On Mercy, Grace, and Smuggled Lollipops

It’s Wednesday afternoon and we are doing that thing we do every three weeks: scouring the house for the 19 borrowed books that are due—when else?—tomorrow. 

The boys collect a few Minecraft books littering the couch, the dining room table, and the backyard, dropping them in a linen bag near the front door. We are missing two Star Wars books, so I send the boys back around the house again. Check under your beds, the patio, what about your backpacks?

I follow Everett into the laundry room to supervise his backpack search because time has taught me that my children often cannot see things right in front of their face (a gift they did not inherit from me). Everett whips his arm out in front of my body to take the lead. 

“I’ll check it, Mom,” he says, unzipping his backpack, which is hanging on a hook mounted to the wall. 

I stand behind him like a warehouse supervisor, watching his inspection, making sure he’s thorough. He swipes his hand through the bag and then zips it back up, shrugging, “Not here!”

I launch forward, unconvinced, and roll my eyes with a curt, “Let ME check.”

Everett hovers next to me urgently, awkwardly, protectively. My mother’s intuition kicks in. He’s hiding something. We do this dance for a minute, back and forth.

“What’s going on, why are you being weird?”
“I’m not!”
“What’s in your backpack?”
“Nothing!”

After a quick sweep, I reach the same conclusion. The library books aren’t there. Everett ducks away with an exhale, looking relieved. (Another red flag.) I keep my hand in the backpack, scraping it along the bottom, looking for some kind of secret, some kind of clue to explain his antsy behavior. Finally, I stick my hand in the back hidden pocket and find … 15 lollipops. 

Aha. 

I remember being irritated a few weeks ago when my husband came home from the store with a package of 100 Dum Dums for class Valentines, shrugging, “This is all they had.”

We attached around 50 to the kids’ valentine cards, and the leftovers have been sitting in an open bag on the laundry room counter ever since. I forgot the bag was even there. It’s the perfect crime. How long has he been smuggling candy to school?

“Everett, why do you have all of these suckers in your backpack?”

He comes back around the corner with tears in his eyes, looking panicked, throwing me for a loop. My heart stirs. I feel another pang of mother’s intuition: something is off here. He’s quiet for a second, contemplating how much to tell me.

“I was just giving them to my friends at school!” he finally blurts out.

He’s on the verge of sobbing and his overly emotional reaction makes me think surely something else is going on. It’s not that I don’t believe him, but I have more questions. Is he bartering these lollipops at school for something else? Has he orchestrated some kind of black market at recess? Is there more to this story? I press in. 

“Ev, why are you giving suckers to kids at school?”

He looks at the floor. “I told everyone we had a bunch of extra suckers at home, and … I don’t know … I just wanted to give some to my friends,” he says. The more he explains, the more his face crumbles in remorse. 

I am completely calm. I am not yelling at him, I am not mad, I am not anything, really. I am just listening. But the onslaught of tears continues to stump me.

“Everett,” I press gently one last time in a soft voice, putting my hands on his shoulders, “Why are you so upset right now? Why are you crying?”

He looks at the floor again. And then slowly raises his tear-filled eyes to mine, begging for mercy, confessing, “Because I thought you were going to be mad.”

***

The day I am scheduled to meet with a spiritual director for the first time, I wake up at 3am, tossing and turning. I fall in and out of sleep, and finally escape into a vivid dream. In my dream, my morning alarm is blaring, but instead of the familiar chime of my cell phone, a voicemail begins playing—of my own voice.

I don’t know how I know this in the dream, but right away, I am aware that God is speaking to me through the voicemail. I am hyper aware of how important everything is, that I should take notes and remember every aspect of the voicemail when I wake up. 

At 4:59am, one minute before my alarm is set to go off for real, I wake up naturally. I blink a few times, a bit disoriented coming out of a dream that felt so tangible, so real. And I only remember one thing from the voicemail. Read Psalm 142. I know there was more to the message. More direction, more words, more guidance, but all of it is gone. I cannot remember anything else. The only piece of the dream I retain is the instruction to read Psalm 142. 

I get a cup of coffee and my ice roller, and crawl back back into bed with my Bible. I read the passage, over and over, three full times. I am looking for clues, something relevant to my life. 

Nothing stands out. 

I feel a little disappointed. And also a bit crazy.

***

Back in the kitchen, Everett’s words swirl in my head for a second. 

There’s a beat in the air, a pause, like a scene in a movie where the camera pans around in slow motion. Because I thought you were going to be mad. I am peeling back the layers like an onion, getting to the center, the crux of this reaction. 

My child is standing in front of me, visibly distressed, tears flooding his eyes, out of … fear. And not just fear. Fear of me. Fear of my reaction. My impending anger. My looming wrath. 

My heart shatters like glass, right there on the kitchen floor. Then, the whole room melts away. It’s just him, and me, and my love for him feels so intense I could burst into tears myself. I cannot wrap my arms around him fast enough, kissing the top of his head, reassuring him it’s okay, it’s fine, I’m not mad, this isn’t a big deal. I love you. I love you. Do you know how much I love you?

His body sinks against mine with relief. I can feel his breath stabilizing as he hugs me back. My mind is a runaway train. I am overwhelmed with compassion. How can I possibly articulate the depths of my love for this child? Doesn’t he know I would throw my body in front of a bus for him? Doesn’t he know, in the grand scheme of things, I do not give a damn about finding lollipops in his backpack? 

***

I find Kate in an online directory of spiritual directors, still not convinced spiritual direction is for me. And yet, when I see the invitation to schedule a free call, my fingers start typing in my contact info before I can talk myself out of it.

We meet for the first time on Zoom. Right away, I confess the skeptical part of me thinks spiritual direction might be a little woo woo. I believe in counseling and mentorship, but this? Meeting with someone who helps you process what, and how, God is speaking to you? Is that even possible? I attempt to respectfully express my doubts while also keeping an open mind. She reminds me that’s what this consultation is for, to talk about what it would be like to work together, and to see if we’re a good fit.

She is warm and friendly, and suddenly my entire life story is toppling out of my mouth.

I tell her about my upbringing, how I grew up fully immersed in a church that taught me information about God, but did not guide me how to be with God. I tell her I spent the first two decades of my life memorizing Scripture and Bible facts, but did not have an understanding of the word “grace” or the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. I try to break down what I’ve been untangling over the past decade: how I grew up in a Christian home, going to church three times a week, attending private Christian school, but somehow still completely missed the essence of the Gospel.

“It’s like I grew up knowing God in my head, but I’m still learning how to know God in my heart,” I tell her. 

I apologize for talking so much, and yet I can’t seem to stop. I tell her about a few pivotal moments that shifted my faith. I tell her about the day I woke up with the word “leave” in my head. How I knew, instantly, what that word meant and how it was to be applied. How that word followed me, consumed me, it might as well have been tattooed on my forehead. How I understood, with crystal clarity, that God was asking me to leave that church. Not The Church, but that church. I tell her about some of the key people involved in my spiritual growth. I tell her about the bible study I joined in my early twenties, about how I still remember reading the book of Galatians with a group of women and wondering where the concept of grace had been my entire life. I tell her about the trip to Liberia, where my life-long sheltered bubble finally popped, where I witnessed a group of people living out their faith in profound and powerful ways I had never seen modeled before.

I tell her about the first time I attended a church outside the one I grew up in. How I cried and cried and cried, and felt an overwhelming sense of peace, of belonging, of the Holy Spirit alive and well and stirring inside me. How I simply FELT something, and perhaps hadn’t recognized until that point how rigid and emotionless my church experience had been up until that point. 

Kate nods, listening intently, and encourages me to keep going. 

I tell her about the dream, that it feels significant, especially that it happened today of all days. I tell her I’ve never had a dream like that before, a dream where God speaks to me. Nor have I ever woken up from a dream with a specific Bible verse in my head. Not once. She asks about Psalm 142, if anything stuck out to me. Doubt creeps up my spine as I answer honestly, “Not really.”  

“Hmm,” she says, leaning back in her chair. There’s a pause, a silence I am tempted to fill but don’t. Then she asks, “Do you think this dream could simply be God’s way of telling you that He could speak to you this way? In dreams?”

I don’t tell her that for most of my life, I didn’t even believe that God could speak to me, in any way.

I simply nod my head and say, “Yes.”

***

Days after the lollipop incident, I continue replaying the scene on a loop. The fear in Everett’s eyes. His body finally sighing with relief when I hugged him.

When I tell you nothing has changed my view of God quite like becoming a mother, this is what I mean. Growing up, I was terrified of God. I feared Him, deeply, and not the type of fear we are supposed to have, one of reverence. I mean I feared him like a crying, anxious child, cowering in the kitchen. I mean I feared him like a child waiting for their parent to be consumed with rage, fully expecting to be punished after stepping out of line. 

But now?

Now I’m learning to view God as the parent who can’t embrace their frightened kid fast enough, even after they’ve messed up. 

*** 

Toward the end of the session with Kate, I tell her about Everett and the lollipops. Tears stream down my face as I recount the story: how scared he looked, how overwhelmed I felt with compassion, how I can’t stop thinking about it.

She listens and nods and asks if God could be telling me something through this exchange, through this story. 

“It clearly had an impact on you,” she says. 

I consider my own reaction. The tidal wave of mercy. Compassion filling up inside my body. I remember feeling nothing short of overwhelmed, hyper aware that Everett does not—nor will he ever—fully comprehend the depths of my love for him. That there’s nothing he could ever do to lose my love.

I love you. 
I love you. 
Do you know how much I love you?

Those words swirl in my head for the rest of the day, from God to me, playing like a voicemail.