aggravation
Aggravation is Riley’s favorite game, but not for the reasons you might expect. She plays by a few simple rules, and Sunday, God wrote them on our hearts:
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It’s really important that we play all together.
When Kevin played Aggravation years ago, on this very same board, with his younger brother and his grandparents, he had all those older sibling this-is-my-chance-to-openly-irritate-my-brother-and-it-actually-be-okay reasons for loving this game. If you’ve never played Aggravation, it’s a lot like Sorry!, just without all the slides. You move four marbles (instead of six plastic bell-shaped pawns) around a board that’s shaped more like a Celtic cross than a square, and just when you think you’re about to sail into home base, some aggravating person always seems to come along and knock you right back where you started. This morning, as I was asking Kevin about the memories soaked up into the yellowing cardboard box we tote back and forth from the closet, he said, “I remember that I loved sending Brian home, and that my grandmother always laughed a lot when the aggravating happened—to anyone. Grandma spent most of her time in the kitchen making everything from scratch, but usually we played Aggravation all together.”
This, partly, is why Riley loves the game. She knows the value of time spent all together. She’s not supposed to care that much about other people. All the stereotypes about autism indicate that the opposite should be true, that the disability should leave her more inept at emotional bonds. But somehow, like a little aerodynamically challenged bee whizzing past the clouds, she loves anyway. Something about all of us at the table with the board in the center just fills her up and makes her giddy. So, on Sunday, after a nap and brewed coffee, we pulled out Aggravation. Called away from his math, Adam protested, “No game today,” and the girls bantered back and forth about marble colors. Kevin and I stirred cream into our coffee, continuing a never-ending conversation. We are both intoxicated with the notion of actually following Christ, not just admiring or simply believing in Him. We talk of our deep love for the church, of our identity together as His hands and feet, of study and ideas and the Spirit. Imperfectly, struggling, we talk of how we want to meet needs, bind up wounds, and run to those who don’t know. We know that these are the evidences of His breath replacing our own, and we reach for them. My man and I seek, and one of the greatest gifts I know is that we do it together.
Riley argues with Adam, her voice breaking into our conversation. “Now Adam, it’s time to play the game. We’re going to play Aggravation together now. Ipod later.” She insists. She’s right. The game would not be as fun played any other way.
Riley’s favorite way will always be all together. In the early days, when Riley first made her own escape from isolation, she stopped lining up her toys and began to line up the people she loved. She’d take us by the arms and move us out of one chair and into another, situating us in groups that made sense to her, placing all of us around her evenly. In much the way that Kevin sorts large family groups and re-positions them for a portrait, she seemed intensely focused on arranging us until things looked just right. Things we were holding—books, coffee mugs, babies—had to be put down. She’d get a little aggravated when certain smaller siblings moved out of place. But always, when she got us positioned appropriately, she’d just stand there looking at all of us, pure delight dancing all over her face. We were together, right where she wanted us to be, and we were hers.
It occurred to me, as we started the game, listening to her talking to Adam, that the church would be better if we were all a bit more compulsive about all together, if the game truly were never quite the same without everyone present.
It was, after all, one of the most infectious things about the early church.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved(Acts 2:42-47)
I’d be lying if I said I wanted to know how it felt to face all the things they faced in their future—persecution, jail, martyrdom. But the way they were together, that just makes me ache sometimes. It sounds as though nothing could keep them away from each other, like they knew the value of the time. Together, they loved and knew a risen Savior, and they suspected He could return to them at any moment. Gathering wasn’t a box checked. It wasn’t something they did when it was convenient, or if nothing else came up. Early believers wanted to assemble, they wanted to take care of each other, they longed to share worship. They knew the value of all together.
At church, Riley enters a room and quickly identifies the missing people. For the first fifteen minutes we’re there, she asks all of the family members she can find about the location of their missing others. The day Riley had the seizure that finally labeled her with epilepsy, a dear friend packed up our anxious Zoe and took her home for a sleepover. When Riley went to bed that night, after hours at the hospital, tears spilled from exhausted eyes. “But I just miss Zoe,” she said, looking helplessly at Zoe’s empty bed. And even when Zoe is home, Riley gets upset if her sister falls asleep before she does. At night, Riley prays that Zoe will wake up earlier than she usually does, because Riley wants everyone she loves awake when she’s awake and with her for every possible moment. Letters are written that say, “Dear Zoe, please get up. I miss you.” So, it’s enough for Riley that we sit down all together to play this game. If only all together made corporate worship enough.
2. Focus on one marble at a time.
For Riley, Aggravation is a very orderly game. Her style has always made us smile, mostly because she often wins playing this way, and she remains undaunted and untouched while the rest of us roll our eyes and ugh and squint at each other over a returned marble. For the rest of us, the board is chaos and land mines. Adam (who is always on my team), Kevin, Zoe, and I always have as many “men” as possible on the board at all times. We ponder over the board every time the die clatters on the table, counting to see if anyone else can be ousted. Meanwhile, Riley moves out one “man” at a time, even though pulling a marble out requires rolling a one or a six. She’ll roll a one and reach forward to move her current marble on the board one space, and sometimes Kevin just can’t stand it. “You know, since you rolled a one, you might want to move out another man,” he’ll say. Riley considers this and then says, “No, I just want to move this one.” Her play is slow—a snail’s pace—but systematic. Sometimes she flips the tables on Kevin and comments on his game play too. He’ll go to move out a second man, and she’ll extend a finger at the marble already on the board. “Daddy, you just need to move that one.” Riley has never been one to rush an experience.
A dear friend of mine recently sent me a quote I’ve been pondering, as one chronically busy and afflicted with hurry sickness:
We live two miles wide and an inch deep. We are totally caught up in a thousand different things, and not doing any of them well. You and I become effective by becoming SELECTIVE (Beth Moore)!
So often the thing that aggravates me the most is trying to juggle so many different things at once. I am constantly reorganizing my priorities, trying to calculate where and how to find time for all the responsibility, calling, and passion with which I’ve been gifted. I pray a lot about simplicity. Oh how I’d love to just pick out one marble and patiently focus on moving that one, and then, when it is divinely plucked from my life, wait patiently like Riley does until it’s time to draw another marble out of start and focus on it. Life doesn’t usually allow for one marble at a time, but it only allows one breath at a time, and it’s certainly easier to focus when I can narrow movement down to a few excellent things.
It’s funny to me that God would use something like a silly game to move my thoughts, but sitting there staring at the board, it’s hard not to see life in it. The game board represents so much chaotic togetherness, everyone moving in their own way, some trying to mind their own business and just make it through, others busy calculating the risk in moving too close to someone else or worrying about someone sitting right behind them. Competition moves us to set aside feelings and grace to get ahead, and our selfish ambition turns ruthlessness into intelligent strategy. In the game it’s all fun, but in life it just hurts.
3. As much as possible, avoid impeding the progress of others.
It took us many, many games of Aggravation to convince Riley that it is part of the game to return someone’s marbles to start. She’s never seemed to mind if we dislodge hers, but in the beginning she’d avoid moving ours at all cost. She’d encounter us blocking her path at just the right spot—the spot where most of us smile wickedly and toss each other off the board—and purposely miscount or stop awkwardly on the space before. She still resists having to oust someone’s marble from it’s spot. The move seems completely devoid of perverse joy for her. Naturally, the rest of us are not immune to the delicious surge of triumph felt when we get to halt an opponent’s almost certain victory over us. I’m afraid we’ve completely indoctrinated Zoe to this thrill, despite the fact that setbacks used to aggravate her so much there were tears, lessons on good sportsmanship, frustration, and speeches about not giving up. Now, she giggles every time she can unseat a marble, especially if the marble belongs to her father.
Whenever we displace Riley’s marble (it’s amazing how reluctant I feel doing that because she is so uninterested in doing it), she always smiles and self-talks her way through it. “I got knocked off. It’s just part of the game! Okay, now I have to roll a one or a six.” I’ve never seen anyone more patient about rolling a one or six. She seems undaunted no matter how many turns pass while she waits, all of her sweet little marbles still lined up in start, as though she hasn’t even begun to play. Oh, for the ability to wait on God that way.
Meanwhile, Adam sits at the end of the table next to me, holding a plastic cup I gave him so that he has to actually shake the die when it’s our turn to roll. If we let him, he’ll just flip the die off of his hand in successive, wonderful sixes. While this would allow us to win the game in about thirty seconds, it’s neither fair nor particularly conducive to a quality family experience. So, he holds the cup and stares at the clock. At this point, he’s just not mature enough to value the game as an effort in togetherness. He likes us to be together, but he’d rather not have us doing the same thing, unless of course that means we can all play angry birds or do math problems. For the duration of his participation in our Sunday game of Aggravation, Adam negotiated with me for the time when he would be finished playing. He’d pick some arbitrary time just moments away on the clock and say, “3:00 and then all finished.” At first, I responded. “No, we’re playing Aggravation until the game is over.” And then, he’d settle his blue eyes on me and repeat, “3:00 and then all finished.” So, I gave up answering. When 3:00 came and went and I was still telling him to roll the die (which he did by shaking and jerking the cup until the die popped out obnoxiously and fell on the floor), he’d pick another arbitrary time and shoot for that. “3:03 and then all finished.”
4. The most important thing, the thing worth celebrating, is everyone making it home.
Finally, I moved my last marble into home base and announced my victory. Riley cheered. Then she looked at Kevin and waited. It was his turn. In her mind, I had simply become a witness. The first witness. The game wasn’t over. I thought of the way that scripture says we are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses” as we run the race “marked out for us (Hebrews 12:1).” A long time ago, we learned that there’s no point in trying to convince Riley that the game is over when someone finishes. The ridiculous times we’ve actually insisted on this fact have left her weeping, her fingers pressed against a blotchy face. We used to think that she cried over not winning herself, which of course brought more lessons about being a good sport. But then we discovered something crucial: To Riley, it doesn’t matter if she’s first or if someone else is first, it’s simply that everyone must finish. In her mind winning is finishing. She cried because the game ended before she, too, could finish bringing her marbles home. So, we’ve learned that even the very last player must roll 900 times successively if necessary, until the very last marble hits home base. Only then can Riley be at peace and truly celebrate.
This particular game, Riley finished after me, then Zoe, then Kevin. As we put the board away, Riley said, “Yea!! We ALL won!”
And then Kevin and I had a moment. Paragraphs passed in a look.
There’s a reason why Jesus said,
I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3).
The pure hearts of children are seeded with wisdom, and their ignorance of that fact shields them from arrogance. Riley really doesn’t care who makes it in first, or best, as long as everyone makes it home. Kevin was the first to speak, and he said, “Everyone making it home. Isn’t that the thing that should really be most important?”
This life we’re living now is in some ways as silly as a game. It’s but a shadow of reality, and all it’s aggrevation must not keep us from finishing well.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4: 16-18).
It doesn’t help to move as many marbles as possible out on the board at once. Finishing well doesn’t depend on our frantic activity. And it doesn’t help to throw the die obnoxiously from the cup and negotiate with God about when and how the game will end. That kind of playing only leaves us frustrated and impatient. So much of our joy today, for this breath, must be found in all together. Oh that we might love each other well enough not to rob another soul of the victory. Because in the end, none of the details will matter as much as everyone making it home.
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children (Revelation 21).
If He’s going to wipe away every tear from our eyes, perhaps that means we’re going to weep one last time, for the ones who never finished.
