Starring into The Abyss

I was starring into the abyss!

Even though I have a strong heart, it was a sight that would have sent the English cleaning ladies on the BBC's How Clean Is Your House fleeing in terror.

The closet of a seventeen year-old boy. . .

Deposits had been made for some time.

NO withdrawals or corrections in recent recorded history.

I flipped the light switch a second, then a third time. The result was the same. No amount of urging could entreat a greater response from the forty watt bulb. There was only so much it could do in its heroic struggle against the black hole of adolescent procrastination.

This was the second day of "my gift" to my son. Lest you mistake me for a weak-willed parent, I had been prompted by the Holy Spirit to straighten his room and clean out his closet.

This was no task I would have considered on my own. I mean, there are some things well below the pay grade of a 60-year old father. After all, the Battle of the Wills was at stake! No self-respecting parent would surrender to a strong-willed teenager...UNLESS it was an Act of God!

Famous last words!

This came in the midst of identity crises, girlfriend troubles, employment frustrations, financial shortfalls, friend betrayals, spiritual confusion, personal woundings...In other words, during a normal rash of family issues, when my wife and children's life-issues weren't fixed, and they weren't being easy to live with, God reminded me they were His gifts to me!

It's very powerful...especially when you realize you have been treating God's gifts as if they were your life problems.

Well,..I'm a fixer. A tinker. That's the way God wired me.

But in the flesh…my tinkering skills hadn't worked out well with our/their problems. Soulishly and emotionally, we've been like porcupines bumping into each other, trying to dig out of the same hole of frustration.

At the Holy Spirit's prompting the next Monday morning, I was to (WITHOUT telling anyone in the family why I was doing it) straighten my youngest son's room. Here is the place he "lets down his hair"…and everything else about his life! It took about an hour just to pick up the clothes and organize his DVDS & video games, food carcasses, empty glasses, make the bed, etc.

However, the next morning, after I swallowed my pride, steeled myself, opened the closet door, and stated into Vault of Neglect and Repressed Issues, I discovered as much about myself as I would about my teen. Here was the closet into which everything dissappeared when he cleaned his room and didn't want to face the task of organizing his world. Games and toys and letters of faded interest joined the pile. Unsorted clothing and shoes became a growing, evolving eclectic reflection of his active, athletic lifestyle.

And secrets! Things he hid in embaressment from family. Issues from school and home which told volumes about his attitude, his behavior. Secrets, which, in some cases, were a betrayal of our relationship as father and son. I was now privy to them. How was I to handle them?

Even more telling...as I went though the process of sorting, hanging, straightening, righting, and washing...was reminants of creative talents he had lain aside to the distractions of later electronic, adrenalin-addictions and relationships. The art pads, the oils, the small guitar amp, the bottle of valve oil for the trumpet…all giftings forsaken for more immediate, emotional quick-fixes.

It wasn't hard to draw the conclusion my son's room, and his closet in particular, was a true reflection of his inner life. Here was a life, not as he wanted the world to see it, but as it is to those he lives with.

Until recently, my own Vault of Neglect and Repressed Issues has remained just as unprobbed and unsorted as that of my son's physical one. Heart woundings and flawed assumptions about God kept me from trusting Him to puck the thorns from my wounds and release my secret yearnings. The inner stress between who I was and who I wanted the world to see, robbed most days of joy.

Perhaps that's true of everyone. We all have a closet of life's experiences, secrets and dreams. Seldom do we allow another to crack the door for fear the disarray will alarm them. Equally stressful, thoughts of introspection drive us to increased activity lest we meet ourselves in those few moments between when our heads hit the pillow and sleep wraps it's fingers around our minds in fitful slumber.

Yet, we have a Heavenly Father who comes to sort through our clutter, to "hang, straighten, righten, and wash" the pile we have jumbled inside. The clean clothes He will fold and hang. The sox He will pair. The love notes He will collect. Memories He will treasure. Giftings He will not withhold…and secrets are His to protect.

For most of the human race, our concept of God has been Reasoned UP. The very use of the term father, husband, man, or brother is limiting. We assign to Him the human characteristics of humans males we're exposed to, good and bad; IE. harsh, condemning, judgmental, withholdings, critical, giving, loving, tender.

However, God can ONLY be understood by REVELATION Down from heaven.

"I don't think the way you think. The way you work isn't the way I work." Isaiah 55:8 (The Message)

Jesus, Himself, told us that if we wanted to know what the Heavenly Father was like, take a look at HIM.

"You've been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don't understand? To see me is to see the Father." John 14:9 (The Message)

I'm keenly aware not everyone's had positive experiences with fathers who've discovered their teenager's secrets. Some have ripped families apart. Even the revival of buried dreams, giftings or lost loves may have created painful rifts when a child's heart veers from the parents unfulfilled hopes for their offspring.

But I can promise you, when that Heavenly Father comes, there is an UN-earthly tenderness to the way He handles the secrets, the wounds, the stories, the dreams. He sorts the confusion of your closet…not to bring guilt, but to give you a new start. You can breath freer when you don't have anything to hide anymore. It's easier to gaze into the gift of grace than abyss of confusion and guilt.

If there was any doubt, Jesus said:

"The thief (satan) is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of." John 14:9 The Message)