him while you are so far away? Why is it so hard in the midst of your family story?..."

All advent long I've been asking Jesus to help me to see Him and to help me to wait on His salvation. And if I'd had it my way I would've missed him completely. I think I would've thought I saw Him as I got to spend time with my whole family, got to snuggle my niece Harmony on her first Christmas, got to tell daddy with my physical presence that he means that much to me. I would have loved each any every one of those moments, but He wanted me to see His love for me.

You see, I could've gone back to the US with all the crazy details of it because I loved my grandma--and I did--or because I love my dad--and I do--but the real tipping point would have been because I'm not sure I'm lovable if I don't go. I need to go, because otherwise I don't know who I am. I don't know if people will love me. What will people think of me if I'm not someone who comes through no matter the cost?  

My need for people's approval and my desperate need to not let people down can make me do life contortions that would impress the most flexible acrobat. But there doesn't leave much room for a Savior, for me or for others. 

By God's grace I saw Him as soon as I read her questions in the middle of the night. And my mourning and fear turned into rejoicing. He loves me! Don't you see it, He loves me! And He rescued me! And He is with my family too! 

And I wanted everyone to see it in this way. Because if He loves me like that, then He loves you like that too.

Romans 5 and Ephesians 2 tell us that it wasn't when we got our act together that Jesus came; it was when we were still far off, still dead in our transgressions, still enemies. It is only by grace.

Because I didn't come through this time--because this time in my heart I knew that I had fallen short of what I thought made me lovable--I got to be like the undeserving shepherds in the middle of the night who heard the declaration of his coming. I got to be the little girl who needs her Daddy to rescue her not the strong one who tries to save but doesn't really have the power. 

I got to see Him come.

Can you see His commitment to helping me knowing His crazy love for me that he would set up such a brilliant scenario: quick turnaround dates, me across the ocean, Hunter's family here, comparatively crazy high cost, dependent on me baby, etc. I balk at limitations like an ocean for moments like this. But it literally felt like He made it impossible for me to get there. He set the table before my enemies and showed me how He anointed my head with oil. And my cup overflows.

And to top it all off, my family graciously found a way to FaceTime me during the service and I heard every word. It was an enormous gift to hear stories of my grandma's life, to see faces of all my loved ones as my sister Stephanie focused the camera on the communion line to see everyone go through. But the biggest gift of all was to hear the gospel. The good news that "it is by grace you have been saved,"

And the best moment?

During the middle of the service we sang the old hymn that goes:

"Come home, come home. Ye who are weary come home. Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling, Calling O sinner come home. Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading, pleading for you and for me? Why should we linger and heed not his mercies, mercy for you and for me." 

And as we sang those words my dad reached for the phone and sang them to me. 

screen shot while we sang together

Surely the congregation was singing about my grandma and Jesus. But I know Jesus was moving towards me, too, inviting my weary anxious heart to receive his rest and grace. 

Northside Church, our home church, is doing an advent series called "Because He came." They've filled in the blank with some thoughts like "I can have joy", I can resist envy and so on.

Here's my contribution: Because He came... I didn't have to go. 

my grandma

If there was ever a time that crying "didn't make sense," it was when Jesus knew that He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. But the Scriptures tell us "he wept" and that as he approached the tomb he bellowed in his sorrow. Even though he knew he was about to bring him back to life. What a Savior!

As we drove into the parking lot of church today I received a text from my daddy:

My grandma died this morning.

I barely knew my grandma (and pappy) while growing up--they lived in North Carolina and we lived in Pennsylvania. They had somewhere around 25 grandchildren so it wasn't like we had the corner market on their time when they visited, either. They had a lot of special people.

But it wasn't just their physical distance that made me know them less. The stories we heard of them were intimidating: home late for curfew meant walking up and down the stairs 100 times; another punishment was picking up clothespins around the yard with your teeth. I think of those stories with laughter and a glimmer in my eye now--knowing their great love and affection for their kids-- but growing up those stories made me nervous. 

But then I went to college in North Carolina and all that changed. They lived 45 minutes from me at Wake Forest so I had the opportunity to visit quite often. I remember the first time I went to their house for dinner; I was shocked at how yummy everything tasted--biscuits, fried chicken, mashed potatoes! I didn't realize that when my dad told me Grandma wasn't the best cook, some of that was because yummier foods were more expensive than they could manage when he was growing up. Devastatingly, my dad's mama died when he was 10 and when Pappy remarried my Grandma, together they raised 12 kids. It's tough to serve biscuits, fried chicken and creamy mashed potatoes when you're just trying to make it.

My Grandma loved kids. She raised a dozen of 'em and then opened her own childcare center. And then at points she brought more kids home with her who needed extra love and attention. She had a marked patience and slowness with which she responded to the chaos I felt all around me. She managed to live with tenderness when life didn't offer her circumstances that would easily produce that fruit. She knew hard work. She held the loving gaze of her husband who adored her. She softened him when she was in a room and he often told me of how "she saved him." She was really, really proud of my dad and told me about it regularly. I was always a welcomed visitor in their home, whether I brought 10 of my girlfriends or showed up alone at 11 pm. My grandma always made time for me. 

Her love for me wasn't because I was special, it was because she was special. She wasn't impressed with wealth, education or fame, she was a servant of whoever walked into her home. I was the beneficiary of that love for a time, but there are many others who know her routine, whom she showered with attention, quiet space, meals, baby snuggles, and a listening ear.

My grandparents didn't live grandiose lives. Their names won't be written in history books for the things they accomplished. But they were earnest, steady, God-fearing and God-adoring, firm in their convictions, tender in their relationships, servants of all. I'm proud of who they were and I will continue to miss their presence in my life. 

The more I've studied what Jesus was like when he came, the more I've noticed and appreciated the kind of love and humility my grandparents had. And in light of advent and my grandma's death it feels appropriate to dwell on Him. **

My grandma wasn't perfect, but like Jesus she loved people whether they were shepherd-like or king-like; like Jesus she didn't demand a beautiful place to lay her head or for people to make a fuss about her, instead she served; like Jesus she consistently loved and welcomed broken people (including me); like Jesus she didn't wait for people to earn her love before she offered it--she went after the ones who would never show as much kindness to her as she showed them (including me). Like Jesus' love, you were never too poor or messed up for my grandma (maybe that's why my mom liked her so much. she's like that too). Like Jesus she welcomed little children and delighted in who they were. 

My heart is broken and my tears steady today because she is gone and because I didn't say goodbye.

This advent:

• I worship a Savior who (from a worldly perspective) irrationally wept because someone he loved died. Yes my grandma got to live many years, but that doesn't offer me consolation in light of her death. Jesus' tears comfort and compel me.
• I worship a Savior who surprised us all with his humble lifestyle; who surprised us with whom he pursued and identified, whom he served and protected. I'm thankful for a grandma who modeled that kind of love.
• I worship a Savior who paid for my sin and my shame because I did not love my grandma as I should have. I'm sorry, Pappy that I didn't love and honor her the way I should have. Please forgive me. 
• I worship a Savior who forgives her, because she, too, sinned and hurt people and wasn't a perfect mom, step-mom, grandma, friend. 
• I worship a Savior who died lonely--rejected and denied by many to whom He gave himself. My grandma was not loved by me the way she deserved but I hope she somehow felt companionship with her Savior in that loneliness or rejection. Lord forgive me.  
• I worship a Savior who promised to wipe away every tear from our eyes.

There's no other Savior for me. 

I love you grandma, I'm sorry I wasn't there to hold your hand and to whisper my and His love. I wish I had been. Give Pappy a kiss on the cheek for me and ask him to please not to wear an NC State sweatshirt to greet me one day.  

****
Here's one of the texts I try to read each advent, and one that I read this morning as I thought of Him and of them. It is from Philip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew:

I remember sitting one Christmas season in a beautiful auditorium in London listening to Handel’s Messiah, with a full chorus singing about the day when “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” I had spent the morning in museums viewing remnants of England’s glory—the crown jewels, a solid gold ruler’s mace, the Lord Mayor’s gilded carriage—and it occurred to me that just such images of wealth and power must have filled the minds of Isaiah’s contemporaries who first heard that promise. When the Jews read Isaiah’s words, no doubt they thought back with sharp nostalgia to the glory days of Solomon, when “the king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones.”

                The Messiah who showed up, however, wore a different kind of glory, the glory of humility. “God is great’, the cry of the Moslems, is a truth which needed no supernatural being to teach men, writes Father Neville Figgis. “That God is little, that is the truth which Jesus taught man.” The God who roared, who could order armies and empires about like pawns on a chessboard, this God emerged in Palestine as a baby who could not speak or eat solid food or control his bladder, who depended on a teenager for shelter, food, and love.

                In London, looking toward the auditoriums’s royal box where the queen and her family sat, I caught glimpses of the more typical way rulers stride through the world: with bodyguards, and a trumpet fanfare, and a flourish of bright clothes and flashing jewelry. Queen Elizabeth II had recently visited the United States, and reporters delighted in spelling out the logistics involved: her four thousand pounds of luggage included two outfits for every occasion, a mourning outfit in case someone died, forty pints of plasma, and white kid leather toilet seat covers. She brought along her own hairdresser, two valets, and a host of other attendants. A brief visit of royalty to a foreign country can easily cost twenty million dollars.

                In meek contrast, God’s visit to earth took place in an animal shelter with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn king but a feed trough. Indeed, the event that divided history, and even our calendars, into two parts may have had more animal than human witnesses. A mule could have stepped on him. “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.
                For just an instant the sky grew luminous with angels, yet who saw that spectacle? Illiterate hirelings who watched the flocks of others, “nobodies” who failed to leave their names. Shepherds had such a randy reputation that proper Jews lumped them together with the “godless,” restricting them to the outer courtyards of the temple. Fittingly, it was they whom God selected to help celebrate the birth of one who would be known as the friend of sinners.”