by Christie Purifoy | Dec 1, 2013 | Advent, prayer, Uncategorized
A prayer for this first Sunday of Advent.
Because we have arrived at a beginning, and we stand before an open door.
***
“Lord, help me now to unclutter my life, to organize myself in the direction of simplicity. Lord, teach me to listen to my heart; teach me to welcome change, instead of fearing it. Lord, I give you these stirrings inside me. I give you my discontent. I give you my restlessness. I give you my doubt. I give you my despair. I give you all the longings I hold inside. Help me to listen to these signs of change, of growth; help me to listen seriously and follow where they lead through the breathtaking empty space of an open door.”
– from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals
***
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by Christie Purifoy | Sep 20, 2013 | children, Family, Grateful, Jesus, motherhood, prayer, Stories, Uncategorized
If this room were hanging on the wall of a museum, like a painting, I would call it “After the Celebration.”
The fabric birthday banner is draped over a dining room chair (having fallen, gracefully, from the top of the china cabinet). A pile of gift bags, in shades of pink and purple, is stacked on the floor waiting for a return trip to the third-floor closet. I think there may still be a few candles, slick with the crumbs of a cinnamon-apple cake, hiding beneath the birthday cards lined up across the tabletop.
I am not yet ready to sweep away the remains of this past year or the party with which we ended it. I am following the trail of these crumbs trying to piece together the story of my baby girl’s first year.
I suppose it is more my story than hers. One day she will look at photos from this day and feel utterly disconnected from the beautiful baby in the pink dress. If I can discover the story, the meaning that lurks in a messy pile of remembered odds and ends, I can pass it on to her.
A better gift, I think, than any doll or keepsake book or slice of cake.
***
I don’t have what it takes (and what does it take? Time? Skill? Dedication?) to pray long or complicated prayers for my children. Instead, I ask for a verse, I write it on an index card, and I pray it just whenever I find myself sitting at my desk.
All year my prayer for this child (my second daughter, my last of four babies) has been less of a prayer and more of a long exhalation of gratitude. I have prayed this: “A longing fulfilled is sweet to the soul” (Proverbs 13:19a).
However, this story doesn’t begin with longing. It begins with my determination not to ask or desire. It begins with a hole in my heart where longing should have been.
***
After the birth of our third, I gave away the baby things. I packed clothes in boxes and mailed them off. I left books at the used-book store. I sold the pricy breast pump on consignment.
This made perfect sense. Having finally earned my PhD, I was embarking on a career that left little space for more babies. I would soon round the corner of my late 30s. But beneath the reasonableness was something much darker: fear.
I had three children, but I had never conceived without doctor visits, invasive tests, medications. Even the surprise of my third pregnancy arrived only after months of tearful prayers.
I had always assumed we’d have another daughter. I sometimes remembered the tiny pink things I had packed away years before, but when I tried to imagine praying for another baby, waiting for another baby, I couldn’t.
Whatever store of desire had fueled my prayers for three children I had used it all up. I was empty, so I gave away every last object that might say hope.
***
Here, then, is the beginning of the story.
It is the quiet, twilit hour of bedtime. I am sitting at the end of my daughter’s turquoise bedspread. Her face is lost in shadow, but I can hear her voice clearly: “I want a sister.”
I have heard these same words before. I have heard them many times. I think it is exasperation that prompts my reply, but I wonder now if it was my own desperation?
I tell her, “I can’t give you a sister. Only Jesus gives babies. If you want a sister, you have to ask him.”
You might think this memory became meaningful only in hindsight. But that is not the truth. I knew something had happened as soon as the words left my mouth. It felt as if a boulder had shifted. Where there had been nothing within me but irritation there was something new.
Was it desire? Was it hope? I’m not sure I can name it, but it felt like this: pain.
My daughter prayed, and here is where hindsight does color this memory. Looking back, I really cannot say whether it was her prayer being offered or my own.
“I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him.”
I Samuel 1:27
*first photo by Kelli Campbell, second photo by Christie Purifoy
by Christie Purifoy | Sep 5, 2013 | children, Family, God, God's Love, grief, motherhood, prayer, Uncategorized
Two years ago, I wrote a few words for my son. They added up to something that wasn’t quite a story. I think they were a prayer. Also, a confession.
I meant them for all of my children, but it was this boy who drew them out of me.
The love we have for others – but especially for the weaker ones, like our children – is often laced with fear. That is our lot in this world: to love and to know that loving makes us vulnerable. Vulnerable to loss. To pain. To worry.
Some of our loves are laced with more fear than others. My love for this boy is like that.
However, in loving him, I have seen something strange but beautiful, something hard but good: the worst moments are the ones that wash my love clean of all the fear.
Somehow it takes having our worst fears realized, to know that our worst fears are not worth fearing. Because, ultimately, we are safe. We are loved. We are held.
Recently, my son began a new school year at a new school. He was nervous. I was nervous for him. Despite my prayers, despite my hopes, his first day went about as badly as a first day could go. Possibly, it was even worse than that. At the end of this terrible, no-good, very bad day, I remembered what I had shared two years ago. And I knew this: our worst days may be the answers to our best prayers.
(the following is edited from the archives and was originally titled The Only Thing I Pray My Children Grow Up to Know)
The second-born, my oldest boy, starts kindergarten in just a few weeks. Not only that, but he will ride the bus (which is, possibly, a bigger deal for both of us even than kindergarten itself).
I’ve been a mother long enough to know that the days are long but the years are short. These summer days drag (how to fill the time between dinner and bed?), but I will wake up tomorrow and watch my son graduate from high school. I know this, and it has prompted me to wonder: what do I want this boy to grow up to do? To know? To be?
Like most parents in these enlightened days, I say, “I only want him to be happy. Whatever makes him happy. If that means becoming a doctor, great. If it’s an auto mechanic, fine by me.” Unlike most parents, I suspect, I really do mean it.
I’ve spent enough time around highly-educated Ivy-leaguers to know that the things which spell success in our culture (straight A’s! a University of Chicago degree!) are not necessarily markers of either success or happiness.
Not only that, but I know that there is some kind of Murphy’s law of parenting: whatever I plan for my child, the opposite will happen. My father gave me only this bit of advice as I prepared for college: “Study anything you want, but be practical. Don’t major in English or History.” I was never a rebellious child, but Murphy’s law kicked in and, by the end of college, I was graduating with a double major in English and History.
What then do I want for my boy? For his big sister? His little brother?
Only this: to know deep down in their heart of hearts God loves them. Truly, that is all.
Unfortunately, there is such a big chasm between head knowledge and heart knowledge, between assenting to an idea or concept and feeling the truth of it deep inside. I tell them over and over: you are loved. By me. By others. But, most importantly, you are loved by the Love who created everything beautiful and that Love is vaster and more intimate than you may ever know.
I heard that too as a child. I sang these words in so many Sunday school classes: “Jesus loves me, this I know.” But I didn’t know. I nodded my head and agreed, but I didn’t really know.
Praying that my children know God’s love is sometimes difficult. It is as if I am praying that they suffer. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is some other way in which this knowledge can travel from head to heart, but the enormity of God’s personal love was only revealed to me in some very dark places.
Looked at another way, I am not praying they suffer. I am praying they be comforted.
And this is what I want for my babies? Yes, this is what I want for them: that, like Hagar, they will one day say, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”
This is my prayer:
“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19).
I’m afraid that it will hurt, but I promise you: it is worth every tear.
“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42: 5)
by Christie Purifoy | Mar 6, 2013 | Faith, God, God's promises, prayer, Scripture, Uncategorized, Waiting
There were years when a little flag would start waving in my head any time I heard someone say God told me to do this or God told me to do that.
A red flag.
It sounded too much like crazy-talk. I’d never heard God’s voice, so what makes you sure? What makes you special?
//
//
Now I am that crazy person.
I’m the one setting eyes to roll with my casual God told us this and God gave us a dream, and, the boldest of all, God promised …
That’s the big one, isn’t it? Talk of promises is crazy and dangerous all at once. To talk about promises is to set oneself up as special and risk looking like a fool.
I am that fool.
//
This is how I got here: desperation. It was the not having, the hurting, the longing, and the pain.
It was that one time I threw my Bible against the wall. I could see the pages bent and the cover smashed, but I could also see words that were so comforting, so particular, I was tempted to make Bible-throwing a regular spiritual discipline.
It was that time I screamed at heaven, until I turned the corner around the clump of trees and saw an optical-illusion moon so enormous and fiery I couldn’t tell what it was. But I heard it. It said, “I’m here. You’ve been heard.”
Sometimes, it wasn’t pain so much as utter emptiness. When there are no friends and no activities, when the phone never rings and you’ve given up the job you pursued for ten years, small things begin to sound very loud.
Like the verse that pastor shared from the front. I was one of a crowd, but those words were an arrow and I was the mark.
Like the song that came over the speakers just as I asked my question aloud. That song with the answer.
Or, all those times (so many times) when all I could do was open my Bible on my lap.
And that’s all it took. Because there it was. Right there.
//
I’m wary of prescriptions, of three-step plans. But if you want to hear the voice of God (and think very, very carefully whether or not you do), then this is what I suggest:
Lean in to the pain.
Listen to the silence.
Let the emptiness be just what it is.
And wait.
by Christie Purifoy | Jan 9, 2013 | Family, Jesus, motherhood, prayer, Uncategorized
I sometimes wonder why God gave me boys.
Recently, my oldest son had to wear a team sports jersey for “spirit day” at his elementary school. I’m sure whoever came up with this idea imagined it to be fairly inclusive. Who doesn’t have at least one shirt for some kind of team playing just any kind of sport?
Well, our family, actually.
Jonathan and I would rather watch Masterpiece Mystery on PBS than college football, so if we raise a sports fan it will be despite ourselves.
The more children I have, and the bigger and more “boyish” my boys become, the more helpless and inadequate I feel as a mother. You might expect it to work the other way. Don’t I have years of experience tucked under my belt? This is true. However, if you look closely you’ll find years of doubt, years of second-guesses for every parenting decision I’ve made, and many spectacular failures. Nine years after becoming a mother, I am less confident than ever.
I’ve decided this is a good thing. It is good because I am praying like never before. I am praying daily and in desperate bursts. I am praying spontaneously, and I am praying systematically, bowing my head over scribbled prayer cards.
Lord, hear my prayers.
I’m praying, yes, but I’ve been struggling to pray for these boys. Who are they made to be? Who do I hope they will be?
I think a lot of mothers pray for “leaders.” They pray their sons grow up to be leaders in their families, in their churches, in their communities.
I try praying this, and the word leader feels like a pebble in my mouth. Whose word is this, anyway? Where did it come from?
Is this the right word for the boy who prefers the edge of the crowd to its center? The gentle boy who loves his baby sister so much he’ll spend thirty minutes trying to make her laugh? The compassionate boy with the quiet voice who would rather play alone at recess than roughhouse with the other six-year-olds?
I try out the word servant-leader. I hear a lot about that one, too. But there’s the pebble again, and I ask myself, “What’s wrong with just servant?”
In my mind, I see Jesus. He is kneeling in the dust of the floor washing feet. I may be uncomfortable with what counts as masculine in our culture, but even I find it difficult to pray this kneeling-in-the-dirt way of life for my boys.
But my son is teaching me how to pray for him.
Here he is beside me. We are bathing his baby sister. I watch as he takes the washcloth and leans across the edge of the tub. Slowly and carefully, he wipes between each little toe.
Lord, hear my prayers.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 31, 2012 | Amish, motherhood, peace, Pennsylvania, prayer, Uncategorized
On the Friday after Christmas we piled our over-stimulated, over-sugared children into the car and drove. We were chasing peace and quiet down the backroads, and we found it.
The three-year-old had fallen asleep and the big kids in the backseat had stopped pinching each other when we drove straight into a flock of children.
Startled, I noticed a one-room Amish school on the top of the hill to our right. The schoolday had just ended.
Slowly our car parted a sea of boys in straw hats. Next, we inched our way past a dozen little girls circling the tall figure of their teacher.
One tiny girl with a heart-shaped face tilted her black bonnet to flash a smile through my window. She gave a little jump and waved both hands in greeting. The wind caught her cloak, and I saw a flash of its royal blue lining.
She looked so much like a little bird.
Our car moved on, but I kept thinking how vulnerable they seemed. All those small children flitting like birds on the edge of the road.
I turned back to look again at my own little birds, two of them sleeping, two of them staring outside at the passing farms.
So vulnerable.
I’m not sure I would have given it much more thought, but Sandy Hook is branded on our hearts, and I can’t stop seeing the flashing blue of that little girl’s wings.
How do we keep them safe?
It wasn’t that long ago evil invaded a classroom of Amish children (did those girls also skip and smile like little birds?).
Some say our schools need guards with guns. I have no rational argument to make against that proposal. All I know is how much it hurts me even to imagine it. I love our public schools, but I don’t think I will ever send my children out to classrooms guarded with guns.
I want my children to live unafraid, but I don’t want them to find that courage in a gun.
When I imagine that Amish schoolhouse – when I see it again silhouetted against a blue sky at the very top of a high hill – I see forgiveness. I see love.
I see children who may not be safe but who are free. Free from fear. Free to love the stranger in their midst.
I have always said I believe love is stronger than anything. Stronger than hate. Stronger than death. Stronger than whatever weapon humanity will come up with next.
I have always said what is only now being tested.
Because now I send my children out into the world with only the protection of an old, old prayer.
Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
