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I like to put my safe skin on first thing in the morning before anything can happen.  Before I shout at a child and see their hurt face, before I think about people close to me sick and whether they’ll make it, before I call a friend to get together and they disappoint me and say they’re too busy.  But my safe skin tends to get pulled and torn a bit when a sweet child runs up to give me kisses even when I’m not trying to hide my grumpiness, or when my eyes land on a toothy, 16 month old who’s feeding her baby and giraffe with a spoon.

That’s why it’s important to mend my safe skin quickly, because I know that a small gap is a great risk to get injured by something unexpected(only the expected makes it through my safe skin).

Luckily, I’ve found a few ways to toughen up my skin and keep it from ripping so easily.  As soon as I get a free moment I can eat food, particularly chocolate, to produce a dependable, thick buffer between me and any potential threats.

Reading a book that can take my mind quickly away from the present is also effective and works even better when combined with the food strategy.

Occasionally I’ll hear a voice breaking through my safe barrier, asking me to let it all down.  Working hard to focus on the book in my hands, the voice interrupts and suggests calmly (but with warmth and intensity) that if I peel back my safe skin and make contact with the disappointing and the unexpected, I’ll find a deeper joy than the shallow happiness I seem to be missing in the moment.

I eat some chocolate and think about it.

I reach for the zipper but it’s not there.  I pull and twist the skin only to find that I’ve been more successful than I thought at toughening the thing.  Now I want more than anything to get it off, to connect to those around me, to take some chances, to feel some pain and the joy that was whispered to me.  I think it’s going to take some giving up.  I think it might lead to a death or two.  I know it’s going to mean listening to that voice without a buffer.  And it’s going to take time.

“Smash!”

I know the source of the sound without looking(or atleast one half of the crash), the sweet blond head of Drummer Boy has once again made contact with a corner of a table or a door handle, maybe the edge of the bathroom sink.  Earlier in the day he stepped on the point of a playmobile sword, and I can’t remember how the bruise come to his knee before I rose from bed.

“I need a band-aid mom.”

It turned out to be the corner of the sink this time.  We’ve been here before with the other kids.  Around this age their bodies are like one of those quick grow capsules that bursts into a foam animal five times the original size when placed in water.  The sudden growth always means collateral damage.

“Buddy, I know what we need.  We need to cover youre entire body and head with band-aids so that the next time you fall you won’t get hurt.”

He giggled and forgot about the pain momentarily. Secretly I wondered if we should go ahead and try the band-aid plan.

For a while now I’ve been walking with people in my life who are experiencing painful circumstances, a change from the many periods of my life when I was the one needing a healing hand. In my own life, I’ve held my 4 day old baby before open-heart surgery, and I’ve been on the receiving end of the full brunt of mental illness in a parent.

Undoubtedly my own experiences have made me more empathetic to someone else’s suffering, but a while back it all reached a point when I was no longer walking beside these people but instead swimming away from a growing tsunami of hurt as it spread over me, my friend, and several of my family members.  Through their pain transfused to me, I was losing vision.  It wasn’t that my faith was in danger, but I couldn’t see the end of the suffering with my finite perspective.  I remember telling a friend, “I’m okay, but if someone asked me to explain why it’s okay for these people to be hurting so badly right now, I couldn’t explain it to anybody.” Even though I didn’t realize it then, I was out of band-aids.  And more than that I was ready to start wrapping myself in gauze, or maybe a full body cast, to create a buffer from everyone else’s pain.

Several years ago my dad’s mental illness(of which I had been unaware) abruptly took it’s true shape, erasing aspects of the father I thought I had finally gained post-childhood. I remember reaching out to my best friend and she pulled away from me leaving me hurt and confused, wondering why she wasn’t there to listen when I most needed her.  Later we talked through it and I tried to understand her point of view.  But it wasn’t until I walked in her shoes, feeling and seeing these people break and being helpless to change anything for them, that I really understood how she felt. It was then that I could see that because she cared for me, it was hard not to let her anger and hurt for my circumstances paralyze her own life.  And each time I shared more with her it brought further realization that she couldn’t do anything to stop what I was experiencing.  She needed to step back, give herself permission to take breaks and feel the sweet(and tough) moments of her own life, and she eventually found a way to give me support in the water without my circumstances drowning us both.

The last few years I’ve been trying to develop a tradition of Lent in my life.  A period of searching my heart, understanding the bottomless nature of my sin and how I participated in the pain heaped on Jesus that long ago friday(and I don’t just mean the nails, but the pain of the sin itself).  But none of the carefully thought out practices I’ve found in my google search have made a connection to my heart. Instead, the infiltration of pain from 3 people in my life has shown me a lot more than easter traditions.  I think about a recent moment when my breaths labored to be released and all the goodness around me seemed dim, reduced.  The pain of the three people I cared about cloaked everything in my life.  Three people, and I could barely tolerate it.

Then there is Jesus.

I found myself reading a story this week that I’ve read over and over again for 9 years to my children, but this time it sounded different.

“Papa?” Jesus cried, frantically searching the sky.  ”Papa? Where are you? Don’t leave me!”

And for the first time-and the last-when he spoke, nothing happened.  Just a horrible, endless silence.  God didn’t answer.  He turned away from his Boy.

Even though it was midday, a dreadful darkness covered the face of the world.  …The earth trembled and quaked. The great mountains shook…Until it seemed that the whole world would break.  That creation itself would tear apart.

The full force of the storm of God’s fierce anger at sin was coming down.  On his own Son.  Instead of his people.  It was the only way God could destroy sin, and not destroy his children whose hearts were filled with sin.

Then Jesus shouted, “It is finished!”

“Father!” Jesus cried.  ”I give you my life.” And with a great sigh he let himself die.

“Mommy, I didn’t know that all of the sin went on Jesus, I thought it just vanished.”

Yes, all of it.  Not from three people, or fifty, or twenty thousand, but a number that might as well be the sum of all the sands on the shore for what I’m able to comprehend of it.  And Jesus did nothing to prevent or limit the pain.  And neither did his Father.

Thanks you, Jesus, that you were broken for me, and thank you for breaking me to know you.