Post Script | October 31, 2022

Prayers for you and your wandering child

I took my mother to the doctor several days ago. Because we’ve moved her from Columbus to Cincinnati, we’ve needed to establish her with doctors in the area, including someone to follow her breast cancer case. (She had breast cancer in 2008, then again in 2015).

As I’m the one tasked with her paperwork, both medical and financial, I dutifully filled out the 12-page patient intake form. But rather than handwriting all her medications, I instead included a typewritten list I’d updated in August, when she moved into her new assisted living facility. On page 8 of the form, I skipped the series of questions meant to assess the new patient’s risk for breast cancer. I figured we had a pretty good idea about this, given her history.

This is all to say that the nurse and I were not the fastest of friends when, during the initial intake, she wanted first to review my mother’s medications. “Are you still taking ___________?” she asks my mother, looking over the top of her glasses. My mother turns to look at me blankly.

“I included a list with the forms,” I say, hoping the nurse can simply open the file and refer to it. But it’s clear she doesn’t want to do this. “Let’s just go over this briefly together,” she says, as if to insist on a process I find inefficient and unhelpful. She turns back to her keyboard.  But neither my mother nor I are likely to remember all the medications she is taking, and hadn’t I already included a list?

I don’t budge. “No, I don’t think either of us will reliably remember what she is taking. Can you just look at the list?” Finally, I can see I’ve won her over, even if she remains unhappy about it. She opens the folder and searches through the pages. She pulls out the list.

I might not register her frustration with me until she follows the doctor in, ten minutes later, and hands me a pink clipboard. “You forgot to fill out this section of the paperwork, and we need to have it all completed.” I take the clipboard from her and look to see what I’ve omitted.

“Actually, I deliberately skipped that section because I didn’t think it applied in this case. My mother has had two breast cancers and a bilateral mastectomy.”

She doesn’t budge. “You may not think it relevant, but we still need you to fill it out.”

“You need to know the date of my mother’s first period? Have you seen the rest of the paperwork, where I wrote about her current health condition?” I don’t want to say Alzheimer’s in front of my mother because this is information her doctor withheld from her at the time of her diagnosis, and I have followed his lead.

The nurse stands in the doorway, looking at me with irritation. Then she gives up and closes the door.

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I understood, at that moment, that my irritation was not really with this nurse. No, it was just one of those terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad days. I had had a worrisome phone call in the morning, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It involved one of my children, and the day was swallowed with anxieties for the future of this child and the future of our relationship. When I had showed up to the doctor with my mother in the middle of that afternoon, I was in no mood for hassle. I wanted the world to take more careful notice that LIFE IS HARD and SOME OF US NEED A LITTLE COMPASSION.

(Yes, the irony is not lost on me. After two and a half years of pandemic, our medical workers might understand this better than most.)

That word—compassion—had sprung to life in a recent session of spiritual direction where, in telling Beth about some of the hardships of this seasons, I had said to her, “I just want to know God’s compassion for me.”

She was quiet, letting my own tearful admission absorb more deeply into me. (This is one of the real mysteries of spiritual direction, that some of the profoundest moments are the truths you find yourself saying, when you didn’t know you knew them.) When Beth spoke again, she articulated something profound.

“God’s compassion is something you have to let yourself experience.”

I knew what she meant. On the one hand, I do know God’s compassion for me. Every day, I read of his steadfast love in the Bible, and I know that through Christ, God is reconciling the world to himself. There is no one more compassionate than our Creator God, who knows our frame and remembers we are made of dust.

But on the other hand, I have very limited knowledge of God’s compassion—because isn’t something you can think your way into. To consider the parable of the Prodigal Son, I am so often located out in the field, with the older brother. I am working hard for my keep, practicing as much diligence in the duty to which I feel bound. Tragically, this means that in many ways, I live estranged from the father, exiled by the reliance on my own efforts.

I have begun seeing anew that God’s compassion is a gift to be received by the weak and the undeserving. It’s a gift for sons and daughters come home with empty pockets, believing the only reason they’re guaranteed welcome is on account of their father.

They aren’t good—but he is radically, recklessly generous.

This story—of the waiting, watching father and his two estranged sons—has been keeping me in recent days and weeks. I’ve begun to see that the only way I can parent my own wandering children is to come home, again and again, to my good and generous father. To let myself be received by him despite all the ways I’ve traveled to the distant country, relied on my efforts, and resisted his grace.

I must let myself be embraced by God’s compassion, again and again and again, then let this embrace be the very place that shame and self-recrimination fall away. It’s here that the inner voice of accusation is drowned out by the father’s call for a robe and a party. Only when I know God’s forgiveness for my great sin can I extend forgiveness and compassion to others, even to my own children.

Here’s what I know. Ryan and I can’t repent for our children. It is their own responsiveness to God’s grace that must decide, “I will return to my father’s house.” And while we can’t do this work for them, here’s what we can continue to do: pray for God to cultivate a spacious place of home in our hearts as we experience his gracious, loving compassion.

Then we can continually ask: “Let there be no outsiders, no strangers to the home you have made within us.”

Yours,

Jen

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If you haven’t read Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, you really should.