Nonfiction – Page 13 – The Word Worker

As anyone who follows my blog knows, I have been silent for several weeks. This was not by choice, but by circumstance. I want to try to explain why because I hope to encourage others to embrace who they are in whatever situation they may find themselves.

Life is not one size fits all. Every person is an individual with unique characteristics and needs. When individuals are combined into families, the combination of however many individuals are involved becomes a new and unique personality. That sounds complicated enough, but as individuals within the family grow and change, the family personality grows and changes. Puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly one day fit differently the next.

Our family has an extra unique personality. For starters, there are eight of us. Consider the standard occupancy limits on things like vehicles or hotel rooms if you want to grasp how unique that is. In addition, we homeschool all six of our children and have from the beginning; our days are full of living books, hours outside, family projects, and conversation. To add another difference from “normal,” my husband is a preacher, so is present and involved in most daily life instead of only nights and weekends. And on top of all of it, as a family we manage extreme personalities, emotional disorders, and behavioral disorders.

We’ve been growing this family personality for twelve years (longer counting the time my husband and I dated), but it has been four years since the last addition. Until this year. This year God blessed us with our sixth child, a precious boy who needed a family. It was unplanned and unexpected, so the adjustment period has been consuming. We went from officially homeschooling three last year to officially five plus a preschooler thus year. We went from knowing every person in the house intimately to learning how a whole new individual fit into our family personality. Adjusting to the new family personality that individual helped create.

In short, our life has never been “normal,” and the last few months made us even less so. For many, this fact makes us unappealing, even crazy. For others, it makes us a novelty. The truth is that not being normal makes us awesomely normal. There is no such thing as normal; it’s an imaginary construct that we as individuals and families constantly stress ourselves out trying to achieve or at least pretend we have. In our stress and our pretense, we miss out on the beauty and variety of “not normal.” We miss out on everything different individuals have to offer each other.

Because we are not normal, I had to take a break from this aspect of myself as an individual. I had to focus on adding new elements to our family personality. I had to find our new normal. It won’t be the last time our life brings change. It won’t be the last time I have to step back and learn something new. It won’t be the last time I get to experience the beauty of “not normal.”

In the book of Mark we read about a man who was deathly ill, plagued with leprosy. This man had nothing left to lose, and threw himself at Jesus feet with a poignant faith born of desperate need. “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

What if Jesus had practiced social distancing? It was the law, after all. The law He had given, in fact. Those who were sick with leprosy (a death sentence at the time and highly contagious) were unclean and anyone who came in contact with them became unclean. Lepers were cast out of society to die a slow, painful, lonely, poverty-stricken death.

What if when the leper fell on his face before Jesus and begged for healing, Jesus had stepped away to a safe distance? What if He had covered his face? What if He had demanded the leper follow the law to be examined by a priest and ritually cleansed before coming into His presence? What if He had ordered every other person nearby to declare themselves unclean from contact with the leper and be ritually cleansed by a priest before allowing them to interact with others, even their own families? What if He didn’t reach out and touch the leper with His own hand, didn’t look into his eyes and say, “I am willing?”

What if the law He had given was not about physical sickness at all? What if it was an object lesson about the importance of separating ourselves from the attitudes and behaviors of those who do not acknowledge God? What if it was about the corruption of a fearful and unbelieving heart? What if it was a reminder to look to Him for heart healing? What if God’s people got it wrong?

What if Jesus had stayed in Heaven? What if He kept His distance from all the corruption of men? What if He didn’t show His face on Earth so that men could know Him? What if He avoided the diseased and the outcasts to appease the misguided and self-absorbed people and to escape their constant verbal abuse? What if He didn’t speak about the depth and the wonder of His covenant, of the Kingdom which is not of this world, and fulfilled the Satan-driven desire of mankind for a perfect and safe physical life? What if He avoided the anger and rejection that tortured His body and broke His heart, that nailed His physical body to a cross and lifted His love so high that no one could avoid seeing it?

What if He didn’t come to be safe or comfortable or admired? What if being saved is not about being safe? What if following His example means I will look different, that I will never be accepted, that I will face misunderstanding and abuse at the hands of other humans? What if I stand beneath His cross, facing the world maskless, fearless, limitless, reaching out to hold the hands of the hopeless and lift them out of the pit?

What if?