valley of vision

I love reading Henri Nouwen's writing. He was a Catholic priest and scholar who taught at Yale, Harvard, and Notre Dame before making a mid-life ministry shift to L’Arche community, a home where developmentally-challenged people can share life with their caregivers.

Nouwen moved to L’Arche to serve people who most of us see only as shadows. He moved there to pour out his life into the invisible. He yielded a safe, cognitive faith to the dangers of flesh, and as a result, the halls of L’Arche served as a spiritual birth canal. What Nouwen learned about beauty and love amid discarded lives was powerful.

Below, he writes about caring for two particular men at L’Arche, John and Adam:

"Yes, John and Adam needed help in their daily tasks, but I, too, was constantly saying, 'Help me, help me.' And when I had the courage to look deeper, to face my emotional neediness, my inability to pray, my impatience and restlessness, my many anxieties and fears, the word 'handicap' started to have a whole new meaning. The fact that my handicaps were less visible than those of Adam and his housemates didn't make them less real... I was going through the deep human struggle to believe in my belovedness even when I had nothing to be proud of... I found myself resisting this 'becoming like Adam'. I did not want to be dependent and weak. I did not want to be so needy. Somewhere though I recognised that Adam's way, the way of radical vulnerability, was also the way of Jesus."

- Henri Nouwen, Adam: God's Beloved

"But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him." - I Corinthians 1:27-29

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Most of the time, Moses will tell me before he has to go “law-wah.” (I don’t know what this word is supposed to sound like in Chinese, but I know what happens after he grabs the seat of his pants and says it.) This morning, he forgot to tell me first.

It’s been almost a decade since I’ve had a kid in diapers, and wiping poopy butts is not something I have missed. I think I have an overly-developed sense of smell anyway -- I can usually tell you what store a gallon of milk comes from by just smelling the plastic. So, bending over a law-wah-smeared rear end, getting a face full of yesterday’s garden produce literally makes me gag.

Isn’t it Elizabeth Elliot who tells moms to let their countenance reflect God’s affection for their child? Well, I’m sorry, but the only divine lesson Moses got from my face this morning was hidden somewhere in Lamentations. “Woe! Woe!”

Leaving the bathroom, I found graham crackers on the air vents. All the buttons on the dishwasher pushed at once. Little plastic things stuffed into places where little plastic things aren’t supposed to go. Marks from little hands, exploring a big, new world.

I remember raising a toddler the first two times, and how these things brought me to despair. I always felt like there were so many important things I was “supposed” to be doing, but there I was, cleaning up messes with no visible progress. Cute urban girls were changing the world, and I was losing my life, pouring it out into shadows and invisibility.

But one day I shut my eyes and opened them, and two fat little boy feet were suddenly covered in veins and hair, wearing a men’s shoe size 11 1/2. And storybooks were closed. And little plastic things were put where they belonged, and they stayed there, while the investments I made into invisibility (wise and unwise) continued growing on a trajectory. Lost things were resurrected. The shadows became light.

My story is different from Nouwen’s because he wasn’t able to see dramatic physical/mental growth in many people he helped. God had other treasures waiting for him at L'Arche. But still, as I’m revisiting toddler motherhood after a long hiatus, I am grateful for Nouwen’s reflections. His life reinforces something I missed as a young mom, that the grueling, non-glamorous work of service can be a rich, spiritual greenhouse. Helping the vulnerable urges me to consider my own vulnerability.

Because the truth is that I mess all over myself. I put things in the wrong places. I use too much. I drop things. I push too many buttons. I reek. I need a Father to help me. As I serve a child, I am also a child being served. Loved. Beloved. This is humbling, clarifying, purifying. I'm thankful.



“The Valley of Vision” (Puritan prayer)


Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,

Thou has brought me to the valley of vision,

where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights;

hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold

thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox

that the way down is the way up,

that to be low is to be high,

that the broken heart is the healed heart,

that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,

that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,

that to have nothing is to possess all,

that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,

that to give is to receive,

that the valley is the place of vision.



Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,

deepest wells,

and the deeper the wells the brighter

thy stars shine;

Let me find thy light in my darkness,

Thy life in my death,

that every good work or thought found in me

thy joy in my sorrow,

thy grace in my sin,

thy riches in my poverty

thy glory in my valley.

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Father. Refuge.

Psalm 118:17


I shall not die, but I shall live,
and recount the deeds of the LORD.

This week marks a year since my dad's heart surgery. Dad and I are close, so that was a frightening, awful time for me.

Our next couple of weeks are pretty scary, too. Although we are super excited, this is new territory; and my notebook full of ballpoint lists doesn't begin to cover the unknowns ahead.

Over and again through Scripture, we can watch God's people recounting His faithfulness during frightening times. Somehow, rehearsing God's loving care through past darkness is a catechism of hope for the future. These are our memorial stones in the Jordan River. (Joshua 4)

So today, I'm posting something I wrote privately a year ago about my Dad - and about the Father who walks into fearful times with us.

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"Father. Refuge."

Pastors and priests casually toss those two terms together and expect us to swallow. Yet reality, for many souls, forces them apart.

Too often, “father” equals ignored, criticized, hit, avoided, abused, abandoned, or deceived. Young trust must learn quickly that “father” is an unsafe place. It must learn that male strength violates tenderness. For these children, fatherhood is a force that destroys.

I’m not sure how kids survive that. It is a wound I’ve never known.

When I was a little girl, Dad would hold me in his lap in the mornings while I woke up. He would listen to my fears and my loves. He would take me on long walks when I needed to cry or vent. He read books to me, and he taught me how to pray. He taught me how to change the oil, and how to skin a squirrel, and the importance of world history. He helped me love words, trees, birds, and things growing from the earth. He taught me how to compete with men and how to respect them. He encouraged me to try sports that would make me physically strong. He loved learning, and pursued it. He helped me see humor in the world. He believed in the worth of femininity and also in the power of it. He brought mom wildflowers he found in the woods.

Dad smoked once a year - a cigar on the Fourth of July to light the fireworks. As a teenager, this was significant to me. He was tough enough to smoke if he wanted to, but he also had the self control not to go there. I learned from that.

Dad turned sixty this past May. He looks fifty, maybe. He is still athletic, strong, active, slim. I have always expected him to live a very long life. He had the genetics. He has the lifestyle. I felt like he would be there almost forever.

‘Refuge fatherhood’ has pulsed steadily through my life like a heartbeat. It is my constant, my music of the spheres. It is unshakable. It is trustworthy.

Last week, I sat in a hospital lobby, while my dad’s heart was stopped and his lungs were collapsed. His mitral valve went bad, and the surgeon was going to try to fix it.

Before he went into surgery, I put my head to his chest. My knowledge of cardiology is limited, but this heartbeat sounded like someone was squeezing water out of a Nerf football. There wasn’t a “thump thump” to it. It was more “thump squish.” The nurses said it was one of the worst they’d ever heard.

And so I watched him leave me. He was peaceful - content to be going wherever his Father led. I sat waiting in an uncomfortable chair under flickering fluorescent lights while the heartbeat that had supported most of my life stopped.

In that silence, Father Refuge came. He listened to my fears. He took me on a walk when I needed to cry. He helped me read books, and pray, and do some practical things. He was tender with my stumblings, and He held me in His lap while I woke to the reality of this new stage of my life.

When Dad came out of surgery, he was intubated. The throat tube was out by the time I went back to ICU, but about twenty other drip tubes were coming from his neck, arms, and chest. I’m one of those people who can’t pull a child’s tooth, because it makes me woozy. But Father Refuge helped me approach my Dad, sit with him, and help him do breathing treatments. He helped me hold his big feet in my lap and rub them to improve his circulation. These are things I cannot do... could not do. Nausea. Drugged confusion. Pain that’s twelve on a ten scale. Monitors. Tubes. With each new challenge, my fingers being pried, one at a time from reliance upon an earthly core. And yet, Father Refuge was strong, and tender, and present when imago Dei could not stand. I'm so thankful for an earthly Dad who taught me how to recognize Him.

There’s a C.S. Lewis quote I can’t find. It talks about how losing your parents is like losing points on the horizon that have grounded your view of the world. I felt that this week, that sensation of falling without harness or light. But Father Refuge met me there. He met me there like he has - like HE has - ever since I was born. It is not a lesson that I am strong enough to have chosen. But Father Refuge knows how to lead our hearts through fearful times into deeper communion with Him.

O Lord of Grace
The world is before me this day,
And I am weak and fearful,
But I look to thee for strength;
If I venture forth alone I stumble and fall,
But on the Beloved’s arms I am firm
As the eternal hills.

(From Valley of Vision: God All-Sufficient)

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