As I grew older, I learned about other gaps. When a dear doctor finally diagnosed the pain in my neck that I’d suffered for ten years as a 2 ½ inch, thorn-like bone that was growing from the back of my neck and poking into my throat, I was ecstatic! It was an “elongated styloid process!” Finding out that my symptoms had a name meant I was not alone! Others had been here and experienced this before me! Someone had crossed the gap and was able to explain it—or at least treat it! Ahh... hope!
When one of our sons was finally diagnosed with autism when he was four years old, I felt like I was tied to a see-saw teetering back and forth between relief and despair. I had known something was amiss. The ‘gap’ in our relationship with Tommy was not being experienced by other parents with their children. It wasn’t a gap of ‘things’ but a gap of ‘missing things.’ Being told by the doctors that my instincts and observations were right was affirming and stress-relieving. Knowing that many other parents had been able to live the life that would now be ours was comforting. Autism was still there; it was not conquered, but something just as important was: the gap was crossed. We were not alone. We found fellowship and compassion and even accountability and direction in a community of parents of autistic children.
We are not made to be alone. God spoke to Adam in the Garden of Eden saying, “...It is not good that the man should be alone...” [Gen 2:18a]. “Anthropos” (man) also translates as “human being.” NONE of us human beings are made to be alone. We have to somehow overcome the gaps between ourselves and the others God has placed in our lives if we want to have the blessing of not being alone.
I have a favorite children’s sermon I share using a piece of pottery I purchased at a folk festival back in Charlotte, NC in 1971. It is a sort of pitcher that is one-third unglazed, one-third glazed in deep blue, and one-third glazed with the deep blue covered by a thick clear finish coat. Holding the pitcher one day, I saw it as an image of myself and my relationship with God. Part of me is as rough and scratchy as the unsmoothed raw clay fired without a finish. This is the part of me that I have not yet put into God’s hands for refining. We all have those parts. Other parts of me are being finished – being transformed by the love and discipline of God. Finally, there is a very small part of me that is transformed and completely sealed with a smooth, clear finish. Not much – but some.
Amazingly, when others look at the old clay pitcher on the sealed, finished side, they are able to see their own image. They can see themselves. Nothing is there to break up the reflection.
Could it be that it is only as we are refined by God – as the clay of our being is smoothed, and transformed and sealed, that the gaps that separate us from one another are polished away? Could it be that only as people are able to see themselves in us – or as we are able to see ourselves in them – do we have the comfort and assurance that we are understood and not alone? Could it be that that this is what Jesus meant when he prayed for us in the Garden of Gethsamene saying:
“Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.... The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” [John 17:11b, 22-23]
I guess another way of saying all this is that a fully sanctified, refined soul can welcome and be in relationship with anyone without a gap – especially autistic sons, or head-strong children, or (gulp...) sinners, because a refined soul knows the time spent on the potter’s wheel in the hands of God that it took to get there.
I’ve got a long way to go...
Love in the Lord,
PH
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