Beige-Colored Days
My son was having trouble pooping the other day. His pierced cries for “Mama,” legs like a crab trying to scurry away from a predator, and clammy, curled hair on the back of his head broke my heart. His typical pooping stance is to hold his stuffed panda in between his hands and mouth, lay on his stomach, and squeeze his little legs up under him until the deed is done. But that day, all my almost one-year-old wanted was Mama to hold him while he clung to my neck like one of those stuffed monkeys with velcro hands you win at the fair and soak my shirt with sweat and tears. I tried all the things “they” say to do--bicycle legs, massage, etc.--nothing seemed to loosen the stool. Nada but more tears and body shakes.
But then something hit me. And I stopped trying to fix it. I just held my sweet boy, our tears swirling together over our hearts and down into our laps.
How much longer is my baby going to want to hold me when things are painful?
When you-know-what hits the fan (or refuses to come out in today’s case), will he know I’m with him?
In teaching him to be independent, am I teaching him that he can come home to Mama in not just the lows, but the highs and the any ol’ times?
Sometimes, as much as we as moms or friends or fellow human beings want to fix things, we just can’t. Our default mode is to try and take away the pain. But what if our factory reset mode is actually to sit with one another in that pain or celebration or shrug of a day? Dr. Paul Farmer, a renowned medical anthropologist and physician who has extensively worked in and written on the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases, spoke about this idea of accompaniment during a lecture I attended. He defined accompanying someone as going somewhere with him or her, breaking bread together, being present on a journey from a beginning and an end. Being present on a journey from a beginning to an end. Granted, Dr. Farmer’s experience is in the trenches of poverty-stricken, community-based healthcare systems, but the underlying principle, I think, is broad-reaching.
In our mile-a-minute, ten-easy-solutions-to-fix-it-fast society, it’s painful to walk with someone from the beginning to end of their journey. And, if I’m being honest, many journeys are kind of boring. Sure, there may be splashes of color, but all-in-all? Pretty beige. Dare I say, maybe kind of like parenting. We are with our little boogers from the beginning of their story to the end of ours. Sure, there are flashes of fun, moments of madness, hiccups of highs, but all-in-all? Pretty beige. What if our job as parents is not to swoop in and be there when things get colorful, but to come alongside and whisper, “I see you. Mama’s here, little one. And I’m not going anywhere.” How rich and true would all our relationships be if we were not just there for the highs and lows, the peaches and pits, but all that beige in between too? Now, I’m not advocating our accompaniment be one of observation like a kindergartener smush-faced on the aquarium glass staring wide-eyed at the sharks and clown fish and kelp swirling all together; quite the opposite, actually. This accompaniment requires a level of engagement and participation that is sacrificial. Sometimes there are no answers to the why. Things may never get better on someone’s journey. Things may never get what we consider colorful. And yet, we come alongside anyway.
The Gospel of John tells us that God became flesh and blood and made his home among us. The God of the universe moved into the neighborhood. He didn’t flip the rundown house of humanity for a profit just to go to the nicer ‘burbs as soon as possible. Thirty-three years of tears and laughs and Many Colored Days God spent as a human all to accompany us on this journey of life. The even better part is that it doesn’t end there; the last words Jesus left as he ascended back to heaven were that He would be with us always. With us in the good, the bad, and the beige. That, to me, is some savior.
You know, that poop finally did come out in its own time. And I was with my son, from the beginning to the end.
But then something hit me. And I stopped trying to fix it. I just held my sweet boy, our tears swirling together over our hearts and down into our laps.
How much longer is my baby going to want to hold me when things are painful?
When you-know-what hits the fan (or refuses to come out in today’s case), will he know I’m with him?
In teaching him to be independent, am I teaching him that he can come home to Mama in not just the lows, but the highs and the any ol’ times?
Sometimes, as much as we as moms or friends or fellow human beings want to fix things, we just can’t. Our default mode is to try and take away the pain. But what if our factory reset mode is actually to sit with one another in that pain or celebration or shrug of a day? Dr. Paul Farmer, a renowned medical anthropologist and physician who has extensively worked in and written on the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases, spoke about this idea of accompaniment during a lecture I attended. He defined accompanying someone as going somewhere with him or her, breaking bread together, being present on a journey from a beginning and an end. Being present on a journey from a beginning to an end. Granted, Dr. Farmer’s experience is in the trenches of poverty-stricken, community-based healthcare systems, but the underlying principle, I think, is broad-reaching.
In our mile-a-minute, ten-easy-solutions-to-fix-it-fast society, it’s painful to walk with someone from the beginning to end of their journey. And, if I’m being honest, many journeys are kind of boring. Sure, there may be splashes of color, but all-in-all? Pretty beige. Dare I say, maybe kind of like parenting. We are with our little boogers from the beginning of their story to the end of ours. Sure, there are flashes of fun, moments of madness, hiccups of highs, but all-in-all? Pretty beige. What if our job as parents is not to swoop in and be there when things get colorful, but to come alongside and whisper, “I see you. Mama’s here, little one. And I’m not going anywhere.” How rich and true would all our relationships be if we were not just there for the highs and lows, the peaches and pits, but all that beige in between too? Now, I’m not advocating our accompaniment be one of observation like a kindergartener smush-faced on the aquarium glass staring wide-eyed at the sharks and clown fish and kelp swirling all together; quite the opposite, actually. This accompaniment requires a level of engagement and participation that is sacrificial. Sometimes there are no answers to the why. Things may never get better on someone’s journey. Things may never get what we consider colorful. And yet, we come alongside anyway.
The Gospel of John tells us that God became flesh and blood and made his home among us. The God of the universe moved into the neighborhood. He didn’t flip the rundown house of humanity for a profit just to go to the nicer ‘burbs as soon as possible. Thirty-three years of tears and laughs and Many Colored Days God spent as a human all to accompany us on this journey of life. The even better part is that it doesn’t end there; the last words Jesus left as he ascended back to heaven were that He would be with us always. With us in the good, the bad, and the beige. That, to me, is some savior.
You know, that poop finally did come out in its own time. And I was with my son, from the beginning to the end.
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