It happened a few months ago after church. I was cleaning up goldfish crumbs and trying to find matching lids to the play doh containers after Sunday School when the boys needed to use the bathroom. "Go together," I said. Which is my standard answer. When you get two kids born shock and awe style, there's hard stuff. Like having two kids in diapers, not taking a shower alone for three years straight, and getting kicked out of the library for being too loud. (True story there.) But one of the PERKS of having kids so close together is that they can keep an eye on each other. One can do his thing while the other can run back if there's some kind of problem. You know. Like if your brother filled the sink to the top to see if he could make the bubbles slide down the side like the Mississippi River and then turned off the tap without ever washing his hands. Important stuff like that. How was I to know that today there would be an ACTUAL problem to report on.
After ten minutes, I stopped and realized how quiet it was. I wondered how long the boys had been gone and my heart skipped a beat. That mom instinct told me it was too long, right? I was just rushing down the hall to find them when they came tearing around the corner sobbing hysterically. They were both crying so hard I couldn't understand them. They were sweaty and flushed and in a true panic. "What in the world happened?" I asked them over and over. Finally, they calmed down enough to tell me in spurts that they had been locked inside the bathroom. I guess the door had gotten stuck and they were in there pounding and kicking and pulling as hard as they could but they couldn't get out. Then they started screaming and yelling and pounding but none of us heard them. I guess this must've gone on for about ten minutes. Which doesn't seem all that long. Unless you're 5 and 6 and stuck in a bathroom. As they started to calm down, I noticed that they weren't so upset about being stuck. But they were in a complete panic because we hadn't come for them! Every time one of them would start re-telling how they were stuck and couldn't open the door, they'd get to the part about "and we knew you would come but you didn't and we thought you would leave without us!" and my poor little guys would start sobbing again.
By then the husband found me sitting in the hall with two distraught boys on my lap, and we assured them over and over that OF COURSE we were coming. And that we would NEVER have left without them. Didn't they know that? Daddy would have broken the door down to get to them! Mama would have sat by the door all day and all night holding their little fingers under the gap til the firemen got them out. Nothing would keep us from them. We would never, ever leave them. And nothing could make us!
Our whole little soggy group went home and got distracted with lunch and play time. But my mind kept going back to how very scared they were in there. And to think they thought I wasn't coming! I had to blink back my own tears. It had truly hurt their little hearts so much. That thought of abandonment so much worse than the fear of being trapped. And I remembered our own Father. How He watched while His only son was taken away and beaten and tortured and left to die. But so much worse. How He DIDN'T watch while His son took on our sins.
He turned His face away.
From His own son. And when His son needed Him the most! Can we imagine it? Could I have stood outside that door, knowing that my children were being hurt and not gone to them? What force could have been strong enough to keep us from running to them when they cried out to us? What door could have kept us out? What army wouldn't we have fought our way through? What ocean or desert wouldn't we have crossed? Because I'm their MOM. And he's their DAD. And those are OUR KIDS.
But God did the unthinkable on that dark afternoon. He turned His face away. He heard His heartbroken son ask him, "Father, why have you abandoned me?" But He remained silent. In an incredible, unfathomable act of love He turned His back. When everything in Him wanted to speak the word and have Jesus in His arms again, He left Him there. It was a demonstration of love unlike the world had ever seen.
And He did it all for us.
Since the kids took our lives by storm, we've begun to understand the Father's love in a whole new way. And as a mom, the precious gift of His very own son amazes me more than ever. As we gather our kids around us this Easter, I hope we can all remember not only how much we love them. But how much we have been loved! On a very Good Friday many years ago.
"He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all--how will He not also, graciously give us all things?" Romans 8:32
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