Getting Rid of Go-go

As a young girl, I never could get into the whole baby doll scene, changing diapers, fake bottle-feeding, ventriloquist burping, etc.  I think it’s because my dolls never responded to me.  They never spoke my name or hugged my neck. Maybe if I’d had one of those mechanical baby dolls that talk and move their heads, I could’ve immersed myself in pseudo-mommyhood with a little more abandon.  Maybe not. 

Many years ago, my daughter Hope got a mechanical dog named Go-go for Christmas.  Go-go was programmed to respond to a list of command sequences.  With just a few hours of study and a pound of batteries, you could get Go-go to do almost anything you wanted. 

Hope played with Go-go non-stop for a couple of days before the incessant, monotone barking suddenly stopped.  Both relieved and confused, I went to Hope’s room to see whether she needed more batteries. 

I found her toe-to-toe with Go-go, shoulders and pig-tails drooped.  Go-go was stuck in an eerily unnatural pose like some kind of taxidermied animal.  When Hope turned to me, I saw that her eyes were beginning to fill with tears.    

Utterly disillusioned and dejected, she whined softly, “I want her to run to me.”

“Sweetie, that response isn’t in her programming,” I explained gently.  Plus, the dog didn’t have any legs, just wheels, a fact that had apparently escaped my daughter’s attention.   

Without a word, Hope carried Go-go to her closet and tucked her away in the “for garage sale” bin.  I didn’t argue with her.  I knew how she felt.  She wanted a pet that would obey and show affection of its own volition.  She wanted to love and be loved in return.

You know, I have to laugh when I hear people talk about Christians as if we are all the same, like mindless, mass-produced talking dolls or wheelie-popping mechanical dogs. It just makes no sense.  Why would the infinitely creative Almighty waste His time making unthinking, unfeeling robots void of free will when He could enjoy the intimacy of a real and dynamic father-child relationship? 

No, God desires unsolicited affection, heart-felt devotion, and genuine worship freely given.  He wants us to run to Him.

Nothing Worse

When I was just a little girl, I asked Jesus into my heart.  I remember lying in my bed and knowing that I needed Him.  Though I don’t remember the words that I spoke or the exact date, I remember praying sincerely, asking Jesus to forgive me and to take over my life.  However, because I was so young, the years that followed are a bit of a blur to me at times.  

I know that I learned Scripture as a child and that it meant something to me, and I remember feeling the Holy Spirit’s presence just as real as I felt my parents’ hands in mine.  But then, life happened, and I had to make choices for myself.  Through trial and error, I learned that endings aren’t always happy, sin has consequences, and people aren’t always who they claim to be.  

Life is complicated.  It dulls the senses, and doubt creeps in when you can’t feel the Holy Spirit as keenly you used to.  I’ll admit that there have been times that I’ve wondered whether what I experienced as a child was real, even as I was seeing God’s hand on my life and depending on His wisdom for guidance, for my very breath. 

In those moments, I envy people who accept Jesus later in life.  To me, it seems they struggle less with doubt.  Maybe it’s because they remember what life was like before Jesus, and I don’t.   For me, it’s almost as if my life didn’t start until I became a Christian.  In one sense, I guess that’s true, but there are times that I long to feel God’s presence as I did when I was a child.  

A few days ago, my son and I were talking about the reality of Heaven and Hell, and he brought up a good point.  He said that Hell is scary for anyone to think about, but that it is even more frightening for a Christian to think about because Christians know what it is to have a personal relationship with God.  To live without Him after knowing Him intimately would be the most excruciating torture.  As I was absorbing what he’d just said, Hunter asked, “Can you imagine?”

Later that day when I was alone, I tried to imagine what it would feel like to be separated from God, not for eternity, but just for a moment, hoping for a glimpse of the imaginary line in my soul where I leave off and He begins.  Searching my heart, I tried to dull or mentally “cross out” all evidence of the Holy Spirit in my life, systematically ignoring all knowledge, peace, discernment, purpose, etc. that I knew came from Him so that I could see clearly what I would be without Him.  Frankly, what was left was pitiful and sad. 

For the first time, really, I knew the depth of the void the Holy Spirit’s absence would leave in my heart.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was completely bereft, as if my husband or one of my children had died.  Pain squeezed my chest and prickly heat stung my cheeks as I forced myself to hold the thought.  When I finally let it go, relief washed over me like warm bath water.  

This little exercise might seem silly to some, but those who were saved at a young age and struggle with doubt might understand.  The truth is that it brought me a lot of peace.  The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit will let us know whether we are saved (1 John 3:24), and my imagining his leaving confirmed for me His presence.  It helped me to see His shape, in a way, and understand a little better the change He has made in my life.  I realize now that, deep down, I have known all along that I was saved, even when the enemy was busy tinkering with my mind.  I’ve known it as surely as I know that I am a mother. 

My relationship with God is as real as my relationship with my children.  I think it’s the out-of-sight factor that trips me up sometimes—that, my sin, the lies of the enemy, and the static that life creates—but when I turn to my brother and friend Jesus for companionship and encouragement, when I run into the arms of my Heavenly Father for comfort and strength, when I turn to the Holy Spirit for direction and discernment, I know exactly to whom I am turning, just as I could easily pick my children out of a crowd blind-folded.  I know their shapes.  I recognize their voices.  We have history and connect on a heart level, and I know how it feels to be near them. 

Because I know God like that, I can put doubt to rest for good.  Just as He promised, He is with me.  I must say, after my little experiment, that I am relieved beyond words to know that I’ll never have to be separated from Him.  Those who don’t know Him may argue, but I know there’s nothing worse. 

Matching Steps

Warm in the glow of a stained glass window, a communion cracker in my hand, I join the congregation in singing an old, familiar hymn and cast my cares on Jesus for the one-hundredth time this week.  Smiling, I remember a similar Sunday morning about thirty-five years ago.  I can’t say for sure, but I think that we sang the same hymn that day.

Afterwards, hand in hand, my daddy and I made our way up the burnt orange aisles of the church that he grew up in, the church my grandmother and great-grandparents still attended, reds, oranges, and yellows from tall, kaleidoscope windows on either side playing across our faces as we left the sanctuary.  Trying to match my daddy’s steps, I doubled mine, clutching a Bible and some Sunday school artwork to my chest.

I was anxious to get home because I knew exactly how the rest of my day would go.  Grandmother was coming over for lunch, and my mother had a roast in the oven.  When we got home, the house would smell like butter and salt and naptime, and I would get to take my scratchy tights off.  We’d eat and talk, and my grandmother would stay for coconut pie and coffee.  She’d get a little on her front, and I would think she was cute that way.  Daddy would watch football for a while in dress socks, and, if I timed it right, I could snuggle in with him just before he fell asleep and listen to his heartbeat until I fell asleep, too. 

There was a certain predictability about my childhood that I found very comforting both as a child living it and now as an adult remembering it, not just in the schedule that we followed or the company that we kept, but in the fact that my parents ordered their lives and the decisions that they made according to their faith.  While they might have surprised me once in a while, I don’t remember there ever being any unhappy surprises, nothing that would tilt our home off-center, so to speak.  That’s because they made a decision early in their marriage to build their home on the solid rock of Jesus Christ and the truth of God’s Word.

They didn’t, as I see some Christian parents doing these days, spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not they were being given the chance to exercise their freedom in Christ, distracting friends and family members with the “permissible,” but not so “beneficial,” choices that they were making.  Instead, they ran toward Jesus, leaving others to quibble about where the line between “do” and “don’t” might be for them.  If there was ever a question whether they should or shouldn’t do something, they didn’t, and that made me feel safe.

As I grew up and became an adult, it did even more for me.  Just as the early Christians had Paul’s example to follow when first learning how to walk with Jesus, I had the example of my parents.  Now, I’m not saying they were perfect parents or that their marriage was perfect.  That would be a lie.  They made mistakes, just as any human trying to live a divine life will, but their hearts never left their first love.  And they never gave up.

Likewise, I was an imperfect child and an even more imperfect teenager, making more mistakes born of curiosity about how “the other half” lived than anything else.  However, God's Word tells us that if you train up a child in the way he should go, when he is old, he will not depart from it.  It doesn’t say that he will never stray, just that at some point, he will return to stay.  That was certainly true of my life, and it was much easier for me to return and stay than it was for those whose parents had claimed devotion to Jesus and then lived something else at home.  They still had to determine what was true and discern right from wrong for themselves before they were able to find rest.   All I had to do was match my parents' steps.