Heartbroken

We are heartbroken this week. Tiffany and little Ava went home for a weekend visit on Thursday and aren't coming back. Saturday she called to say that the trains weren't running their usual schedule, she'd try to catch one on Monday. Monday her mom called and left a message that Tiffany would be home "later" as she had some relatives who wanted to see the baby. We've played the train game before and had already decided we weren't going to stand for it. It's very difficult to plan our whole day around a time when I need to get 8 children to the train station only to be told at the last minute that she has no intention of being on that train and so thus began a series of conversations with Tiffany's mom trying to explain why they were being inconsiderate. She didn't get it.

In fact, she didn't get a lot of things. She didn't get why Tiffany was living with us in the first place - isn't the best place for her in her own home with her own mom? She didn't get why Tiffany didn't see a future for herself in DC - wasn't this where she'd been raised and isn't this the city she loves? She didn't get how a 16-year old girl could have the will to change her heart and her circumstances - how can she know what she wants when she's so young? The conversations with her over the next couple of days were very revealing to me. They were filled with lies, half-truths, broken promises and a lot of self-pity. By the end of the first day I was up all night reading a map written on my soul of Tiffany's spiritual heritage. It was truly frightening and I prayed for her, begging God to bring her back to us before she slips away for good. But she'd been in the city for too long and she'd been sucked back in. The next morning Deacon Jeff called to tell us Tiffany had called him to tell him she wouldn't be coming back. She didn't have the guts to call us - and still hasn't. That seems to be her family way - if there's some unpleasantness just don't talk about it and you won't have to deal with it. Convenient for them, infuriatingly frustrating for those who are at the other end of it.

I spent 3 hours today cleaning out her bedroom - she had, afterall, just gone home for the weekend and so she left behind most of her things. I sorted through a mound of laundry, I put aside her wallet and her WIC coupons, her medical card and her important papers - things you just don't abandon somewhere if you're thinking rationally. I sorted and packed and I cried. There was so much evidence there of her growth since she'd entered Sparrow House. I found her baptismal certificate, her pamphlets on parenting which she'd been reading religiously, CD's filled with Christian music she'd been trying to use to replace the filth of the world which had filled her mind and soul until her recent conversion. "Please, Lord, don't let bitterness take root in me!" I cried out and He listened and He replaced the bitterness with an overwhelming, heart-wrenching sadness.

I'd been contemplating yesterday in a particular way the marriage relationship between God's people and His church which scriptures describe most vividly in Song of Solomon. I had been thinking that intimacy between two people married so long that they begin to acquire one another's thoughts, characteristics, even looks is a wonderful picture of the intimacy Christ desires with us. When we use the phrase that we are to "be Christlike" we are placing ourselves in that relationship with Him in which we are so acquainted with His ways and so intimately connected to His thoughts that His Being begins to seep into ours. It is as much a curious happenstance of Friendship with God as it is any intentional effort of our own. And so, in the midst of my turmoil over Tiffany I stood in the bathroom and called out to Christ as the Spouse of My Soul. And He responded with likewise intimacy by revealing to me His Heart. I saw Him stand and watch Tiffany wherever she was at the moment and He began to weep and the pain overwhelmed me and I had to weep with him. I wept for only a moment compared to His eternal weeping for all of us. It was too much. It was too overwhelming. His love for us is so lavish. His gift to us, too generous.

My heart is broken. Betsy watched me sort through a pile of papers and immediately noticed a colorful picture full of butterfly stickers she had given to Tiffany. "Mommy!" she cried, "I gave Tiffany that picture! She loves that picture! Why did she forget her picture, Mommy? Why didn't she take her picture? Is she coming back? Is she coming back to get her picture I made her?" How do I answer that? How do I wrap up all the generations of someone else's bad choices in a simple answer for a 4 year old? I can't. There is no answer for my dear little Betsy except to assure her that Tiffany will get the picture back. She'll get it because it will be on the top of the pile of things I send to her that she's too irrational to realize yet that she needs. She'll see the picture Betsy made her along with the picture of our family I tucked into her wallet and the broken crucifix we'd given her which was broken because she'd been carrying it in her pocket faithfully.

Tiffany is teachable - it's the thing I love most about her. So when she sees her things, she will remember that her sights were set higher here, that her soul was more free here and that God has a wonderful plan and purpose for her life. She will remember and she will rise above it. No, I don't think this chapter is done yet but there is still the lingering sadness of the present moment. I am still living in that place in life where we allow God to have His way with our hearts so that we can learn more of His heart. Tiffany and Ava have taken up residence in that place of my heart already occupied by Jake. They are the ones for whom I will pray without ceasing until God sees fit to raise them up out of their circumstances to walk solidly on His path.