Thirty Seconds and Band-Aids

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We have been using a lot of bandaids around our house lately.  It always seems someone is in need of one.  In fact, today I dreadfully went to Wal-Mart, the worst Wal-Mart in the world (on Emerson in Beech Grove, in case you ever want to experience the phenomenon…or get a contact high in the parking lot), to buy my one-dollar-sugar-free-vanilla-syrup that I cannot live without.  I put a tiny bit in my Lavazza cappuccino every morning and every single time I smile inside thinking about how that one shot would have cost me fifty cents at Starbucks.  In fact, when at Starbucks, I have begun simply ordering a skinny vanilla latte just to avoid saying “…and a shot of sugar-free vanilla.”  Because watching them ring it up always makes me re-think the shot and over-analyze my drink choice and of course that opens the part of my brain that screams, “Screw the man. Why are you supporting the machine? You should be at a local coffee shop supporting local business!”  So that just really f’s with my need for a good latte and thus the beauty of the Wal-Mart syrup. A whole bottle for a buck.  Who knew! 

Anyhow, so the bandaids.  I was over in the vitamin aisle searching for whatever vitamins the gorgeous girl in one of my social work classes had on her desk this morning.  Her skin is perfect and I thought maybe it was directly correlated to her little baggy of vitamins that, upon my inquiry, she listed as if calling Santa’s reindeer to attention. And they each looked so pretty.  Three purple chewable ones, two clear liquid ones, two pebble-sized aqua ones, and one flat pink one that resembled a Tums.  I thought, “Damn. Even her vitamins are pretty.” She offered me a purple chewable one and I politely declined, informing her that I was enjoying the lingering taste of my coffee in my mouth mixed with toothpaste.  Yes, I actually said that.

So it was while searching for perfect-skin-vitamins that I saw the bandaids.  My eyes scanned past Barbie, G.I. Joe, Hello Kitty, Monsters, Inc., and Despicable Me2 and landed on the 97 cent Curad flexi-strips.  Not only would I be saving two bucks, but also I wouldn’t have to answer to my kids’ complaints that they were too girly, not girly enough, or, in the case of my ten year-old, “dumb.” In addition, I wouldn’t be thinking about the twenty cents down the drain every time I found one, sticky and nasty side down, on my floor.  Win win.  Win. 

I brought them home and apparently left them on the counter because when I walked in the door tonight I found the little white strips all over the counter, as if the Chipmunks had invaded the box in order to bandage Alvin after one of his crazy stunts.

Here’s the thing about bandaids: It’s rarely about the bandage itself.  Really, I can count on one hand the times my kids really needed one (and usually those times were accompanied by stitches).  But the reality is that bandaids represent so much more.  They are a visual reminder that someone took the time out of their busy lives to address the pain, whether great or small. I have vivid memories of sitting in the bathroom as a kid while my mom peeled back half of the strip and then attached it ever so carefully to my scrape.  She would gently press it down on my wound and then slowly detach the other strip, adding, “Alright. All better now.” And I would jump off the counter and run back outside.

Everything was better.   In a matter of thirty seconds, I had been reminded that someone cared about my smallest pain.

The reality is that I usually can’t find our bandaids because our kids, okay, mainly one kid, is in the business of handing them out to neighbor kids. I typically get incorporated in this process.  It’s like she knows that these kids need thirty seconds of nurturing via beige plastic stickiness. 

So I have become the nurse of the cul-de-sac.  One of the little girls makes special trips inside my house to tell me whenever she gets hurt.  And then she tells me about another time that she got hurt.  And about the mosquito bite. And the twisted ankle that happened last year.  And I hear in her soft, sweet, six year-old voice, a desperation to be heard.  Sometimes I offer a bandaid, especially when I can find one; but more often, I offer her thirty seconds of my life.  I tell her how sorry I am about her scrape, cut, bruise, fall, headache, tummy ache, etc.  That’s it.  I don’t do anything super spiritual like asking to pray for her.  I don’t give out ice packs or popsicles.  I usually don’t even ask to see where she got hurt.  I just simply say, “I’m so sorry.  Are you okay?”  Every single time, she nods her head yes, smiles, and then runs off to play again. 

God says that he sets the lonely in families.  This verse dances in and out of my head every time a neighbor kid is at my table, on my porch, in my car, at my church.  I am certainly not special.  My kids often inform me that I don’t spend enough time with them, so it’s clear that I’m not giving neighborhood kids crazy amounts of my time.  I simply try to give them my presence, even if it means I’m busy cooking or working on a paper or folding laundry. 

No matter what I am doing, I can find thirty seconds to offer my ears and, sometimes, a bandaid.

Front Seat

I like photography because it freezes in time the moments I want to re-live forever and ever.

But sometimes a camera cannot capture the depth of a moment.  Because the moment is in itself far too simple.  Far too mundane.

These ordinary moments are the ones I never want to forget. The moments like today when I let my son skip school and hang out with me.  We ran some errands and he, taking full advantage of his 70 pounds of ten year-old life, sat in the front seat.  He discovered the little plug-in to my I-Phone and played various sorts of music, begging me to download "that I got twenty dollars in my pocket song," to which I explained that I am not sure if there's a clean version out there...to which he responded "What do you mean?" To which I responded, "Uhm, it says the F-word in the real song..." to which he began singing "...this is freakin' awesome."  There was more where that came from, as he has begun to call me "man" and "dude" and I can't help but laugh at how the southside of Indy has already gotten to him, even though we've only lived back in the USA for less than a year.   

But the moment frozen in my mind occurred when we were listening to a Christian radio station.  Two songs that he sang for his spring program came on and he was belting them so loud in this sweet non-pubescent boy voice.  "Your love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me..."  And of course I was singing along with him.  I didn't let him see me glance over at him.  I didn't let him know how I was praying in that moment that those words would stick with him forever.  That he would forever know that God's love will never give up on him, no matter how far in sin he may fall, no matter how far he may run.

Not that I am saying he will. 

But I know he will struggle.  Because we all do.  And I never want to be surprised by the fact that my children are sinners.

One of the proudest moments of parenting for me happened recently when Elias came to me to confess something he did.  He was so broken inside.  Tears streamed down his face as he cried out, "Just ground me forever..."

But we didn't ground him.  We praised him.  He could have hid his sin, like Adam and Eve hid in the garden.  But he didn't.  And I knew in that moment that this was the beginning of my relationship with a tween/adolescent.  And I felt the weight of my response.  I knew he would see Jesus' forgiveness of him in the way in which I would respond.

I breathed deep and allowed his confession to settle into my heart, into the parts of me that are broken too.  I related to him in a way I never had before.   Unbeknownst to him, I empathized with his shame.  With his guilt and his heartache.  And like going on stage for the first time, I performed a response that I had played in my head since I was a child.

I didn't react.  I didn't say a word.  I looked into his tearful eyes and loved that boy more than I had ever loved him, not believing it possible.  I cried with him, and after much silence, I told him I was sorry.  For sin.  For it entering the world.  For the struggle that robs us of joy and lures us into the darkness to hide...to believe the lie that His love does give up on us.  Does run out on us.

My son laying in bed crying in confession.  That same son belting out praises to God.  That same son singing "this is freakin' awesome."

This is it.  The human experience.

I don't want to miss a minute of it.  Those images are juxtaposed in my mind, intertwined into the fabric of my son's DNA: sin, confession, forgiveness, praise.  Those images are the ones my camera will never capture, but that will fade endlessly into eternity when they will become but a reflection of the glory of a sinless, struggle-less kingdom.

Until then, may I continue to be silenced by these little people.  As they teach me, from the front seat, about honest worship.