My Mother & Velveteen Prayers

This Saturday my mother graduated with a degree in Elementary Ed. I am thrilled for her. She is the most resilient, remarkably giving woman I know. She made my childhood magical. When we ate spaghetti we were birds eating worms, when we swam in the pool we were dolphins, when we were caught out in the rain we were Indian princesses and we danced around and around and around… I know she will be the most amazing teacher ever.


Her accomplishment sent my mind reminiscing:

Two years ago I stood before my classmates a college graduate, just like she did this weekend. My accomplishment that day was a testament to her love and sacrifice and that of the rest of my family, the Vineyard, Oakdale, and Mercy--- hundreds of people who despite some unlikely odds refused to give up on me. So at 22 I had this sense that my life was hugely significant. Why else would God have showered all this rescuing love on me?

As I addressed my fellow graduates I admonished them “Speak up because we are called to be leaders.” The speech included a quote about the painful side of becoming a leader that the past years have continued to unpack for me. In this season of growing up I have often return to the words of Robert Clinton to give context and solace,

“The major work is that which God is doing to and in the (young) leader, not through him or her. Most emerging leaders don’t recognize this. They evaluate productivity, activities, fruitfulness, etc. But God is quietly, often in unusual ways, trying to get the leader to see that one ministers out of what one is. God is concerned with what we are. We want to learn a thousand things to do. But He will teach us one thing, perhaps in a thousand ways: ‘I am forming Christ in you.’ It is this that will give power to your ministry.”

—From The Making of a Leader by J. Robert Clinton.

You see the truth is I am not the girl I dreamed of being the day of my graduation. I was full of dreams then. I wanted to do great things for the kingdom of God. I wanted to work to create a more just world. Instead I have found myself back here in Kansas fighting the same sins, doing a less than glamorous job... and I am ashamed to admit this, but I am disappointed.

But remembering that though I “want to learn a thousand things to do. God will teach me one thing, perhaps in a thousand ways,” comforts me when I feel like such a failure to the kingdom. He must form the image of Christ in me… And this is necessarily a terribly painful journey.

At the Revolution worship service this week Jeff read from Deuteronomy 8. My anxious heart grabbed tight hold of the words Moses spoke to the children of Israel all those years ago (v.2-5):

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.

Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.

As I listened I realized this season is not so much about failure as it is about refinement. Sandwiched safely between my husband and my friend, I let my mind go into the painful places to explore this truth.

These past two years have taught me that I am not better than the next person, That:

• when I get sick,
• when money is tight,
• when work is hard

……When the promises appear hollow and the Spirit is silent

I shake my fist at God and bleed just like the next girl. Two years ago I would see this breaking as evidence of collapse, but weakness has become a teacher to me. Sickness has evoked deep hunger for God. Smallness has inspired my greatest prayers. In this place I have met the God of third, forth, fifth… chances. He doesn’t abandon the weak and the sick for they recognize how deeply they need Him. He is disciplining and humbling me…

During worship my heart responded to God’s humbling me. The team played a song I had never heard before, My Desire by Jeremy Camp. Jeremy begins “You want to be real. You want to be emptied inside…” and I cried snot. I do. I dream of being unselfconsciously Christlike, the Sarah I was created to be.

As I was drifting off to sleep that night my mind was flooded with snapshots of growing up with mom. It zoomed in on a picture me nestling down into a “nest” I had built of blankets as my mother read me The Velveteen Rabbit.

She had beautiful copy which she read with a British accent. I remember being mesmerized by her voice as I snuggled near. The sound of my mother reading my favorite part of the story echoed from this distant memory to the present,

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Yes it hurts to become real. Sometimes I think that there is so much sin in me that there won’t be anything left after I have been sifted… but since I know that I am not being abandoned, but re-created I choose this journey… I learn my dependence of the Word of the Lord more each day.