used
It’s funny how one word can mean such different things.
In the afternoons, Adam learns to clean the house, my hand gesturing to a trash can he’s to empty or resting over his own, showing him the right way to hold a can of Scrubbing Bubbles. Right now, we focus on three jobs—emptying trash cans, cleaning bath tubs, washing windows. I am determined: no matter what challenges he carries with him into adulthood, he will know how to take care of himself. I wish I could say he loves this quality time, this training, but he doesn’t. At first, he actually shed tears about having to help, telling me, “No empty trash cans, today. No clean a bath tub.”
I had second thoughts myself. Every mother knows that these lessons do not occur in tranquility. While I bend over Adam’s back, showing him how to wipe in circles, Riley stands in the doorway holding a slip of paper in her hand. “Mom, is that the right definition?”
I realize then that she has read something to me, probably from another room. Riley thinks everyone has supersonic hearing like she does. She is matching vocabulary words to their definitions.
I look back at her, my hand still flat against the far side of the bathtub, Adam still under me using straight strokes instead of the circular motion I am trying to show him. The thing you might not know, unless you too have a child who struggles to understand words, is that what I can explain to Zoe in fifteen seconds I have to show Adam, sometimes moving his hand myself, over and over again until he understands. “No, no, a circle,” I say to him, and then to Riley, “Umm, what’s the word again? Can you read me the word and then that definition you’re holding?”
“Okay,” Riley says, retreating quickly, happily. She goes to the kitchen and starts reading. I can’t hear. Meanwhile, Zoe’s feet have replaced hers on the carpet outside the bathroom door.
“Mom, can I have a Popsicle? I’m finished with my homework.”
I glance back at her, registering the hopeful expression on her face. Adam is moving below me, trying to get to the other side of the bathtub. “Sure,” I say, even though I’d rather she were the first kid ever not to fall in love with frozen, dyed sugar-water. The supermom voice in my head says, “You should’ve bought molds and made pureed fruit pops. Why did you buy the 100 pack of freezer pops if you wanted her to eat something healthier?”
“Adam, follow the numbers,” I remind him. Last week, when I mentioned to his teacher that I couldn’t figure out how to get Adam to keep his wash cloth flat or how to get him to see he had to wash the whole tub instead of a tiny path on the edge, she brilliantly suggested I buy bath mitts and bath tub crayons. That way, instead of holding the wash cloth, he could put his hand inside it, and I could draw x’s on the bath tub to show him where to spray the Scrubbing Bubbles and write numbers (since he loves numbers) to show him where to wipe. The day I introduced these strategies into the lesson, Adam stopped grumbling and completed the work without complaint. He even laughed when he realized he got to wipe in order, following the numbers. He understood what I wanted him to do, and that made the task at least tolerable, if not fun.
For Adam and for Riley, learning to clean the whole of any space requires visual aids. I had the same difficulty with window washing, for which his teacher suggested washable markers to show what areas needed to be washed. Riley is learning to vacuum the living room, and she had trouble understanding that when I said the whole thing I meant everywhere in the living room and not just a tiny rectangle in the center of the room. The solution, if you’re interested, was Carpet Fresh (suggested, of course, by Adam’s teacher). Riley can see the powder, so she knows where to run the vacuum. Words present such a garbled message for children with autism that anything we want to be sure to communicate clearly must come with visual support. I spend more time than you would imagine figuring out visual ways to communicate and creating teaching tools and check lists with pictures to support the words. It is a joy for me, but it does take time.
“Riley, I can’t hear you,” I tell her. “Bring the words and definitions here and read them.”
“Adam, wash away all the green,” I say, pointing to the blurr of smeared green bath crayon where he hasn’t wiped with enough pressure. Zoe appears in the doorway beside her sister (who has returned and is rambling out a definition I have barely processed), a bottle of water in her hand. “Mom, can you open this? I can’t get it.” I look down significantly at the wet bath mitt on my hand, aware that only Zoe can read my expressions that way. She needs neither words nor pictures to understand.
“I know, it’s just, I’m thirsty, and I can’t open this.”
I sigh, looking back down where Adam is waiting, holding his bath mitt over the tub, watching the water fall from the end. Drip, drip, drip. I motion toward the faucet. “Okay, Adam, time to rinse.”
He turns on the water, interrupting the flow with his mitted hand, giggling. I have to act quickly, before this turns into a game. “Zoe, either get a cup and get some water from the sink, or ask your sister to help you open the water bottle, please.”
“I’ll help you!” Riley says a little too eagerly, recognizing the opportunity to demonstrate her position as the elder sister.
Zoe sighs. “That’s okay, I’ll just get a cup.”
I am not looking at them. I am showing Adam how to move water all over the tub with his mitted hand, how to take it off and squeeze out the excess. When we finish, Adam gives me five, an expression of glee lighting up his face. It isn’t that the helping has brought him satisfaction, but that completion, finishing, moving on from the unwanted teaching makes him happy. He feels free.
I remember, putting the supplies away, how I felt as a child during lessons like these. I did not understand. In fact, there were times when I felt sure that my mom had made up her mind to have children so that we could do her work for her. Funny that I didn’t see it as my work too then, but children never do. I did not know then what I know now, that allowing me to help, teaching me how to participate in the management of the household, only created more work for my mom, who not only had to spend time showing us but often had to go behind us and do the job again, showing us the things we had neglected. Children just can’t see far enough into the future to understand that love motivates the extra work required to teach, especially when they don’t want to be taught. Love moves a parent to equip a child with skill, preparing them to face future responsibility without stumbling.
And so it is with us and the God who loves us. I couldn’t help smiling over this as I climbed the stairs after Adam’s lesson. I am sure that my features darkened as I realized the cleverness of the Enemy, the trick so deeply threaded through our culture that we miss it. Used is an ugly word in our world. No one really wants to feel used to accomplish another’s will.
Our energies, our tears, our time, get used up, like a battery gone dead. When I say I feel used, sometimes that’s exactly what I mean. This world, this life takes. It uses and discards for its own selfish reasons, defining worth on the basis of benefit to itself. Someone savagely steals their pleasure from us, using us, then turns their back on our suffering, and we cover our eyes with our hands, not wanting to see anymore. Use, the use of the empty and the selfish, leaves us feeling depleted, vulnerable, wasted, violated, worthless.
Then there are the things we’ve left behind, things we don’t want to or can’t attend to any longer, things we used to do, or say, or feel. Regrets, sometimes. I used to think myself incapable of hurting someone else. Zoe thinks that now about herself, and maybe now she is, but it won’t always be so. Human beings battle selfishness their entire lives. Other times, it’s just the change brought by years, or the inevitable requirement of life. I used to bake bread once a week. Before my kids were born. There were many who knew before I did that this would not always be so. The word indicates something spent and done, a fact withered and discarded.
There’s really only one way that word means possibility, presence, fullness, now. There is nothing I want more for my own life than to know that God uses me. Every person ever used by God to bless and build everlasting things–the things that plump and grow and overflow but never waste away; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, life eternal—every person used that way knows that nothing else really ever satisfies a soul. The fullness and joy seeping through hidden places are a holy rush like no other, a feeling that spills over into tears, makes us tremble, moves us to shake our heads in humble wonder that He would ever allow us to participate in divine, eternal activity. We know, and yet nearly every time he whispers, let me use you, we hesitate.
Used is such an ugly word in this world, this life.
I can be a bit like my son, when it’s time to participate, when God wants to teach and prepare. There’s something else I’d rather do than this thing He’s called me to do that I might learn. And I don’t always understand. It’s work to listen and look. It takes time and my attention, focused silently on my Father. I laugh because He shows me a thousand ways what He wants, the how, the where. He moves my hands in circles over and over, to show me that the straight line I had in mind just won’t work. He whispers patience as I grumble over how long the training is taking. And sometimes, when a season of difficulty and learning has passed, my thanksgiving is about the finishing and moving on, rather than the learning He brought me through. I cannot see far enough into the future to know that He is preparing me with skill for future responsibility. Because I am a child, I think that I am free when the teaching is over, instead of recognizing that my freedom allows me to learn from Him.
I often confuse God’s purposes, His use, with the selfish use that withers and discards. I know, and yet the flesh reverberates with lies. What if you can’t really do this? What if it will take everything you have? What if when it’s over, you’ll be so emptied and tired or hurt that you can’t recover? But that’s all wrong. Jesus said,
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).
Take my yoke…learn from me…find rest for your soul. I’ve seen pictures of yoked oxen, and it doesn’t look pleasant. It looks like a trap, like forced work that shrivels life, emptying the yoked to please only the one at the reins. But that is, of course, a very human perspective. It’s the lie that presupposes that every sort of use depletes and withers and takes, not to mention blinding me to the fact that a yoke usually fits over more than one neck. But heaven forbid I should have to seek help, admit that I need someone else, see that He has provided. Since I am alone, I will shrivel alone under use.
Kingdom use absurdly has the opposite outcome, and that’s always been God’s way. We are so used to the selfish use of a fallen world that we cannot fathom, even after experience has taught us otherwise, how this teaching and preparing we did not desire could ever result in use that is fulfilling and overflowing with eternal, unhindered, joy. We do not know, hesitating as we are, stuck facing learning that will not be easy, that at some future time the humble realization that we have been used by our faithful Father will make us shake, and dance, nor that it will spill over onto our faces with fresh tears that acknowledge that we are loved, and that is why we are used to accomplish purposes which would be easier for Him to accomplish without us.
One day, my children will understand. I am able to take care of my family, to pour out love on them, because when I least wanted to learn, my mom poured herself into teaching me. I pull down their beds at night, touching the soft, clean sheets with my fingers, and I whisper gratitude. And every time some wonderful soul shares that God has used me and our undreamed life to build everlasting things, tears spill over as I whisper gratitude, humbled that He loves me that much.
