9

We All Fall Down

It was a strange family outing, I admit, but fortunately my kids didn’t balk. “I want us all to go visit Haven of Hope,” I announced one evening. “It’s a shelter for the homeless in Wichita, and I think it would be good for us to get in touch with that kind of ministry.”

They said, “Okay, Mom. Sounds good to us, as long as it doesn’t take all day.” So on the appointed Saturday we piled into the van and headed to the edge of the city. There in what looked like a former nursing home, the Union Rescue Mission had set up this center. They ran buses from downtown Wichita late each afternoon, bringing in men who had no other place to eat or sleep.

The first order of business for the arriving men, we learned, was a shower. Then came a gospel service in the large meeting area, followed by a meal. Finally, everyone dispersed down the long hallways to sleep in the many rooms of the building. They would be bused back downtown the next morning, since some of them had day- labor jobs.

I had gotten the idea for an excursion like this one day in the jungle, when I said to Martin, “You know, I don’t ever want to forget what it’s like to be hungry. This feeling—it’s real for too many millions of people in the world. When we get out of here, I want to take the kids to a rescue mission somewhere.”

I didn’t have any place in mind. Then a few months after my return to America, we were at the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson, and I spied a booth for Haven of Hope. I walked up, introduced myself to some of the women working there, and asked if I could bring my family for a tour. They said yes.

After the visit, we were impressed enough with their program that we talked about it back in our church in Rose Hill. In time, our pastor invited the Union Rescue Mission to send a guest speaker to our Sunday evening service. He stayed for the youth group that meets afterward in the basement. This meeting always starts with food—sloppy joes with chips and pop that evening, as I recall—and then the man spoke about keeping your life clean from drugs and alcohol so as not to end up being one of his clients.

I’ll never forget what happened in the question-and- answer time afterward. Various kids made comments, including my Jeff and Mindy. From the fringe where I sat, I could see one girl fidgeting, as if she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure she should.

Then the leader called on her. “Tell us what you’re thinking,” he said.

She brushed her hair back and said, “You don’t want to know.”

“Yes, we do,” came the reply. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well,” she answered with a bit of detachment, “the way I look at it, these people you talk about have made bad choices. And now they’re reaping the consequences. I’m not sure it’s our duty to get them out of their own trouble.”

The room was quiet for a moment. The speaker didn’t react or launch into any defense of his organization. What happened next was that I spoke up, even though I was a mom, not one of the teenagers. “You know, it’s when we’re in trouble—whether or not it’s our fault—that we need grace,” I said quietly.

“Without realizing it, I made a bad choice when I arranged for my husband and me to go to Dos Palmas that Saturday. If I hadn’t chosen that resort, we would never have been kidnapped. I would still have Martin to live with. All kinds of things would be different today if I hadn’t started down a treacherous road.

“But when we found ourselves in a mess, we needed help, and we needed it badly. The way I look at it, sooner or later we’re all going to need the grace of God in our life, to compensate for our mistakes.”

The discussion continued along this line for a while, and I kept thinking about the fact that our choice to sin is much worse than any selection of a getaway resort. Sin separates us from God, and that is the worst predicament of all.

When we were needy, we needed a ransom. Second Corinthians 8:9 says, “You know how full of love and kindness our Lord Jesus Christ was. Though he was very rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty he could make you rich.” Jesus left his heavenly palaces, where he was praised night and day, to come to this nasty earth and pay our ransom. He lived among us and let himself be killed by human hands so we could be redeemed.

*   *

The Mother Goose rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie” ends with this line: “We all fall down.” In real life, we dance and prance our way along, but sooner or later, all of us seem to go splat on the ground for one reason or another. Then what?

Our only hope is for God’s grace. He sees us lying there, scuffed and bruised. He is entirely willing to help us up, dust us off, and stabilize us again. In fact, attitude makes a lot of difference. “The LORD mocks at mockers,” says Proverbs 3:34, “but he shows favor to the humble.” This verse is referenced twice in the New Testament, once in James 4:6, then again in 1 Peter 5:5. Apparently, it is a key theme of Scripture.

The humbling experiences of life are meant to introduce us to God’s favor. Surely God’s people can do no less than to exemplify this favor to others in real, tangible ways. And when we ourselves need to receive this grace, the best thing we can do is simply relax our taut shoulders and open our hands.

If we expect to get all the way through life without embarrassing ourselves, without playing the fool, without needing the unmerited favor of God . . . well, it’s just not going to happen. We are too human—all of us.

I remember one sultry morning in the jungle when Martin and I were packing up for a day on the move. It was sometime after Thanksgiving, because we had a now-empty plastic Skippy peanut-butter jar from our recent care package that we were using to carry whatever morsels of food our captors would give us. It was often viand, the Filipino term for anything that goes with rice. It could be chopped bananas boiled in coconut milk with salt or onions or garlic, for example. Or it could be boiled squash. Sometimes on a farm we’d find ginger roots that we could chop up for added flavor.

On this day, we had received our portion, and I remember twisting the lid onto the jar. As I picked it up to place it in my backpack, the lid came off. Apparently I hadn’t gotten it on straight. The jar fell to the ground, dumping out all the viand. That was to have been our food for the whole day!

A sick feeling swept over me. I looked up at Martin and said, “Oh, I am so, so sorry! I’ve just dropped our food.” I started to cry.

He looked at the wet spot on the ground, then turned to me and said, “I forgive you . . . and you need to forgive yourself.”

I learned a lot about grace and forgiveness that day. I learned that my husband was more prepared to absolve me of my clumsiness than I was. In fact, he would have to pay the same price I was going to pay. We would both go hungry that day as we trudged along the trail. Yet there was not a flicker of blame in his eyes.

That is how it is when we come to our heavenly Father in the wake of a wrong move. He extends his love and restoration to our souls. And he wants us to do the same for ourselves.

*   *

I have noticed that as we give grace to ourselves and to one another, it becomes a way of life. Maybe that is why my son Jeff kept his cool when I did just about the worst thing a teenager’s mother can do to him: I backed out of the garage without looking in the rearview mirror and crunched right into his pride and joy, his little blue Dodge Neon in the driveway.

Jeff was in the van with me, and we got out to survey the damage. Once again, I felt so stupid. The bumper of the van had put a big crease down the left side of his car. His side mirror was hanging by a cord. He couldn’t get the left door open.

In that awful moment, my sixteen-year-old son, like his father, gave me grace. There was a soft sigh, and then he said, “It’s okay, Mom. We’ll get it fixed.”

I could have hugged him. But the neighbors were no doubt watching.

I apologized every way I knew and said, yes, we’d certainly get it repaired. When I called the insurance agent to file the claim, however, things got complicated. Jeff and I had titled the car in both our names since he was not yet of adult age. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Burnham,” said the lady on the other end, “but you can’t claim damage against your own property if you caused it.”

“But it’s Jeff’s car!” I cried.

“Yes, I know. But on the official record of the state, it’s your car, too. If a tree had fallen on it or something, that would be a different story. Self-inflicted damage, on the other hand, doesn’t qualify for coverage.”

I had no choice but to pay the body shop out of my own pocket. We were heading into Christmastime, with all its expenses, and here the repair was going to run more than a thousand dollars. I gulped and signed the work order.

At that point, I faced a choice. I could go home and beat myself up for wasting a big chunk of money, getting a migraine in the process. Or I could forgive myself and believe that something good would come of it all somehow.

I still don’t know what that good might be (other than providing an expensive illustration for this chapter!). I do know, however, that it served to remind me once again that we all need grace.

In a way, I guess I’m a little like Peter in the Bible. Like me, he talked a lot. He was proud and thought he knew so much. Frequently, he said the wrong thing. If he had come with me to one of Mindy’s basketball games, I can just imagine the two of us sitting there on the bleachers yelling at the refs.

On the night of Jesus’ arrest, Peter denied even knowing the Lord three times. Imagine what this man had to face when he looked in a mirror.

We know the Lord Jesus forgave him; the story by the seaside in John 21, when Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved him, is one of the Bible’s most touching. And apparently Peter forgave himself, becoming a respected apostle. Decades later, his written instruction to other leaders in 1 Peter 5 is mature and valuable. After quoting the Old Testament proverb mentioned earlier, he adds, “So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and in his good time he will honor you” (verse 6).

We all mess up. We all fall down. We all self-destruct at times. And we all need to open up and receive the warm, restoring grace that originates with our loving Lord.