Vulnerability

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.
- Frances Bacon, 'Of Marriages and Single Life' Essays, 1625

Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.
- Elizabeth Stone

I first heard this Elizabeth Stone quotation when my oldest child was a baby. Her words struck me and stuck, like rice cereal to a highchair tray. She expressed the shocking and overwhelming vulnerability I felt as a mother.

Now, if there were a fire, I wouldn't just yell to Husband and get myself safely outside. Now I would not leave the house without Huckle, even if it meant running into a fiery room to grab him. (Okay, I'd run back for Husband too, but he's self-sufficient and likely to get himself to safety.) Now would I sacrifice my life for an important cause, like standing up to Nazi atrocities or participating in the Underground Railroad? Would I hold true to my standards if my child were threatened? Definitely if I were single and childless. But now that I'm a wife and mother? Wow, I hope so. But standing up for a dangerous cause would now be layered in heart-wrenching difficulties.

Once you become a parent, a new layer of vulnerability is added to your existence. Some of the most important 'parts' of you, in fact the beings you hold more dear than your own self, are often beyond your control. And your heart only wanders farther from your body as the children age: there's the first day of school when you realize they aren't in the same place as you and you cannot know everything they experience and immediately intervene. The fire scenario changes, since you might not hear about it until the damage is done -- you are miles away. Even though the Columbine killings happened before my children were born, this event, like 9/11, is branded on my consciousness and probably on the consciousness of parents everywhere. What if my child were trapped in the building with the killers?

And then come the years of growing independence, which culminate in the dreaded day your teenager gets a drivers license and then again the double-dreaded day you drop off your kid at college. And, if that weren't difficult enough, the college years lead to adulthood, when the child you love and nurtured may decide to live far away and not communicate. And then there are car accidents, cancers, kidnappings, and whatever other calamities your imagination throws out there.

Sometimes, as Bacon said, it feels as if you have given hostages to fortune, increasing the odds of something terrible happening that shakes your world.

But here's the key point: if you think YOU are vulnerable, imagine how God feels! At first that sounds counter-intuitive -- He's the most powerful being in the universe and is in control. He can intervene at any point.

But God set up His world to allow free will -- He already had angels whose sole purpose is to do His bidding and worship Him. God wanted beings that could chose to worship Him, the way I'd rather raise a child than own a robot even if the robot will never disobey or say, "I hate you".
And, of course, that also means we beings can chose not to worship Him. And giving a choice other than good (God is good; worshiping Him is loving and doing good) means allowing evil.

The crazy thing is this: regardless of which you chose, God loves you.

John 3:16, For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. [my italics]

I Timothy 2:4, ...God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. [my italics]

You see? God loves every one of His human creations and desires that each one of them be saved. In so many parts of the Bible does He express His love and show His vulnerability. Again and again He pleads with His people to turn back to him and when they reject Him. He compares Himself to the spouse of an unfaithful partner cheats over and over again or some. He expresses anger and indignation and hurt, and yet He forgives and then forgives again. Or He compares Himself to a parent mourning for a prodigal child who has run away in body and in spirit. God knows rejection and sadness, yet He never turns his back on us.

Matthew 32:37, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.

This makes Him the most vulnerable of all, more than me with the limited number of individuals I even know, much less love more than self.

And that's what separates me from Frances Bacon (along with nearly 400 years and many other beliefs, though I'm a big fan of his 'scientific method'): my beloved family members are not hostages of fortune but individuals jointly loved by me and by God. He put them in my life so I can be His arms to hug them and His voice to speak His words of peace and love and goodness. I am His gift to them, and they are His gift to me. He cares for them more than I ever could and, unlike me, He CAN be with them everywhere. He has the knowledge of what is best for them and the power to see that His plans for them are fulfilled. I need to entrust my precious children to God and let Him be vulnerable on my behalf.
Yes, easier said than done, but what a relief it will be to let go of my fears!

Proverbs 14:26, He who fears the LORD has a secure fortress, and for his children it will be a refuge.