Bauserman Cottage

October 13, 2008

Psalm 91:2

My refuge

I am not at all confident that my brain circuits are back to normal, whatever that is, but I am eager to go on, with apologies if this is premature.  If I mess it up I will try again, which is the story of my life right now. I just spilled my first cup of tea all over the kitchen as I have not adjusted mentally or emotionally to the one-handed life. This material in Psalm 91 has such a hold on me I have to get some things out.  As we begin to look at this magnificent, anonymously written glorification of God, I want you to hold two ideas in your mind.  One is “What did I really need when I was a child and what were the deficits and failures?”  The other is, if you are blessed with children of any age, “What does each one of my children need right now from me as a parent.  What have the deficits and failures been in the past and how can I help them now?”

Talking to so many grown children reflecting back over their lives I have drawn a lot of conclusions about what we all needed and need.  It is not surprising to me that two images in this psalm summarize the whole picture, and I’ll spend my time talking about one of them now. As I have shared earlier, I believe that the key post-Fall issue is fear.  Life outside of Eden must have been a horror for them.  Their bodies and souls were used to total safety and peace and total provision of every need.  They found themselves without God or safety or the things that they needed, and the door was locked to home. We were not made to live apart from God and nothing can substitute, no matter how hard we try, and we all try awfully hard. It is easier, I think, to consider our children and what they need than to look at ourselves.

They all show us early on that there are things that make them feel unsafe: pain, fatigue, startling events, and frightening images. These are all very distressing to them, and they need our help. They can’t make themselves feel safe on their own.  We are their refuge.  And if we are not a refuge for them they will carry fearfulness with them wherever they go. This fact only changes shape as they grow.  There are always going to be things that feel too much for them, whether they know it or not, and they need us to see the signs and help them get safe.  Home needs to be a refuge for them forever. It needs to be a safe ecology, separate from the world, different from the world as well as corrective of what the world does to them. Too many homes are not refuges because they are just like the world, over-stimulating, performance oriented, and a place where they don’t really feel known and loved for who they are.  The foundational stone in child development is to feel known and loved. You know at a deep level who your child is, you treat her accordingly, and she grows up in a world, at least at home, where she can be herself and that self is going to be nurtured and protected forever.  It is how we come to know and love ourselves, which is the Biblical standard and necessary ingredient for loving others. 

All parents, pardon the painful universal indictment, fail at this critical task, even people like you and me who try hard and should know better how to pull it off.  Almost all of us want to love our children superbly, but none of us knows how. The shelter of God’s wings is the refuge for our children and the place where we can face our own deficits and learn to really know and love our children in a humble way.  We need safety ourselves to open our hearts to face these painful truths and the Lord is quick to comfort, not to mention the instructive, enabling power of the Holy Spirit. Most of us have little in the way of refuge experiences in our own lives, rarely having had this as children.  Sometimes a special relative seems to really know and like us and sense what we need, and it feels great.  Sometimes a space in the home feels safe and secure and we can go there to rest and recover.  If we are really blessed, our parents know what we need before we do and they help us get away from the stresses of the world by creating a different kind of world in the home.

We always worked hard to make our home a place where our sons could be themselves. It was a creative space, and they could get away to follow their need, whether to create or rest or swing from trees or kick a soccer ball. Our exhausted college artist son just came home and watched soccer and slept for three days. Thank God he knew to do what he really needed.  I never did have this good sense.  For me growing up, refuge was not a concept I understood.  I was going hard or crashing.  Later for me, refuge was a two week September vacation at the beach during our home school years when we could afford the trip.  How sad that I saw the rest of my life as busyness and waiting for vacation.  I had no idea what I really needed or where to get it, or even that I was entitled to pursue these glorious September days of freedom and rest, making choices just because they felt right.  I understand refuge now and seek it daily with great diligence. 

Only the Lord knows us and can love us as we have always needed. He is our available refuge at all times, in the greatest and smallest needs. The desire of our hearts, that someone knows us to our marrow and can love every cell.  And He wants us to pursue Him for every need.  Refuge is not an idea that many of us grasp intuitively, and we are all starving for a safe and loving haven where we are off duty, loved for our presence and cared for in ways we didn’t even know we had needs. Such is the refuge we have under God’s wings.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Joe's Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.