Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Beautiful, Dumbfounding Moments

There are dumbfounding moments in life.  

Like the time I experienced the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland -I was astonished and speechless.  The natural beauty is simply breathtaking.  Standing on those rocks and taking in the magnificence around me is a moment I will never forget.  

Or the time when Lily dressed for church in the burka that my husband brought back from the Middle East.  Dumfounded, I tell you, that we didn't notice until we turned into the parking lot.  That was a moment.

And then there was the moment that my son read an original poem to his class (and their parents, I should add), which poetically stated the bad smell in the mornings...of his mother.  Yep.  That was an awkward moment.

Moments like these have been unforgettable, some inspiring a belly laugh and others producing a tear.  What I've been learning of late is that each of these moments have purpose.  Jesus is not absent in any of them.  No matter how great or insignificant a moment seems, the remarkable reality is that they all have significance.  

I brought my youngest along to visit my mom at the care center a few days ago.  So, this usually goes one of two ways:  either it's a great success and everyone departs with grins, or my daughter gets restless and starts doing cartwheels in the small room, hits her mom with her legs, and knocks over the humidifier.  I'm just saying that could be the other way.

But, I took the chance because my joyful and sometimes ridiculously crazy kid loves her Ya Ya.  Lily spent the first twenty minutes bossing my mom around.  Like a mini nurse she was demanding my mom stay in bed, keep her legs under the covers, and, of course, it was important that Ya Ya did not doze off while she told her stories, which became increasingly dramatic with every minute we were there.

When the nurse came in for mom's shower time, I had to laugh at my mom's quick pace in getting to the bathroom - perhaps she needed a break from my youngest?  I mean, I totally get it.  Sometimes you just need a few minutes of distraction from the number of words no matter how much you love her.

Lily was keeping us entertained with cartwheels while mom showered.  Each time her legs flipped over they came closer to hitting the bed...and the dresser, the humidifier, the tray, and her mother.  But we were interrupted when the nurse called for help.

Mom had fallen, so I immediately helped her up and assisted with the shower.  While mom calmed, my own emotion frantically rolled over me.  As I tenderly helped bath her, my youngest yelled from outside the bathroom, "I'll be here in the hallway doing cartwheels for you YaYa!  Then everybody will stop screaming their head off!    Cartwheels help everybody stop crying because you can't cry and be upside down at the same time!"

I had no context for this moment.  Literally holding my mom up while my daughter did cartwheels in the hallway to keep her from crying - this was a moment of pure, raw emotion that simultaneously inspired a belly laugh like I hadn't done in a long time.  It was a moment I will never forget.

Jesus was not absent in that moment.  It was not random that I had my lily with me in a moment when I'm sure my mom felt desperately vulnerable.  

I was thinking of this moment with my mom while we sat at a computer programming competition,  watching my son be a part of a team that found themselves in the finals, potentially winning a total of $30,000 for their weekend's work.  And what would make me think of my mom while at a Glolbalhack competition?

Lily's cartwheels.

My husband and I were expecting to merely pick up my son from his weekend of learning about computer programming through a competition that he became a part of at the last minute, thanks to a more than generous man who wanted to teach him.  But instead we sat in our Sunday best with several hundred other people, not in their Sunday best, watching our son and his team, "Jrod the Prodigy," present as one of the finalists.

I'll let you guess whether or not we stuck out in that sea of computer whizzes.  I'm pretty sure my husband was the only one wearing white pants and a purple bow-tie in the sea of weekend programmers, and I'm pretty sure I didn't spot another woman in a polka-dot sundress.

But I sat there nodding my head during the presentations, acting as if I understood  the various questions being asked to each team.  I mean, come on.  With each head nod I said to myself, "Stop it!"  But for some reason my head kept nodding.  Maybe it was some visceral way to try and fit in.  With my polka-dot sundress.

And while we sat nodding in our Sunday best,  my youngest did cartwheels down the side aisle.

And when they announced that "Jrod the Prodigy" were the winners of Glolbalhack IV, we were dumbfounded.  We had no context for this - our son winning money for a computer programming competition while our daughter continued with her cartwheels barely missing photographers and successfully hitting her father with her legs.  No context.  Dumbfounded.  It was a moment that we will not forget.

And Jesus wasn't absent in the moment.  It wasn't random and it wasn't by accident that the Sunday before he had a conversation with an incredibly generous friend who happened to be a computer programmer.

Each moment, whether excruciatingly awful or surprisingly joyful, is a gift, not a burden, filled with divine purpose.

Not long ago I had the privilege of sitting with a nurse as he cared for a woman who is essentially in a vegetative state.  She opened her mouth to eat, but her eyes remained shut and she sat completely and utterly unresponsive.  I felt sorry for this nurse until he said this:

"Some people may think she doesn't have purpose anymore.  But she has purpose.  The moments that I have to feed her help me.  And I know she knows I'm here."  

These beautiful, dumfounding moments make up this life that we've been given.  We're all given these kinds of moments.  Sometimes we just have to see them, know who's in them, and be grateful for them...

All of them.