Tuesday, July 12, 2005
What God Wants
“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” —John 14:9
I dug it deep and scraped out its veins with my shovel. I had to stop the parties taking place on my lawn and driveway. This was the whole idea behind digging the trench. Every raindrop in the southeast was gathering on my lawn in pools and screaming with delight as they slid down my drainage system only every now and then.
When the Weather Channel started discussing Hurricane Dennis, I got concerned. I don’t like hurricane parties. They always get out of hand. So I decided I’d do something this year. I went about busting up the party.
I used a shovel and every muscle in my body. My hands look like I joined the local Fight Club, as if I’d fought Brad Pitt’s character and lost. But I didn’t lose the match with the trench.
The ground was soft with raindrop corpses. The shovel went through the dirt like a fork through pudding. But three inches deep, I hit something. The shovel made a funny noise the way shovels do when they strike concrete or brick.
I worked my shovel around with my left foot. I uncovered a brick, as I expected. But I wasn’t prepared for the black coal. The mother of night was in my yard. It shimmered in lumps. It made me wonder where this coal came from. I live in Alabama, not West Virginia.
My house was built in 1910. And the place where I was digging in my backyard close to the fence used to be an alley for trash trucks and moonshine runners. It’s not where I thought I’d uncover coal, but I pictured a man in his overcoat and coal bucket in hand, making his way out my backdoor and into the alleyway.
Then his freehand grabbed the bottom of the bucket to spill the contents—snot like icicles hanging from his nose. And I wondered how cold they must have been. I wondered how life worked back then when coal was the warmth and filth of a generation.
The trench I dug was going to transform into a French drain. I’d Googled one, and it seemed easy enough. You dig, you put down ground sheeting, you cover with rocks, you wrap the ground sheeting over the top of the rocks, and then you replace the topsoil.
It took me two days to finish what seemed like an easy task. At intervals, my wife and neighbors came back to the alley to encourage and harass. I’d shoot them a smile while wiping sweat. Then an unexpected visitor stepped into the mud surrounding my trench. I looked up to find Sloan, my fifteen-year-old daughter, standing there, and she said, “Dad, I want to help.”
Now when your teenage daughter is standing before you desiring to help, you know what’s coming next. You know she will ask, “How much will you pay me?”
But Sloan never asked the question. She grabbed the shovel after I gave instructions. Her job was to replace the topsoil, and she proved to be good help. It was grace really. So unexpected. But I still wasn’t ready to let down my guard. Maybe she was setting me up.
I figured she’d eventually let the shovel handle hit the mud and demand payment. So I didn’t mention money when Sloan asked hundreds of questions about the French drain. “Why do you put down sheeting? Why rocks?” Questions like that.
I detailed each answer, as she shoveled and listened. I described the theory behind it. I crouched and ran my hand above the trench to show the slope it needed to drain. I could tell she was actually interested. Man, was she good! I was buying every bit of it, as she shoveled without upfront negotiation. I knew she was a day laborer. She wouldn’t be back tomorrow, if the project lasted that long, and according to Jill it would go on for many days, perhaps years.
Then unexpectedly—about the time sweat formed on her face for the first time under work conditions—she let the shovel drop and announced she had had enough. She was going inside. Then she walked away with no mention of pay. It warmed my heart. I felt a sense of pride as she proved that not all teenagers are out to make a quick buck off a hurricane. Some genuinely desired to help carry the load of domestication. And I watched her disappear across the yard and into the house, thrilled my wallet had dodged a bullet.
I finished the trench on Sunday afternoon with a huge blister in the palm of my hand to show for it. Yes, I was wearing gloves. But when you possess the force of my pectorals, things can catch aflame easily. I nursed the blister while waiting on Hurricane Dennis. I was ready for him, but I wasn’t prepared for what Sloan did later that night when one of her fellow cheerleader friends came to visit.
I stood in the kitchen pouring cereal in a bowl when I heard Sloan tell her friend, Sarah, that we put in a French drain. “You want to see it?” she asked.
Now this wouldn’t seem so unnatural unless you knew these two cheerleaders who cared more about who was online than a French drain. So I followed them to the backdoor and watched them walk into the backyard while Sloan described a French drain. Now if it had been talk about a French kiss everyone would understand. But this had nothing to do with the French’s contribution to sex. But it had everything to do with the way it made her father feel—all warm inside.
When Sloan and her friend walked back into the kitchen, I held out my palm and showed them the blister the size of a quarter. They emitted sounds of repugnance. Then they went to the computer to see who was online. But for a minute, the father’s work ruled their voluntary attention.
I realized teens don’t always want just money, even though the percentage of voluntary time they give you compared to their lifespan is one, one-hundredth of a second. But charity exists. Time with the father was more than asking for money. It was front-page news with her friend, and you can go to bed on nights like this, feeling valued. As a parent, we can be ignored for one more day, knowing that these moments actually exist when our work becomes front-page news.
Maybe this is all the Father desires. Maybe He desires to be valued. Maybe He’d feel honored if we just told one person about His work in the world, making Him front-page news. Maybe He’d feel what I felt as a father when my daughter walked into my presence—for no money or ride to the theater—and helped create a French drain because she wanted to spend time with the father with no strings attached.
This isn’t asking for much. But this is what God wants. For I know in His presence He will hold out His palm to show me His work in the world, to reveal the wound my sins put there. A wound I believe He received right along with the Son. And seeing His work in the palm of His hand will be enough to cause me to love Him for a few more billion years (John 14:9).
© 2007 by Robert Stofel