Falling down the stairs.

A couple of months ago, Nixon fell down the stairs at my parents’ house. Where were his parents, right? Ha! I guess he suddenly felt brave enough and old enough and big enough to just try and walk down face forward. I was across the room at the time. I knew he was in my care because Aaron had just yelled down the hall to make sure I had him. “Yes,” I said. But I was cleaning up the toys on the floor with my back to him while he (I thought) walked my direction. But then suddenly I looked over my shoulder and he was at the edge of the stairs. It was one of those moments where you see what’s going to happen the very split second before it happens.

“NIXON!” I yelled in a way only a terrified mom would yell at their child. And then he immediately went tumbling down the stairs as I ran after him. Thankfully my parents’ stairs are split into two small flights with a landing between them. So technically he only rolled down a half flight of stairs. But he was on his back on the landing by the time I reached him. He started bawling and I was shaking as I picked him up.

The thing is, Nixon knows how to go down the stairs. He knows how to slide down on his belly because Aaron taught him several months before this and he’s been using the technique ever since. If you tell him to slide, he’ll get on his belly halfway across the room and scoot himself all the way to the stairs and then down them. But this time. This time he didn’t. And this time I wasn’t there to catch him.  

How many times do we stop our kids from getting hurt and they don’t even know it? How many times have I grabbed Nixon’s arm before he fell down or held his hand so he didn’t trip or reached for him before he fell into the corner of the table? How many times have I been there to hold him back before he tumbled down the stairs?

My pastor used this example one time to talk about God. We get upset at God when bad things happen, but how many times has he stopped us from getting hurt? How many times has he been there to hold us back before we hit our head and we didn’t even know it? How many times has he held us safe without our knowledge and we just walk along through life? But it’s the time he doesn’t stop it - the time he doesn’t hold back the pain, that we get angry and think he must be awful.

A couple of years ago, Aaron and I saw the movie, The Heart of Man. It’s a documentary about the story of the prodigal son and God’s desire for us to come back to him – how he made a way back long before we ever chose our sin over him. In the movie, one of the people they interview is Paul William Young, the author of the book, The Shack. One of the most poignant things he said was that it took him “all of fifty years to wipe the face of my father completely off the face of God.” Oh man. That will preach —just that line alone.

Because I think we do that a lot –we consciously or subconsciously let God have the face of our earthly father and then use that as reason not to come to our heavenly one. If your dad left you, then logic says God will leave you. If your dad was abusive, God will be abusive. If your dad had an anger problem, God has an anger problem. If your dad was never around, then you’re just an afterthought to God as well. Whatever the case may be. Or, if your dad was loving and attentive and gave you everything you wanted, then God should be also, and yet you don’t have what you want, so then you feel as if God is withholding for no reason. It’s evident that our fathers have so much influence on our view of God.

I think the most damaging view we might have of God is the mad, pacing father. We often think he’s angry with us – for disobedience, for falling away, for walking away, for choosing something else over him. He’s angry and yelling and pacing around wondering, “Who do you think you are?” I don’t know about you, but coming back to that kind of rage doesn’t seem all that inviting. Can you imagine if, when Nixon fell down the stairs, I just stood over him and yelled at him instead of comforted him? Or if I left him to cry at the bottom of the stairs and just yelled over at him, “Get up! You know better!” How terrible of a parent would I be in that moment?

But I think sometimes that’s how we view God when we mess up. We do something we know we shouldn’t or we get ourselves into trouble somehow – we get ourselves jammed up as we’re so prone to do—and we decide he probably doesn’t want to see us anymore. He probably wants us to go to our room and not come out because after all we knew how to slide down the stairs but we chose not to. We launched face first down the stairs because we were pretty sure we knew better.

One of the most freeing things I realized a couple years ago was that God wasn’t shouting at me about my sin. He wasn’t pacing around, angry and threatening. He was sitting there with me, willing me to choose something better – hoping I would see his light and life and following him as a better choice than my sin choices. Psalm 139:8 says, “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol (hell or the grave), you are there.” Through my decisions in my twenties, I made my bed in the depths of hell so many times and what I finally understood is that when I did that, he laid on the floor next to my bed waiting for me to choose something better – waiting for me to choose him instead. He was the better thing, the only thing, I needed. 

When we do fall down the stairs —when the horrible thing happens, when we get ourselves into trouble or find ourselves there somehow – what if instead of angry about our choices, what if he shouts for us right before it happens in one last attempt to hold us back? LYNDI! And then when we tumble down the stairs and land flat on our backs, perhaps its Jesus that stands over us and asks if we’re okay and holds our hand while we get back up. Do we view him that way? As the attentive father that Scripture shows him to be?

After I realized the truth about God – that he wasn’t angry or shouting at me and that he was there with me when I chose poorly --anytime I choose sin over him, I just imagine he’s there offering something else, a better way. Jesus is always there —not hating me, angry with me, yelling at me. He hates the allure of sin, but not me. His thoughts toward me, toward you, are precious. His love for me is endless. He knew I would choose the grave when he went to the cross – he knew I would make every mistake I’ve ever made and will make, he knew we would choose lust and greed and murder and still he said, “She’s MINE! You will not have her. She’s mine.” My heart has no capacity for that level of love. I am known, chosen and loved. And the moment you place your trust in Him, so are you.

Of course when Nixon fell down the stairs, I was a wreck. I patted his back and smoothed his hair while I told him he was okay. He was done crying in a couple of minutes, but I was still worried about him. He’s my son. I will never not care about him and tend to him when he needs me and even when he thinks he doesn’t.

But I guess the point I want to make to you is that that is how God cares about you. God doesn’t have the face of your father, regardless of how your father treated you. If you want to know about God, look at the life and love of Jesus. Look at the way he treated others, how he cared for the sick, how he tenderly lifted the face of the adulterous woman in the crowd. He is the father we need —the one we’ve been looking for all this time. The father who won’t abandon us or show up late or get angry over our missteps. He’s the father who cares what makes you happy and what makes you sad and knows anyway because he MADE you with his careful hands. He can be trusted to lift your head, to pick you up at the bottom of the stairs and hold you close no matter how many times you fall down.