Lent day 5: longing

³¹At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” ³²He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. ³³Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ ³⁴Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! ³⁵See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

It is those calls that make me want to throw away the phone.

The painful sobbing. . . . the loneliness in the words.   "I failed."  "We lost."  "It was horrible."  "I'm in the ambulance."

Of course I'm on my way.  But then the next sentence.

"No, no, I'll be ok.  I'm with my coach/friend/someone else's parent.  I just wanted you to know."

The longing to be there, to hold you to comfort you, to make it all ok somehow.  To pull you in close and wrap my arms around you.  How much do I want to pull all of them into my chest and hold them and not let them leave me?  So much.

They'll never know how much I need that.  What it means to me to have them close, to hold them tight, to be together.  They have no idea that I can make it through another day or even a week of spite and pain if I could just hold them together and hold them against my heart.

God shares our longing for closeness.  God knows the tugs on our heart when we just need to hold our loved ones and we can't.  God too longs for us to be together, to hold us close to God's heart and aches with us when we say, "No, no, I'll be OK.  I just wanted you to know."

Praying like those phone calls doesn't do it.  "Hey God, just letting you know my heart was ripped out of my chest today -- thought you might like to know," isn't going to cut it. I need to take the sobbing mess of emotion and hurl myself into those holy arms and cling to the chest of God with each prayer.  To put my heart right alongside God's heart and let the rhythm of God's hope calm the racing.

Just like I wish my kids would do with me.  God gets mothers.