spotlight

Shine the light bright, just there.

Tuesday night and we restlessly weave our way through the double doors, a slowly meandering people-river, a jumble of fabric and purses and shoes.  We move patiently, craning our necks, and the sound of us ebbs and flows—the voices, the walking, the slide of our clothes.  A security guard stands beside the door, his fingers wrapped around a cane, looking more imposing than compromised.  In the bigger room, we spread out and rearrange ourselves, orienting our bodies toward a semi-circle of our children.  They have been seated in chairs decorated with their names, the letters black and angular on the white paper against their backs.

I catch sight of Adam immediately, sitting almost in the center, his hands spread carefully in front of him, one on each leg.  From time to time, he looks briefly at a square of notepaper, scanning it quickly, turning it lightly in his fingers.  A schedule.  His teacher accompanied him into the holding room as they prepared, when they spoke to the children about how this would happen.  On the piece of paper, she has written,

1. Sit in Adam’s chair
2. Wait until they say Adam Henegar
3. Go stand on black square
4. Get plaque (award)
5. Go sit down
6. Wait
7. Take pictures
8. Go home

We all need a written thing to tell us what to do and when, black angular letters filling the blank space between what is and what will be, the words sketching boundaries lightly around what we cannot see or know completely.  The note slips from Adam’s fingers and drifts to the floor only a little more quickly than a leaf falling from a tree, dancing to the ground. Adam glances at his teacher, who sits in the front row, as he stretches down, reaching for his schedule.  Retrieving his list, he flicks his eyes toward her again, then spreads his fingers across his thighs, placing his hands carefully.  I suppose Adam thinks this is how it looks to wait until, the hands carefully placed and still, where they can’t make trouble by flying into impatient action.

I wave toward him, my son.  Just thinking those two words fills my mother-eyes with tears.  Adam lifts one hand, seeing me, and his lips form the words, “Hi, Mom.”  I remember the days when he wouldn’t look at me at all.

He returns his hands carefully to his thighs to wait, and I whisper something to Kevin about what a beautiful creation he is, our boy.

In a moment, the school board members amble to their chairs, grasping pens and placing cups of water in front of them, settling glasses on the nose.  A light tapping signals the return to business, and the Chair speaks into a microphone, calling us all to order.  He makes a joke, something about all the tedious but necessary duties, and then he says, “But in the midst of all that, it’s important for us to remember why we’re all here, to turn the spotlight on the students we serve.”

A woman moves to a podium at the side and explains that the students seated in the semi-circle are overcomers, though she doesn’t use exactly that word, but these instead: they have persevered through adversity and have excelled.  They have been selected by the schools they represent.  She calls their names and reads statements the schools have written about them.  They are every shape and skin color and texture.  They are restless and calm and nervous and careful.  They are excitement and energy and innocence bubbling and hardly contained in neatly combed and pressed packages.  They are rays of sunshine and always a joy and an example to their peers.  Among them sit two children with autism, one who is blind, one who has muscular impairment, one who came via a refugee camp.  Their stories stretch broad and hard and shining, and there aren’t enough words sufficient for honoring them.  I hear love and inspiration and patience and hard, hard work curving through the letters and the words as the presenter reads to us, her voice lilting.

Kevin and I look at each other with red eyes, blinking, thoughts passing silently between us.

The world was not worthy of them.  The Spirit breathes, whispering it into the heart of me, an echo, the shadow of a root planted.

When it is Adam’s turn, he walks up the superintendent to receive his plaque, more concerned that his feet rest precisely on the black square (as his schedule dictates) than that he take hold of his reward.  It makes me smile, the recognition that my son doesn’t consider himself entitled to honor or notice, that self-promotion doesn’t clutter his thinking.  He is there because we said that he would be.  He takes the plaque because his schedule says he should.  He will not know what you mean if you tell him that he is amazing.

No one overcomes knowing what to do with that word—amazing.  Most persevere for much greater reasons than our applause, and the struggle leaves them gleaming but feeling gritty, ordinary, messy and emptied.  Overcoming recreates, reshaping us into the reflection of One victorious and completely other than ourselves, and the perfection of the process shines more brightly in the humility it leaves behind.  Overcomers cannot see the way they appear to the rest of us because it’s His reflection, the glimpse of His glory (even in the those who don’t yet know) that draws our notice.

I perch myself on the edge of the chair where I can watch Adam’s face, and I see a thousand versions of him in my mind: his baby eyes searching my own in pain as nurses hold him down to secure an IV in his foot after two tries in his arms; next to me in the tilt-a-whirl mumbling oh no oh no oh no, digging his fingers into my elbow; gagging over a Thanksgiving plate full of food he is desperately afraid to taste; telling me tomatoes in the trash; sliding books slowly out from the other side of the wall to control how much he will see at once; piling stuffed animals on top of himself for pressure.  I feel myself laying on top of him in the special room at the dental office while he thrashes, strong and fierce, and they hold his mouth open with a metal vise.  I see us sitting together at the top of the stairs, having “anger management classes” after he tries and tries and tries again to beat his head against the wall.  I hear him screaming hysterically, so hopelessly and desperately angry, feeling as though he can’t possibly succeed.  I see him far away and all our reaching for him, the piles of velcro and words and pictures, the schedules, the sentences repeated.  I feel Kevin pushing himself out of bed in the middle of the night to be in Adam’s room ahead of the alarm, to walk our son through the process of managing his diabetes independently in the night.

And now.  Now Adam gets up every night on his own to test his blood sugar and comes into our room to tell us when things are not as they should be.  He requests sweet peas with his supper.  I think Thanksgiving lunch just might be his favorite meal.  He reads Riley’s gratitude journal and talks to us about what he reads.  Early Tuesday afternoon, before the weaving and the ceremony and the black square on the floor, he follows me through Target reiterating that he’s done his chores, and chores mean money (and this with the hands out flat in front of him, extended for me to fill them), and 15 money then Chris Tomlin (meaning another music CD).  He rides his bike in the cul de sac with his sisters, the wind ruffling his hair, his smile lighting up the sky.  He walks back with the dental hygenist and has his teeth cleaned without me, right out in the middle of the room with all the other kids. He lives happy, without banging his head or screaming or beating his fists against his life.  Our son has so far still to go, but he has overcome so much already.  He has pushed past so much fear and frustration and anger.  He learns and grows and stretches and changes and smiles and presses on.  And He has absolutely no idea that when I look at him, I see the reflection of my Redeemer.

Adam won’t know what you mean if you tell him that he’s amazing.

Standing there with the superintendent, Adam catches my teary-proud smile and holds it just a moment while our cameras click and freeze time still, and then he turns and walks back to his chair.  From where I sit, I can see him itching for a pen to check off #5 on his list.  The recognition hardly matters compared to the going home.

After the ceremony has ended, I watch the semi-circle disintegrate as the children peel away from their labeled chairs and rejoin their families in jubiliant knots around the room.  The world was not worthy of them (Hebrews 11:38).  Again the whisper, and I recognize that here we stand again in a great cloud of witnesses, witnesses to what God does, witnesses to hope, to promises kept, to redeeming power, even if we fail to name it as such.  I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart!  I have overcome the world (John 16:33). The world has never been worthy of its overcomers, its heroes of faith. I would hardly number us with them, nor compare our struggling to their torture.  Our troubles have, by comparison, remained “light and momentary.”   But could it be that overcoming in any shade achieves a far greater glory (2 Corinthians 4:17) than we shall ever know here?

Kevin beckons to Adam, just a tiny gesture, two fingers lifted, quickly bent twice in the air.  Our principal congratulates all of us—Adam, Kevin and me, his teacher, the girls.  We all know that our steps forward take a team, that overcoming doesn’t happen alone.  Together we travel, together we struggle, together we cry and laugh and breathe and finally go home.  Together we should celebrate what God has done.

I want to spend this life celebrating overcoming, not for our effort, but for the glory accomplished by His power.  The victory really has only and always been His.

And I want celebrate not just at the breathless, poured out end, but right through the middle—when we already feel emptied; when we tend to focus on how much is still left; when we wonder how to keep going.  That’s the time for looking hard, for reaching into the dimness and gripping strong the evidence of triumph.  Because make no mistake:  triumph is not an earthly word.  All our empty would still only signify loss, death, the husking of souls, were it not for three days and the unbound, magnificent sweep of Loving, Creating Power shaping that word and the tomb all new.  Three ugly days, and God changed empty forever.  And now empty also means alive and overcoming.  Empty means triumphant.  Empty, in so much as it shows His filling, is something to celebrate.