The Margins

Today my kids ate PB&J’s on cheap, nutrition-less white bread for the first time ever.

We had run out of bread and I was watching my friend’s daughter for the day so I called Lauren and asked if she could help me out with some bread. She brought over her loaf of white “Bimbo” brand bread, purchased at the little corner market at the end of our street, and we laughed because she knows that the kids always eat some kind of whole grain bread (since she makes their sandwiches as often as I do!). “They’ll love it!” I told her.

All three kids devoured their sandwich, crust and all. And demanded more. All three ate a second sandwich. I was laughing realizing how exotic cheap white bread was to my children. I wonder what would happen if they got bologna!

Sunday was Father’s Day and to celebrate that our church hosted a special brunch an hour before our regular meeting time. I arrived with the kids about twenty minutes after it had started, and Aaron and Mercy raced right in to find their daddy and to search for doughnuts. I had hoped that the baby would fall asleep on our walk there, but he was instead lying in the stroller, with a blanket draped over the canopy, fussing and crying. I knew that he just needed to sleep, so I stayed outside and paced the sidewalk in front of Mack Elementary while Doug and the kiddos celebrated inside.

At some point, a woman came out of the auditorium. She is new to our church and we have spoken a few times in the past weeks. She is warm and gentle and kind to my kids, and we primarily communicate with each other in spanish.

She walked up to me and told me that she would walk the baby so that i could go inside and be with my husband. “No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m fine.” The truth was I was not fine. I was frustrated and tired and was losing patience with my not-sleeping baby.

Again she offered. Again I refused.

She went back inside and I walked and walked, and by the time I made it back in with a sleeping one, there was not a chance to get any food before we started our time of worship, and Doug needed to be up front to lead.

Later I thought about my response to this woman’s offer of help, and why I could not accept it. Looking back I realized that I would have been blessed by the break; by the time with Doug; by the time with my big kids and their doughnuts. And I think she would have been blessed too. And yet I held back, clinging to my own burden, and refusing to let a yoke-fellow enter and ease the weight of my load.

This past week, the kids and I were reading bible stories, and we got to the part where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. I read the story and did my best to explain to them the significance of having your feet washed, and then I had an idea. “Wait here!” I said, going into the bathroom and wrapping a towel around my waist and filling their play-sink basin with warm, soapy water. I came out and kneeled down beside the futon where they sat and told them we could act out the story.

Instantly, they each drew their feet up underneath them. As much as I pleaded with them and tried to get them excited about acting out the story we had just read, they were resolute in their refusal. They would not let me wash their feet. I was taken aback by their reaction: my kids LOVE pretend-play. How was this so different from me “being the prince“? Was it my identification with Jesus and the connection between this story and his death (we had talked about this)? Were they scared that if I washed their feet I would die?

Eventually I gave up, took off the towel, and dumped the basin into the bathtub. I marveled at their resistance to what I was trying to do, and realized that while I have read and heard and considered the story of Peter’s resistance to Jesus countless times, I never really had any emotional connection to it. But something about the fierce obstinance, fear even, of my two and three-year olds gave me a new picture of what Jesus received from his dear disciple. Like Mercy and Aaron, I can imagine Peter’s wheels turning: “If I let him do this, what does that mean? What are the ramifications of this?”

Servanthood. Sacrifice. Mutuality. Loving others more than we love ourselves. These are the inheritance of those who allow the master to wash them. A purification not to be set apart and kept clean but rather one that leads to more dirt and greater callouses. Amazing.

Is that why I did not let the spanish woman longing to love me push the stroller in my place? We always hear about Peter’s pride, but could it not be as well that to be washed by Jesus is to accept that same mandate: to stoop and serve even the lowest?

I am reminded of Scot McKnight’s foot-washing story in A Community Called Atonement, and the powerful call we all share as followers of a towel and basin King.

Doug brought home a box of Noah’s bagels last night that were leftovers from one of the DMin classes which started yesterday. I gave a bagel to both Mercy and Aaron this morning to eat (Aaron chose the brown one, certainly thinking it must be chocolate, and even though it was Rye he ate it happily calling it his “glazed doughnut”).

Both kids were sitting at the table with their bagels, with Elijah strapped into his highchair eating his breakfast too, while I made the morning’s coffee. When I came back into the dining room with my cup of the coffee, I entered the room and saw a bunch of little paper plates (that had been left on the dining room table after a church gathering at our house last night) spread all over the surface of the table with little pieces of bagel on each. Before I could even form a sentence about wasting the plates, Mercy looked up at me excitedly and proclaimed:

“Mommy, I had a miracle!”

I play the hammered dulcimer. Well, I used to play it. It now sits silent in a corner of the house, packed away for some later time when I can teach Mercy the simple beauty of its music.

Growing up, I would often be asked to play for some church service or wedding or school function, and as a young girl, it was a chore to carry both the instrument and its stand. I can still picture my dad, at the conclusion of a performance, quietly making his way over to the dulcimer and packing it up into its case and carrying case and stand to the car or wherever we needed to go. He ALWAYS carried the dulcimer.

I remember sometime during college, or possibly after, being asked to play when I was home visiting, and by then I had grown accustomed to sherpa-ing my own instrument having been on my own in Chicago for some time. When the event was over, I was surrounded by people wanting to talk and visit, and when it was finally time to pack up and go I looked over toward the dulcimer and saw that it was not there. I scanned the room and, sure enough, there was my dad standing near the doorway talking to some friends; and he was carrying the dulcimer.

I love my dad. And when I thought about what best describes the way he moves through this life, that is the image that came to my mind. Someone whose default setting is to see an opportunity to serve and meet it, be it simple or costly. Someone who doesn’t think twice about quietly lifting the burden of another. Someone who sees service and sacrifice not as the exception but as the rule.

Dad, the dulcimer doesn’t make it to Seattle anymore, but three little ones and a weary mom often do, so it looks like you’re not off the hook anytime soon! I love you. Happy Father’s Day.

This pic was taken right before Mercy was born when my dad flew down for a weekend to help out and painted our bathroom for us.

“Mommy, I am going to turn into a Daddy.”

“Why, Mercy?”

“Because my legs are growing fur.”

Sundays are not the easiest days in the Haub household. Doug is up and out the door early to set up and rehearse music with the worship team, and I am left to wrangle the three kids into clothes and shoes and (if we are lucky) brushed hair. I once even used the Teletubbies TV show (which is only on Sunday mornings) to pacify the two big kids while I did their shoes and socks and hair. Yikes!

Our Sunday worship service starts right in the middle of Elijah’s nap, so part of what makes Sunday mornings frustrating is having to wake my sleeping baby, or simply refuse him his nap altogether. And our worship services are far from the twenty-minute sermon variety and so lunchtime for my kids hits about one hour after we arrive. Add to that the fact that once the service is over, Doug is again committed to packing up and relating to his worship team, so I am on my own to herd (literally) three squirrelly, overtired and hungry small ones out the door and back home.

By the time I wheel us around the corner onto Kenwood we are often entering a downward spiral, and just getting everyone up the long flight of stairs, stowing the stroller, and assembling lunch is a feat. I often hear people talk of opting out of the Sunday service component to “church” on philosophical grounds; in my weaker moments I have come close to making the same choice and philosophy has had nothing to do with it! I know that this season of life is short (especially when you have kids as close together as we have!), and that single parents everywhere handle more than this regularly, and that I have a great community that bends over backward to offer us every care and support: but sometimes it is still plain hard.

This past Sunday, I had planned to take the big kids to a neighbor’s birthday party which was scheduled to begin right after church at a park down in Carson. Doug would stay home with Elijah so he could get some homework done (and so Elijah could get some much-needed sleep), and I would take the kids to the party. After the trek home, the frenzied lunch, and printing my directions to the park, I made the mistake of lying down on the futon next to Doug while the kids played. My body ached as it met rest, and my mind flooded with how crazy the afternoon would be dragging my two already exhausted kids to a huge park filled with kids and lots of sugar. The last thing I remotely wanted to do was to move but I knew I needed to rally the troops and get us out the door.

As I lay there with my eyes closed, I said to Doug:

“I feel like Jesus when he was all: ‘Hey, let’s go to Jerusalem.’”

Thirteen people were murdered this weekend in Los Angeles (the L.A. Times offers details on eleven of the slayings).

We have all noticed an increase in activity lately in our neighborhood: sirens, screaming, the pounding of helicopters that hardly ceases…”Do you know what was going on last night?” is a common question between neighbors.

Meanwhile life goes on and days are spent chasing marbles up and down our driveway, starting swimming lessons, going to birthday parties with neighbors, and welcoming new babies into our church family.

But thirteen people were murdered this weekend.

Doug came home from work Friday night feeling sick, so he crashed on the futon while I put the three kids to bed. It’s a bit of a circus getting the three into their beds, and that is with two parents. It is much harder to do it when there is only one of us (which makes me all the more grateful that our precious Lauren took the whole brood for the night this weekend!).

I got Elijah settled in his crib in our room and the big kids were in their beds waiting for stories when a helicopter began to circle. It was low to the point of making the house shake, and ever since the take down in our driveway a few months back, I have become more vigilant about knowing where the helicopter is circling. I looked out a few windows and couldn’t see it (usually not a good sign), but finally saw out the back porch that the center of its circle was a block or two away. Having established this, I went back into the kids’ room and did my best to read over the noise.

I finished our books and Mercy asked: “Mommy, lay with me?” I don’t always know when stuff like this unsettles them or makes them feel afraid at all, and often enough they seem pretty oblivious. But I am always careful to be very present and to help them feel secure when there is this kind of noise and chaos going on outside. So I cuddled up with my girl, and she immediately rolled over to one side and requested “rubs”. I rubbed her back, trying to offset the pounding of the helicopter with a counter rhythm of gentle touch.

Suddenly there was a loud voice coming over a loudspeaker of sorts, repeating variations of: “Go inside your houses. Do not come out of your houses. Stay inside.” At this, I hopped out of Mercy’s bed and again did the survey through different windows to establish where the activity was moving. The helicopter’s circle had not moved but now there were cruisers covering different streets around us.

I got back into Mercy’s bed, and this time she asked for an “arm rub”. So I traced patterns on her arm, just the way I always loved “arm scratches” as we called them. Every few minutes, the helicopter would get really, really loud or a bunch of sirens would pass, and my fingers would curl a bit more tightly around my little girl’s arm.

The noise continued as did my rubs, and just as Mercy was getting drowsy and Aaron was finally still in his bed, I heard the loudspeaker again, repeating: “We have you surrounded. Surrender.”

One more time out of her bed, into the hallway, and to the bathroom window where I could better hear and see. Doug had also gotten up by now and clicked on the news to try and see if we could figure out what was going down. Deciding again that the threat was still a block or two away, I made one last stop to the kids room. A few leg rubs later, and my girl was breathing heavily. I did not hurry out of her bed again, but stayed a while beside her sleeping form.

Eventually the sirens faded and the helicopter sped off. I called our friend who lives a block away, and he said that they were okay and that the center of activity had been one block east of their house. Nothing ever did show up on the news, and we still don’t know what all the fuss was about.

Last night the preachers of our church gathered to look at the next section of John’s gospel that we will be preaching from this summer. We read this passage in John 10: “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

We talked about where we see “the thief” at work in our midst, and it was not hard for us to name some of the things that rob life from our community. Gangs. Unemployment. Addiction. Racism.

A chapter earlier, Jesus announces that he is the light of the world and I thought of this verse in Isaiah: “It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the fortunes of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

I like to imagine God looking down at those places where children play without worry; where families have employment, food, insurance; where church platforms are loaded with every high-end piece of technology and, with the sound of helicopters beating in his ears, declaring: “It is too small a thing…”

Stomach flu.

Three small children.

Really, really, really not fun.

“Things that we love get broken.”

This was Mercy’s comment to me yesterday, and I think it came in response to her accidentally tearing part of her children’s Bible. She was struggling with the fact that she was doing what she should do with that book: read it, carry it with her, sleep with it. And yet those very things caused it to become worn to the point of actually tearing.

Things that we love get broken. Yes, my little one, your words are true.