This is her, a middle of the kitchen, let's talk here and now about real life, kind of girl.
She asks about the momma. The momma missing her little girl. The little girl with a tender heart that no longer beats because day after day the students at her Christian school they used their words to beat and break her. Until she stopped her own breath and stilled her own tenderness.
And I look at real-life girl and I ask her-because she knows what it's like to have a sister that no longer sucks oxygen and beats rhythmically- I ask her how she keeps on loving.... How she keeps on with a tender heart.
And she thinks and looks to a place and time I can not see and she tells me about the brokenness that marked their home after her sisters body was marked by cancer.
She tells me how she watched a frame be destroyed day after day by chemo- the wrecking of a person. She told me how this wrecked her own momma. She tells me how a brother stepped in for a mother and stepped out of high school experiences and now has stepped out of the church.
She tells me how it's hard and there was breaking and how there still is.
She tells me there's a new normal, a new confidence in what Jesus is doing-has done.
A hope he has given for seeing her again and knowing she doesn't hurt or break any more but only knows things we long to get to. She tells me her sister has scouted out heaven and knows the "sweet spots" but best of all her sisters sits face to face with her healer.
And the tenderness is evident in her by the way she serves and listens and encourages and I am still amazed.
Sitting here now the words from Ephesians 4 remind me of her
"be kind to one another, tender hearted"
And I read it and I watch those words and they are words that limp across the page, as helpful and rich as a beggar on the street. They are not bold and soul stirring or quiet and insightful. They are lifeless.
But I pray them for the one, the one who told me her heart has been broken and now she puts on her brave face but she has told me there is only bitterness behind it.
He didn't mean to but he told her with out words that she wasn't worth the fight. And now she fights to appear whole and together when he's taken pieces of her with him.
I pray for kindness and a tender heart where callouses have begun to toughen her. Where insecurity has begun to claim her.
And my nice packaged prayer is interrupted by my wildly beating heart
"How Daddy?! How do you expect us to live here where cancer takes Jesus-loving sisters and words beat a beautiful girl breathless. And young sisters lie awake afraid night after night, afraid to live in case they too catch death. And brothers work hard but work to no end because no light is in their soul and only you can turn soul lights on but for so long it's been dark in there and he blames you because where were you when his sister's eyes want dark. And a girl too young grapples with pieces of brokenness trying to hold pieces together, tries to believe promises when promises have been bold faced broken?"
And I pray in faith knowing he knows how to do it. But me, I am at a loss.
A complete loss.
How do we do it?
How do we live open hands, open hearts when hearts stop beating and break and bruise and fall apart and are scarred ugly.
What do I say to the fear that tells me, that shows me closed hands, closed heart are safer.
Tenderness alone leads to timidness that cause palms to stay dark and hearts to die.
And Piper he says
"It seems to me that we are always falling off the horse on one side or the other in this matter of being tough and tender, durable and delightful, courageous and compassionate -- wimping out on truth when we ought to be lionhearted, or wrangling when we ought to be weeping….Some readers need a good kick in the pants to be more courageous and others confuse courage with what William Cowper called 'a furious and abusive zeal.' Oh, how rare are the Christians who speak with a tender heart and have a theological backbone of steel."
Tenderness is tough and tenacious.
Tenderness is the God of the whole universe sitting inside his creations womb for 9 months, being knit together.Born with tiny hands and toes and a stomach that hungered and eyes that grew tired with sleep and choosing to sleep the sleep of death so that we could awake.
Tenderness is the one who commands goats to give birth and decided the depth of the ocean and causes waves and undercurrents and comprehends the expanse of the earth filling us with his fullness.
Tenderness is the one who has been inside of the store house of snow and causes heaven to give birth to ice and the ground to bear frost then chose to causes the ox to spend the night at his manger and the lamb to bleat at his birth.
The one who created words, who is the word chose to use none when standing before his creation mocking and scorning him so those re-created could stand at the throne of grace boldly worshiping and petitioning him.
Think of it!
He hung on the tree his mind had crafted and power caused to grow, his deity wrapped in humanity stayed there.
Tenderness for us his enemy, his false accuser.
He was so tenacious for his own glory for our redemption that the creator of gravity subjected himself to the grounding weight of humanity.
Rejected by his Father for our acceptance.
Humiliated by man for his elevation.
Sub coming to death so that his dead bride could come alive and wed his resurrected body.
He satisfied the judge so we could share his inheritance.
Imagine it.
Tenderness.
It is strength to live to die.
It is hope, confident expectation of what is coming, when life hurts deep.
Tenderness is a life scarred and bruised but rehearsing still the life of the one who came to kill and bury death.
Tenderness is a bride dressed in white waiting, wide eyed, watching for her groom to come even when others act like he won't.
Tenderness is believing he fulfills promises when life has shown promises break and bend and leave.
Tenderness is life lived on the victory rock- the place the Israelite battle winners would stand to see the hard fought and won victory.
Tenderness is believing, remembering, rehearsing the promises kept and on their way when life shows us tight hands and tough hearts are the only way to survive.
