Peering Past

Among the celebrations that mark the closing of the academic year is the inevitable glut of school field trips during the last week of school. When we departed for one such event today, a trip to visit the workplace of one third grade girl's father, I was concerned to see one of the second grade children acting out – chasing others, yelling like a child of a younger grade, and seeming more disruptive than I had ever seen. Although I wrote it off as being excitement over the end of the year, and a less structured week, I was still concerned that, if she didn’t settle down, this characteristically good-natured child would make a long day for all involved.

When we arrived at the recycling center for our tour, she quickly quieted down – and then, just as promptly, found a student to drape herself across, and start distracting. Her mother, who was standing nearby, gave her several comments to re-direct her, but she repeatedly found a way to glom on to a fellow student rather than pay attention to the parent guide.

After a short span of too many little outbursts and dangerous interactions, the mother knelt down, whispered a few words to her, and all of a sudden, the tiny eight-year-old was crumpled in her mother’s arms, in tears. I had no idea what was said; had no inkling as to why the tears – Her mother, holding her steadily, tried to reassure the cognizant onlookers with the words that it wasn’t anything that had happened, but was something going on within her: that is was ‘her problem’ –

There was tenderness, and so private a nature in the mother as she concealed her daughter’s reason for tears. Yet there was an equally intimate knowledge of her child’s manner, and poignancy in the way her words to the girl could be so meager, yet cut to the heart of what was disturbing her youngster.

I don’t know that I would have been as struck by the parental discernment and compassion – except that God had dealt with me in like manner before I left for school this morning. I had spent the better part of last night “throwing fits,” and fashioning increasingly more reasons not to trust my spiritual Father, until – by this morning, when a rush of venom came from me – it was His whisper which suddenly brought me to shuddering tears. His piercing understanding of me which knew the cause, and could immediately unfasten the hurt which lay behind the raging; His gentle dealings which “shattered” me in an instant, rendering me so broken as to only be able to crumple in His arms.

I don’t know how He can “unwrap” me so easily; how He can pinpoint in that quiet moment what the real concern is; or even why He would stave off others who, with curiosity, could not understand us as He does. I only know that my Father, the One upon whom my tears are shed, is faithful, kind, and wise. And that, in His dealings with me, He sees past the outburst to comfort the pain behind it.

“How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure…”