"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Proverbs 4:23
"...but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up into eternal life." John 4:14
"If anyone is thirsty, let him come and drink... streams of living water will flow from within him." John 7:37&38
Our first son turned 9 this week. Each day of parenting is full of reflections on past impacts to make positive changes for the future, and birthdays concentrate all those feelings and thoughts exponentially. That’s really true of being a person, regardless of whether one is a parent or not. We’re set in a cycle of time — rapid or deep breaths and heartbeats in orbiting hours, days, seasons, years. How I used to look at my maturation process in time became dangerous for me, until I accepted something new about my unchanging Christ, something I’d always heard but never accepted because I'd frosted my heart with mean things I'd believed.
The Bible is a beautiful story about God’s love for people, and it’s a narrative that includes incomprehensibly complex notions of time and culture that have been further complicated by people’s grasping, insecure demands. I accept that my God is absolutely good and constant. I reject that my (or anyone's) little pinprick of logic, emotion, or any combination of the two can possibly have all the answers for a perfect character. As a kid, learning about existence, I interpreted flowing, transforming truths of life as concrete, brittle facts. Eden was God filling up a perfect bath, setting Baby in it, and Baby better keep that bath water pure or we’re going to have to toss out Baby with the nasty bath water. Decline and annihilation.
All my life I have heard sermons and conversations about how “no person is perfect,” “none is righteous,” “we all need Jesus to save us from our sins” — all very true. But underneath all those words, all the interactions, were unforgiving expectations of perfection and a rejection of the individual suffering process through Christ’s long-suffering power. My life became dirty and useless the first time I soiled the bath water with envy, lust, or bitterness. The first time I disappointed anyone in charge of me was the end of my worth. And I sat in it, begging Jesus to help me not hate myself, because what other choice was there in that scarce supply of goodness? I was about to toss Nicoll out with the shamefully filthy bath water.
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| Without surrendering to the flow of Jesus's forgiving work, my heart is a cesspool. Endless praises to Him for this not being my reality. |
As a new wife, I viewed our marriage as this bath water I had to keep clean. As a new mom, I viewed our child’s wellbeing as this bath water I had to keep clean. As a friend, I still don’t have a lot of comfortable friendships because there’s no way to do life without some disagreements or judgments that feel uncomfortable. So would I rather sit, isolated and paralyzed, in this falsely clean water, only to despair when I realize all my best intentions muddied it up anyway? And although I’ve had heartache and struggle, I come from a goody-two-shoes culture of privilege. What hope could there be for people who’ve been significantly harmed or were born into bad situations? The gigantic global hopelessness became suffocating.
The simple, easy-to-take-for-granted cliche “Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water” has come to mean so much to me, a recovering neurotic, especially in light of Jesus’s identity as Living Water. He promises that He will flow from me, from any of us. Instead of a scarce supply in a limited tub, His righteousness is an Abundant Flow from a Everlasting Source out of my control. Nothing is as either-or/black-white/worthy-
When depression and anxiety catch me in a riptide, when I fight with everything I have to be anyone but me, I practice surrendering to my humanity ... or I'll lose to my weakness in the forces out of my control.
I will never have all the answers, but I can find solutions.
I will make mistakes, even willfully harm myself or others by selfishness, but I can face them and apply positive changes.
I cannot control people’s perceptions of my best-laid plans, but I can learn how to please my Audience of One.
My love may go misunderstood, but I’ll do it anyway.
I may continue to find out each decade what an ignorant jerk I was “back then,” but I’ll rejoice in growth.
In the icky failures, I can also accept the clean realities: the responses of strength and hope because of mercy and grace in love. They may have been small, they may have been floating alongside fear, others may have mocked them; but I let Jesus hold them close to my wellspring of life for His glory and work, while the imperfections slide by into wherever He can refine them through this flow of Living Water.
When my husband and I fight, we find mutually constructive compromises that make our team stronger for the next obstacle.
When we yell at our kids, we show them that everyone loses control — and can gain it back, apologize, and move forward together.
When our kids make mistakes, we get to share our weaknesses and how God finds strength and weaves grace into them when we engage with His loving purposes.
When someone in our community disapproves, we get to find common ground and either support each other on separate paths and/or join together where possible.
When we learn concepts that take us on a different trail than our heritage, we get to keep what is good and let go of what is bad to blaze a healthier future.
We get to practice and learn.
And practice some more and learn some more.
It never has to be all or nothing nor now or never—because Jesus is a river of peace and healing, who lasts eternally. He isn’t as urgent or impatient as we are because His vision is eternal, not political or temporal. He is an ever-patient and kind caregiver, no matter how late bath time is after an exhausting day or how many splashes make a mess all over the bathroom.
Peace-that-passes-understanding like a river.
The cleansing flow.
Wellspring of daily life.
Never give up. Love never gives up. Don’t throw out the good things you have because of the bad things. Discover every tiny treasure inside and value it as God’s work that He *will* complete, no matter who else appreciates it or not.
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