my pink toes

[This is an essay I wrote a couple years ago. My friend Jenny's post reminded me of the importance of the hard work of repair. I realized I wrote this before I started blogging, so I'm posting it now. It's one of my favorites.]

All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them.
1 Corinthians 5:18-20 (Msg)

Scarred for life. It’s a phrase we toss around casually, jokingly. “Hey, don’t put tape on the cat – she’ll be scarred for life!” It’s also a phrase that lurks around the corners of a parent’s mind, at least on mine. When I lose my patience and snap at my 4 year-old for putting his socks in the peanut butter again, I fear it. “Oh, I hope he won’t be scarred for life”. Will he remember me as an impatient harpy? Or as the loving mother that I try to be? I worry.

My counselor assures me that I don’t need to worry that I’m scarring Henry for life. She tells me that it’s all about repair. When we mess up in a relationship, it’s not the messing up itself that causes pain - it’s whether or not there is repair. Apologizing, listening, owning our mistakes, seeking to deepen the relationship even though it is painful – that is repair.

On a visit to the Science Center when Henry was two, I was overstimulated by all the zinging and whistling and the raucous zeal of small children. I was hungry and tired and could feel the tightening band of a tension headache wrapping around my skull. Finally, it was naptime – time to head home. I needed to go to the bathroom before I navigated the long walk back to the car and the drive back to Redmond.

While in the stall with me, Henry kept playing with a small trash receptacle. Open, closed. “Please don’t, Honey”, I said. Open, closed. “No!” I said. Open, closed. “Dirty!” I shouted. Open, closed. Open, closed. “Stop it!” I yelled. He continued to play. I snapped. I grabbed his hand and slapped it. Hard. I was so tired and frustrated and part of me wanted to hurt him as badly as I was hurting. He took his hand back, stared at it and began to cry. I washed my hands, still fuming, but now feeling empty and depleted. I buckled him in his stroller, still whimpering, and marched toward the exit. Once out of the building, the fresh air hit me like a blast. My emotions bubbled up and I started weeping. I had hit my child. Hard. On purpose. Because I was angry. I had done what I had vowed never to do.

When we got to the car, I lifted Henry out of the stroller and cradled him to my tear-covered face. “I am so sorry, Henry”, I told him. “Mommy never ever should have hurt your hand. It was very wrong and I shouldn’t have done it. I’m very very sorry.” He squirmed out of my arms and sulked in the carseat. It was a long ride home.

Later that day, Henry crawled up into my empty lap, looked into my sad eyes, and patted my head. “Mommy very sorry hurt-a-hand. Mommy very sorry.” He patted me again and snuggled in to my chest. Tears flowed down my face as we sat together. Repair.

As long as we are humans in relationship, we will mess up. Being human is messy, messy business. The hard, worthwhile work is in repair. Not in “fixing everything” or “trying to be perfect all the time”, but in repairing. It takes time and effort and can be very painful at first. I know some people who will actually end a relationship because they don’t want to work on the repair - it’s easier for them to move on than to apologize, listen to the pain they’ve caused, and work toward trust and understanding. I have been guilty of ignoring pain in a relationship, pretending that it wasn’t there – my unwillingness to engage in repair slowly rotted these relationships from the inside out.

Just as often as I mess up my relationship with my son, I mess up my relationship with God. Thankfully, God knows how messy we are – he created us! His plan for confession and forgiveness are a picture of divine repair. We do it over and over again, creating a pattern of repair, of deepening relationship. It is a model we can use in our human relationships as well.

Reconciliation and repair - it’s a good pattern to get into. It takes a lot of hard, deliberate work, but it is worth it. I’m convinced that only through the hard work of repair can relationships fully deepen and grow into what God wants them to be – a slice of our relationship with Him. None of us has to be scarred for life except Jesus.