safe shelter
Think about the places where you feel like you belong, the book urges, just like that, plain and simple on the page, and I think of my friends, who are reading this book with me, of their faces and our seasons of meeting together on a screen, of the wildly wonderful way God has assembled us as safe shelter.
I wheel into the parking lot with Riley and Adam and their friend in the car, all of us wearing masks like bandits, like rough-and-tumble children dressing as surgeons for Halloween. As we arrive at their school, I think, this is one of those places, too. Looking in the rear view mirror, I see that Adam forgot to brush his hair, or if he did, he has since run his hand through until it stands up on the top of his head like a cresting wave. He looks like someone who rolled out of bed and decided, on a whim, to look like a rock star. He’s wearing sweatpants, with maybe a smear of something on the right thigh. I squint a little trying to see, then shake my head once and smile, because I know that Adam’s friends won’t care what he looks like, and his teachers will love him anyway.
Think about the places where you feel like you belong. And aren’t those the places where we get to be all of who we are? I feel safe in spaces where I can be valuable and weak, where I’m more than what I do well or what I do right. I think of home, where all of my flaws are exposed, and still, I’m loved.
We’re trying to teach Adam social rules he’ll never understand, because he doesn’t really belong to this world, and humans can be most cruel to those they don’t understand. But here at school, he’s safe. I roll down the windows so our waiting teachers can take temperatures and ask screening questions, and then the kids open the doors and unfold into the world. I watch Adam sling his backpack over his shoulder and saunter into the building without looking back. Of all of my kids, Adam tends to be the most afraid, maybe because he’s least able to make sense of things. He shies away from unfamiliar sounds, from anything–even cartoons—with big teeth, sometimes from tiny insects flying around his face. But here, he feels safe. Comfortably, he walks away from the car and into his day, and I drive away giving thanks that even Adam has more than one safe shelter.
Describe your perfect self, the book also says. I reflect on this, turning the corner away from school to drive home, taking in the swaying blooms that lean over the shady street. I hadn’t realized it before, but the two prompts really lead me in the same direction. I think about how a Greek word often translated perfect in New Testament scripture means, “complete in all its parts,” which suggests that maybe more than to a present life without brokenness or flaws, I am called to integrity and wholeness that reflects the integrity and compassion of the triune God. Adam is the kid who messes up his hair with his always moving hands, who loves baggy sweatpants and forgets to use his napkin. He is also beautifully tender, especially in worship; funny, loving, kind, and sensitive. He is authentically all of those things. He accepts those things in himself; he doesn’t try to hide or pretend. For all of Adam’s difficulty “fitting in”, he suffers no self-reproach. In fact, “fitting in” isn’t really Adam’s goal. He will learn our social conventions as best he can, but he will never try to be anything other than his whole and honest self.
In this, Adam naturally possesses maturity I am only just developing. I have only just begun to appreciate that my whole and complete self, rather than attaining some unrealistic air-brushed quality, includes the softness about my middle and the silver hairs on my head and the reality of all of my many flaws. It’s only just becoming my habit, when considering where I feel like I belong and where I most definitely don’t fit in (Do I need to?), to actively and intentionally remember who I belong to.
In my unwillingness to accept and acknowledge all of who I am, I have not always been safe shelter for me. I have assessed my own worth based on what I do well and what I do right, and in so doing, have denied the gospel. I have not allowed myself to be valuable and weak. I have seen my vulnerabilities and inadequacies exposed, and I have not responded with gentleness or love. I have found belonging least of all beneath my own scrutiny. Maybe this, more than anything I’ve felt or received from or blamed on others, accounts for many of my own feelings of alienation.
And how, I wonder now, easing away from streets canopied with trees and onto the interstate, does all that make me somehow more adept than my son, who accepts himself—flaws and all–and all the rest of us too? Oh that I might learn from Adam, and in wholly accepting myself, become also safe shelter for others.
