What Does a Happy Ending Mean?

About a year ago, I was spending a lot of time making peace with a sad ending. I was asking what a sad ending means and wondering how anyone comes through the devastation of one.

The Lord was faithful to answer that question. In a word, he answered it with: resurrection. When a sad ending feels like the final chapter, our hope of resurrection tells us otherwise. It constantly reminds us that there is hope on the other side of the grave. We look back at our resurrected Jesus, at our once dead, risen King and we look forward to His life in us and His life in our loved ones after death has had its way.

Now, a year later, a different question has been nagging me. What does a happy ending mean? What if death is postponed, what if that fear that we carried around in our chest like someone was tightening a noose on our heart, intent on taking us to the brink, has subsided.

What does it mean when we’ve begged God to make something untrue, and by some measures, that has happened? Is this the moment when we claim victory and sermonize on the power of prayer to do just exactly what we wanted it to? Do we march triumphant, laughing at the death that we’ve defied? What does it mean that Titus survived that awful seizure and time on life support? What does it mean that he’s doing better than we expected and is progressing forward rather than regressing?

There is a devilish temptation to give glory to God for seeing the wisdom of our perfect plan. How godly we can look when we give glory to God for answering our prayers, even if the prayers say, “My will be done,” rather than, “Thy will be done.” The truth is, many of my prayers have been selfish and nothing more than a desperate mom’s clinging to a life that doesn’t belong to her. I know I have to be careful how I say this. It isn’t wrong to pray for God to heal your child, or ask for our loved one to live and not die. It’s right and good. But do we end with, “Not my will, but yours, God.” Are our hands lifted and open?

And is it right to claim Titus’s progression as an answer to our prayers? Isn’t it self-aggrandizing to assume that I understand the reason God has granted Titus to be where he’s at right now? What I can know for sure is that Titus is where He is because of the kind providence of God. It’s not that my prayers don’t matter, but praying simply to get what I want, is not the point of prayer. If prayer doesn’t align my will with his, what is it, but wishing upon a star?

One thing I’ve learned is that God’s will isn’t simple. He is not indebted to give His children yeses to their prayers. He told his own perfect Son, no.

Sometimes we have really special things planned for our kids. We plan vacations or get togethers with friends and they often don’t know about it until the plans are underway. Then, on occasion, they will ask for the very thing we’ve already planned. They’ll ask to get together with someone and it just so happens that we are planning on heading to their house later that day. It was part of the plan before they asked. They might think that we’re going because they asked, but we’re not, it was in the plan.

That’s how I feel about Titus. God has a plan. Our job is to submit to his will and allow him to bend us in ways we’ve never been bent before. Does God answer prayer? Yes. But claiming to understand how or why certain prayers get answered is risky when those prayers are not part of God’s revealed Biblical will. There are some prayers that I know God will answer with YES! When I confess my sins, repent and ask him for forgiveness, he ALWAYS says yes. When I ask for patience or self-control He always provides opportunities and the Spirit’s help to follow through with it. But it’s harder to correlate his answers to prayers outside of His revealed will for us. And when we do presume that He has answered our prayers for circumstantial good things on the basis of our asking (not necessarily in accordance with His will), it can also lead to a puffed up, inflated self-importance–the kind of view that believes our will has the power to bend his will, when it is exactly the opposite. Prayer is about bending our will to His.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Wouldn’t it be good to give glory to God for healing Titus, whether we know for sure if he did or not? I’m not so sure. It doesn’t glorify him or honor him to misinterpret or presume upon the storyline. Titus’s brain is still the same. He’s developing, yet disabled. He’s doing better than we expected and all of the praise for that goes to God.

Without glorifying our prayers, we can glorify Him by trusting His sovereign, wise plan when He takes and when He gives. We glorify Him with faith that He will give us the exact number of hardships that are good for us. We glorify Him by continuing to pour out our hearts and ask without hesitation in accordance with His will. We glorify Him with faith that He loves our son more than we do. And with faith that He loves us, too.

Have you talked to someone who believes that God has answered their prayers favorably regarding an earthly circumstance and is triumphant about it? Have you been pressured to just believe that God would give healing? Have you been made to feel like God’s answers to your prayers hinged on the amount of faith you could muster (not faith in God, mind you, but faith in a favorable outcome)? Is He glorified by pride about our faith?

A happy ending doesn’t mean I get credit for earning a yes from God.

Another thing it doesn’t mean is that all the sad chapters are over. It would be silly to call Titus’s story a happy ending when he’s nineteen months old. But it’s tempting to do so. How badly we want to be done with the pain! I can’t claim a happy ending for any of my children.. or myself.. or anyone! We can be thankful for the kind providence of what he’s granting us right now, without clutching at tomorrow. This life doesn’t end happily for anyone, because it ends in death for everyone. Death is our enemy.

It is on the other side of our enemy, death, that we get our happy ending. Knowing this means we can say, “Where is your victory Death?” We can mock death, “Where is your sting?” We can live in peace and contentment, because our ultimate destination is happy forever.

So what does a happy ending mean? For a Christian, it means the same thing that a sad ending means. The story isn’t over. This life isn’t our ending. We bank it all on the resurrection hope that we have because of Jesus Christ’s bloody death on a cross. He swallowed death on that cross and we will be raised with him. The perishable putting on the imperishable; the mortal, immortality.

The Hostas Underneath the Snow

Spring matters more than ever at our house, because the resurrection matters more than ever.

Lewis calls spring the “waiting room of the world,” a “nothing time.” I have felt begrudgingly similar toward my least favorite season. I’d take the known cold of winter over being jerked around by the seemingly false promises of spring. I love warmth and buds, but every year I find myself in a malaise of disappointment, wondering if it will actually come round.

Yet, spring is reminding me that God does keep his promises. Even when it’s April and a snowstorm. Or, May and a snowstorm. Even when it seems like death wins. I must not mistake the hints of God’s goodness and promise-keeping that are all around in the thaw/freeze/thaw/freeze cycle of spring, for the taunts of the enemy, who’s hoping I don’t notice the hostas underneath the snow.

Think of Jesus and the thaw/freeze cycle of his final week. Triumphal entry=thaw. Cleansing the temple=freeze. Lament over Jerusalem=freeze. Teaching and explaining parables=thaw. Plotting of Pharisees=freeze. Last supper=thaw. Gethsemane=freeze. Questioned by Pilate/Herod=freeze. Release offered by Pilate=thaw. Crucifixion=freeze. Resurrection=thaw. Humanly this is difficult to grasp in the moment, but this is all one massive thaw, just like spring. It seems back and forth, but it’s really the trajectory of resurrection, and the freezing is necessary for the ultimate thaw.

Winter is the setting and the stage for redemption. It is the stark backdrop to the glories that are coming.  And for those who have gone deep into that winter, those for whom winter has been the bleakest and coldest, who have refused to take the road of bitterness and have thrown themselves on the grace of God, perhaps the glories will be all the brighter.

We bid farewell to winter as the big melt was underway on Saturday. Tom took the kids for the last sledding trip down the hill.

four kids, a dad and a sled.
four kids, a dad and a sled.
Whoops, falling off.
Whoops, falling off.
All set!
All set!
And they're off!
And they’re off!

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Goodbye winter.
Goodbye winter.

 

Jesus, Bread and Easter: Give the Children Something GOOD to Taste

This has been a crazy Easter season. The day we found out we were having a little boy, we also signed an agreement to sell our house. After devoting my life to a “show-ready” house and battling with the trials of pregnancy, there is nothing I’d love more than a laid back, contemplative Easter season.

Alas, the Lord has other ways to reveal His glory than in stillness alone. He also shows up when we’re doing our jobs, cleaning, schooling, working hard, feeding mouths.

Thursday was just such a day. We had to be out of the house for hours for an inspection. My folks are so gracious and let us come hang out at their place whenever we have to be gone for a showing etc. The night before I’d made dough for bread that has to rise overnight. So, I baked it just before we left and brought it along with us for lunch.

On the way over to my folks, I thought that the crusty bread would be a perfect way to illustrate the whole Easter story and we could still eat it for lunch.

Here’s what we did. We cut the loaf about 1/3 of the way in, then we tore out all the hot delicious innards and ate them.

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My kids like it plain, with occasional dips of nutella. I like mine with PB and honey.

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While we were doing this we talked about the Last Supper and how Jesus called himself the Bread of Life. How he said things like, “This is my body, broken for you.” The bread tasted wonderfully, as warm bread tends to do. This is an essential part of teaching my kids. If it tastes bad, how can they have a foundation to understand, “Taste and see that the Lord is good…”?

The big part of the bread crust becomes the tomb, the smaller portion becomes the stone that covers the tomb.

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We saved a chunk of bread and Eliza fashioned a little man out of it.

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When we got home that evening, the kids found sticks from the dead flower bed remnants and we made crosses, tied up with yarn.

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It sat on the counter Thursday night, as I pondered how to set it up properly. Today the kids enacted Jesus on the cross and put him in the tomb. Then tonight, I pulled out some river rocks and serving tray and arranged it so that the crosses would stand up. The bread tomb is on a green towel, to look like a small hill.

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This is the little “project” that isn’t. It isn’t anything at all, but real life. Real bread that we were making, a real meal that we were eating, to remind us of our real Savior. This isn’t a show put on for kids. This isn’t different from the truth that we live in every single day. This is His body, broken for us.

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This is our table where we gather to enjoy gifts from His hand. Won’t you taste and see this Easter? He is GOOD.