Practicing Goodbye

She walks out the front door like a new recruit headed to her first Army assignment. With a sleeping bag in one hand and a gym bag in the other, she shouts out, "I love leaving the house with bags in my arms!" When I ask her why, she says, "Because I love going!"

She's 11, and she doesn't care where she's going. She just wants to go already.

I have written before about how different my third child is from my others. This one has two speeds: 0 and 100. Home is a place to crash, and the world is a place to conquer. This week she's conquering summer camp. While the other campers navigate the campground with their parents and many offer tear-filled goodbyes, Brooka has no time for such things. There's adventure to be found. That, and she's never been one for long goodbyes.

From her very earliest days, she shooed me away. As a small toddler, she would yell, "GO!" when I dropped her off in the church nursery. This was new territory for me. My oldest had screamed for his life when I attempted to leave him in the nursery. This would continue until he was 2 1/2 and we found a nursery worker who encouraged him to bring along his Pooh Bear, for whom she had set up a special spot at the table, complete with Pooh's own Dixie cup and graham crackers. My next oldest just pouted in the corner by herself the whole time and punished me later with her silence. Then came my third, who literally pushed me out the door and lit up the room with her smile when I was out of sight. This was the first of my practice goodbyes with Brooka.

Before she started preschool, I thought I would have to duct tape her to her carseat when we dropped the older kids off at school, so desperate was her desire to escape the van and follow them in. When her first day of preschool finally came, her eye was swollen shut, the result of a mosquito bite gone bad. She looked terrible, but there was no holding her back. She marched in the classroom without a backward glance, leaving me to dab my eyes alone in the hallway. We repeated this scene again in kindergarten, minus the swollen eye. I could expect a quick hug, but if I held on for an extra second, the push would come and off she'd go, never looking back.

So it's no surprise that this is the child who lives for her time away at summer camp (and winter camp), the one who has no patience for a long goodbye. I think about the goodbyes that are to come. No doubt she'll spend summers as a camp counselor as soon as they'll let her. I can't imagine a Brooka-less summer, but probably it will be here before I know it. She's saving up her money for her first overseas trip, and unless I save up my money, too, that will entail a tearful goodbye, at least on my part. One day she'll leave for college, or for somewhere, and I'll realize that our house is now only the place she'll come to visit. Surely that will be the hardest goodbye of all.

But I'm thankful I get to practice at it first. Every time she leaves, I get a little more brave. I'm a little bit more like my own mother, who dropped me off at a college in California she knew nothing about with people she'd never met. Newly widowed and returning to a completely empty house for the first time in her life, she held me in the parking lot and let me sob, and then she smiled and bravely left. That's the kind of goodbye mom I want to be, the mom who believes in her child a ridiculous amount, who says, "I know you'll do great," and who walks away with a smile, then falls on her prayerful knees the minute she walks in the door.

Identity and Lunacy

Sometimes our culture changes so slowly I don't even notice it. Sometimes it's fast enough to give me whiplash.

What has happened in the past month? And is there still a place left for truth in this world?

Bruce Jenner is now a 65-year-old supermodel named Caitlin. A white woman passing herself off as black, when asked point blank if she's African-American, replies, "I don't understand the question." Bruce "identifies" as a woman even though he's a man. Rachel Dolezal "identifies" black even though she's white. You can call yourself whatever you want, but what about still telling the truth?

I'm a brunette who "identifies" as a blonde (I was born one, after all), thus I'm prone to spending large amounts of money lightening my hair. But my driver's license lists my hair as brown. Because that's the truth, no matter how I feel about it.

At what point, I wonder, does "identifying" with something cross over into lunacy? What about a 36-year-old man who identifies as a teenager, and thus lives in his parents' basement and dates 17-year-olds? What about a poor person who identifies as rich and runs up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt? Here's one that can't be long in coming: a person who identifies as a vampire and as such must satisfy his craving for human blood. Have we arrived at lunacy yet? Or do we have to get all the way to a person who identifies as a goat? Wouldn't we all agree that person has reached the point of insanity? Or will we all still walk around on eggshells, respecting his right to "identify" however he'd like?

I'm not talking about personal encounters with individuals. Nothing gives us the right to be mean or disrespectful to another human being. I read a Christianity Today article recently about how we should respond to transgender people who walk into our churches, and I agree that we need to get over ourselves and welcome them, awkward as that may be. Our job is not to berate them over their choices, but to point them to Jesus. What I'm talking about is a larger cultural move toward tolerance at all costs--even if the cost is truth. I know we've been headed this way for a long time, but we're picking up the pace. If someone "identifies" as something, anything, then it's legit, and anyone questioning the truth in that is a small-minded bigot.

Truth still matters. It may be beaten and battered and lay bleeding in our streets, but it has not been obliterated. We still need it, especially when we're talking about ourselves. We have freedom in this country to live how we want to live and to be known for whatever we want to be known for; we also have a responsibility to be honest. Rachel, be a white person who loves African-American culture and people and who tells the truth. That's the greatest advocacy you could offer.

(By the way, my money's on Rachel Dolezal becoming an internet millionaire off of hair products and extensions. Watch and see.)

Countenance

I'm always trying to figure out what big, great thing God wants me to do, what jaw-dropping assignment He's going to bring my way. Yet time and time again, He brings me back to the simplest of things. Most recently, it's been as basic as the look on my face.

Jean Fleming, in her book Pursue the Intentional Life, calls this the "ministry of countenance." She writes about the great possibility of every face-to-face encounter, whether that's a moment of chance eye contact in a crowd or a focused conversation with one other person. Something as basic as the expression on our faces makes a huge impact on those encounters.

I used to be a small part of a video team, and occasionally I got to interview someone for a video piece. I learned how to do this by watching my friend JoAnn, who taught me that the facial expression of the interviewer, though off-camera, was essential to getting a good interview. Because I couldn't use verbal cues to encourage people in their responses ("Wow! Yes! Amazing!"), I had to use my face. I tried to keep my eyes wide and locked in on them. I smiled and remained engaged with their every word. I nodded a lot. I tried to communicate with my face, "You're doing great. Keep going!"

I got the hang of it on a video shoot, but what about in real life? Part of living fully present, my life's mantra, is making sure my face matches my words. When I'm making chitchat with a mom in the school hallway, am I fully with her, or is my mind spinning 20 paces ahead, with who needs to be where at what time and what I'm going to feed them before they get there? And if my brain is planning, strategizing, troubleshooting, what does my countenance look like? Is it saying, "I'm with you, keep going!" to the person in front of me?

My kids aren't afraid to call me out when my face and my words don't match. I can be talking in what I think is a calm voice, and one daughter in particular will say, "Why are you angry with us?" When I tell her that I'm not, she says that while my words may not be angry, my face is. Ouch.

Is there anything we give less thought to than our countenance? What's on my face as I'm in front of the check-out person at Walmart? Or in front of my AWANA kids at the end of a long Wednesday night? What do my husband and my children see on my face day in and day out, when I'm doing dishes, taking out the trash, matching socks from the laundry basket? I'm thankful to Jean Fleming for making me more aware and for sharing her prayer with me:

"Lord, I want my face to minister to people, whether to someone delivering a talk or to the person sitting across from me. Will my face serve the purposes of God? Will it communicate that the love of God lives in me? I'm too often thoughtless in face-to-face encounters. In the years remaining, please express your love and concern for people through me. I offer my face to you. Make it a channel of blessing."

Today, instead of looking for some big assignment from God, I simply offer Him my face. Who knows what He can do through me when my countenance is one of love, tenderness, affection, approval, and blessing?