“I don’t think I would change anything, really, even though if you asked me back then I would have changed every single thing.”   Tim Burton

Last week, The Kid and I spent a day together shuttling between his appointments: first, with the physical therapist; then, with the pediatric orthopedic surgeon that the therapist recommended take a look at his spine to rule out any malformations that might be preventing him from turning left. You see, after a year of physical therapy and a surgery, TK maintains his characteristic head tilt and preference for movements to the right. (I could make a joke about his conservative-leaning mother here, and genetics, and…well, you get it.) So it happened that on a Thursday afternoon, we scarfed down lunch and jumped back in the car, napless, and drove to a new clinical setting where TK was forced upon an x-ray table twice. I carried him back into our waiting room and he collapsed on my shoulder, sucking his thumb and snoring lightly, and I leaned back in the chair that held the weight of us both. I recalled an afternoon when he was about three months old, and tensions were higher, and we fell asleep on the couch, his head on my shoulder then too. A thought crossed my mind: how many of these shoulder-naps is a mother apportioned during her tenure? And so I soaked in the moment, the limb-numbing, technology-devoid, cramp-inducing moment, and as the heat from his body translated into a sweaty patch on both of us and we awaited the surgeon’s all-clear diagnosis, I gave thanks.

Later that day: another doctor, another patient. My mammogram had come back with a dense spot and they needed a redo. I scheduled it for later this week, then got on the horn with The Sis, an NP; The SS, a prayer warrior; and The Mom, a mother. About a decade ago I had something harmless removed from the chesticle in question, and there was no small amount of relief in the likelihood that the dense spot is likely scar tissue from that. But still: moments like these remind us that we are mortal; that the world is broken; that God is good but not safe. And so I gave it to him, the one not surprised by any of it, and pushed TK uphill toward dinner and The Husband and home.

During this season of Lent, when the behavior modification component of religion kicks into high gear and self-improvement projects in the name of God abound, I find it especially easy to slip into my contrarian ways and consider a different approach. And on Twitter, I found it in Tullian Tchividjian’s feed:

Perhaps Lent is your opportunity to reorient your heart to the gospel by giving up nothing more than your own efforts of self-justification.

I realized what a transaction of faith this would be, rather than a transaction with my own will: I know, after all, when I’m eating chocolate; but how often am I aware of my own attempts to justify my self, my worth, my value? So I start with the obvious and decide not to look at my Site Stats or compare myself with other writers or look at their page views/responses/comments sections. And I trust grace to intervene in all the moments I need it, to shine a light on my unwitting self-reliance and overpower it with the verdict already rendered on my behalf.

And I remember how those attempts to justify myself, so many of them throughout my life, have really just been amputations of grace by my own hand. That Elizabeth Elliot, a widow twice-over due to tribal warfare and then cancer and yet a believer still, voices two annoyingly simple and true statements that can change a life–

Acceptance brings peace.

Whatever happens is assigned. 

And I know that some surgeries lead to dense tissue like mine, while some remove it, like TK’s; but after them all there is a hand greater than ours directing the healing–its nature, its duration, its difficulty. I know that hand works with a will that fulfills prophecy, not expectation, and that this is what Lent, what life, is about: making room for his grace in whatever manner it should appear, whatever mark it leaves upon us.

Before TH and TK came along, I never truly saw how dangerous and terrifying is this world in which we live. But I can’t stop there, because what naturally follows, what gracefully follows, is that I never saw how protected I was within this world, to still be here now. To still be with them. And so we all sit in our waiting rooms, where life really is, and let a head rest upon our shoulders while we find a place to rest our own as well.