The Tender “I Know” Is What I’m Most Grateful For
Not long ago I wrote a prayer in my journal to God. Put a new heart, I wrote, right in this mother’s broken cavity. I was crying out loud as my pen scratched the paper, trying to expel all the ugliness I felt with my erratic strokes.
That particular evening, I was feeling horrified by the lack of patience and compassion I had shown my children all day. I had been sick, and so had they, which meant that they needed me most when I had least to give. I had marveled over the way my son twirling my hair made me want to scream. I hardly recognized myself cussing down the hall when my daughter needed comfort at naptime.
I was humiliated as I sat before God that night. I hated the way my selfishness kept rubbing at my soft edges. I could feel it whittling away the good and beautiful parts, leaving bitterness in its place.
There was a time when I would have tucked into myself, letting the tears fall quickly and quietly before trying to formulate a plan to move on and be a better me. I would have circumvented prayer because the chasm between God’s glory and my own human condition would have felt impassable.
But, to assume God could never understand (and therefore never embrace) me would be to neglect an essential fact about God’s character, and that is his own humanity. How quickly I forget that God was man, too. Oh, the delightful madness!
Like an administrator leaving his desk to teach kindergarteners to paint and sit in a circle for a year, or a CEO scrubbing the bathrooms in his own office, Jesus came to do the dirty work he didn’t have to do, in a place he didn’t have to be, with a body he didn’t have to wear. He took upon himself the painful schlepping that comes with being a person.
He could have kept his bird’s eye view from Heaven, but he chose instead to get in the mud and experience all the discomforts of life with us.
The hunger pains.
The exhaustion.
The tedium of rise, work, sleep, repeat.
The waiting.
The relational issues.
The death.
I forget this part all the time–that he too walked around on this unruly earth and knows what it’s like. He has dealt with the crush of rejection and disappointment, just like we do. He has had death standing in his path, also, and has had to journey through life knowing the way it would inevitably end.
I am incredibly comforted knowing we have an advocate in heaven who is able to sympathize with our weakness (Hebrews 4:15). The fact that Jesus was fully God and also fully man means that we can reach for his hand and expect him to grab on and squeeze. It means we can sit before him when we feel so human it hurts, and know that he’ll weep with us and wash us and tend to our turbulent souls with patience and understanding. His responses are not filled with, “You shoulds,” and “What’s wrong with yous?” but rather tender and loving, “I knows.”
I’m grateful for his “I know”
It’s the tender “I know” that gives me the courage to dry my tears and forgive myself for my shortcomings as a mom. When I remember that the one sitting on the throne is the same one whose feet got dusty in this ground we’re on, I am overwhelmed with gratitude, knowing that he won’t condemn me for offering my humanness to him, but will instead squeeze me tight and press his balms of mercy and grace to my soul.
Meet Deidre Braley
Deidre Braley is a writer and elementary school teacher. She lives in Maine with her husband, Ethan, and their two children, Theodore and Vivian. When she’s not teaching or wrangling toddlers, you’ll find her working on her blog, The Second Cup, or sipping coffee and reading a book.
Where to find her . . .
Begin Within is a series to inspire a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbors as well. Gratitude is a theme we talk about often around here because it ties so closely into other missional living rhythms. Practicing gratitude reminds to keep our hearts soft and expectant and our eyes open. Therefore, the more we embrace gratitude, the easier it becomes to truly see our neighbors and where we can join what God is already doing in our neighborhoods.
If you would like to contribute to Begin Within, you can find the submission guidelines here.
Creating Ripples
If you would like to cultivate rhythms in addition to gratitude that will empower you live on mission in your neighborhood, check out Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors. This small book will help you make a big impact in your neighborhood as you learn to let missional living flow from the inside out. Get the 30-day missional living challenge free when you purchase the book.
