Lock Out

 

It was my first school lockout. I quickly held in the overwhelming emotion to keep my son from seeing my fear. The words, “No one goes in, no one comes out.” It was any ordinary day, all except for the fact that when I took my son to school at 12:30 for half day kindergarten, I couldn’t drop him off. My daughter was in there, in her second grade class. Was she o.k.? Was she scared? Was she safe?

I immediately called to God, and he quickly responded with a peace that can only be explained by the beauty of his desire to comfort me. I could feel his touch, hear his voice and my heart quickly calmed to the gentle pace of his smooth breathing. As a child who lays her head on her father’s chest to rest and find the comfort and warmth of the sound of his beating heart. It was a second, only a second, but enough time for my nerves to be calmed and to remember that my children are in his loving hands and their safety is his responsibility. One child locked in, One locked out.

These are the moments we call upon our faith and we see just how deep our well is. On this day it was full, thankfully full. But some days it seems as though the tiniest hiccup can derail me all together. We don’t see the need for our source of strength (God) when we think we have enough on our own to carry us through. I found myself in a different kind of lock out the other day. Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual in nature this lock out was caused by the threat of a less mysterious danger… Myself. 

Maybe you have experienced that moment when you fail someone so badly, you wonder if you can come back from it. For me it was with my son. Was the cause of my anger toward him some horrible thing he had done to deserve my wrath? I guess that depends on if you think spilling some oatmeal on the floor is worth the death sentence. The way I reacted you would have thought so. I guess the idea is that if you keep drawing from the well and never put back into it, eventually you come up empty. And unfortunately this well was not the living well, it was my own personal well, one that had been completely drained by a lack of sleep and my desire to carry my own burdens and try to do everything myself.

In that moment when you realize that you just called your child stupid, or you hit him out of anger, you truly feel the shock of the “lock out.” What have I done? You see the child that you love, close himself up out of protection. And until the threat is resolved, you are locked out. The shame I felt and the possibility that my son would not be able to forgive me created what could have been a very long lock out. But as shame crept further in I chose to break its hold with the simple offering of a genuine apology. I asked my son to forgive me and I explained that I was wrong to say those words and that in fact the very opposite is true. The living Well inside of me was in that moment filled with life as I allowed the truth of God’s love to enter in and flood my being.

I guess you could say this mommy experienced a few obstacles this week in her attempt to hold it all together. But in the end whether it was realizing that God is holding them when I can’t, or still holding them when I should be and fail to. He showed me that I need to be filled at all times with his love and mercy, not just utilizing his living water as an emergency store house but that his life is forever flowing and that I can use it all the time. I guess we get in the survival mindset that we should save it up for a drought, but like a steady rain God desires us to be drenched in this living water living in the understanding that it will never fail or run out.

The question God asked me this week was “What do you lack?” If we are connected to the source we should lack nothing.  Check your connection and make sure that you are truly pulling from the source.

Psalm 23:1
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing
 
James 1:2-5
 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.  If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.