The Struggle and The Spiritual Thumb Sucker

Plus a Mother's Day love note.

Today I have two sections. Section one - for Mother’s Day. It’s short but that has nothing to do with it’s importance.

Annie. You are my mother. I love you. And without you there would be no me. Without your courage to press on and to let nature take it’s course I would not exist. And how sad and boring that would have been. If you could step inside my heart (I think you’ve been there several times) you would know that it is intertwined with yours. You are my Annie. An angel haloed; forever backlit with the glow of heavenly light, twinkling, singing, magical in front of my three year old little girl eyes. You are my Annie. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.

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Mom, because of you we always had a leg up. I know you’re resting in peace now. I love you. Happy Happy Heavenly Mother’s Day.

Mom, Annie, Me. Judging by the high waists…early 90’s

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The Struggle and The Spiritual Thumb Sucker

I was a thumb sucker as a child. No real revelation if you’d grown up in my house. I needed something to pacify. I didn’t have a blankey. I usually walked around with my other thumb and forefinger just inside the waistline of my pants grazing the top tip of my underwear.

I’m going to just move forward because that’s too much to explain. However, my sister-aunt who was roughly sixteen years older than me once confronted me.

“What are you doing with your hand?” She said it in such a way that implied:

YOU ARE A COMPLETE FREAK. YOU ARE A WEIRDO. STOP DOING THAT.

I was about five.

I did stop. (Not the thumb sucking but I took my hand outa my pants.)

Weirdo.

But I thank her now. Because even though it probably wasn’t that weird it could have become way wacko. Where was the teddy bear? Anyway in my defense the cotton was worn and soft like a blankey. It was comforting.

(And weird.)

I’ve had some time to be able to sit quietly in the chapel at my parish and pray. I’ve been struggling inwardly about those ever present “next steps.”

I see a man with his wife. I've seen them a few times before in this chapel. He scoots and shuffles up to the front row, folds up his walker and slowly sits, and I find myself thinking:

“Am I going to be eighty-three still struggling with this particular thorn in my flesh, still concerned, persecuting myself over who I think I am and, more to the point, what I do? Will I still be obsessed with how to say this/that/theother on my website? There are people (a whole hell of a lot of people) who do not have their own website, you little poisonous self-promoting elf.”

Then I immediately remembered how I finally stopped sucking my thumb at age thirteen. (Yes, thirteen.) Up to that time everyone in the family tried everything they could – Tobasco sauce, physically pulling my thumb out of my mouth, as well as warnings about my teeth going crooked. Nothing worked. Then one day I thought:

“Am I going to be sixteen and still sucking my thumb? Am I going to be dating and still sucking my thumb?”

And I stopped right then. Right there. I just stopped. Because for once I could see who I was headed to be: a dating thumb sucking high schooler with severe buck teeth.

That's what I thought as I watched and contemplated this devout elderly man. Will I still be struggling with comparison and identity? Will I still be worried about how I am defined by what I say I currently on a dotcom?!

Will I still be spiritually sucking my thumb?!

Part of 1 Corinthians 13¹ comes to mind. (Verse 11 to be exact.)

When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became an adult, (ie. when I grew up, when I came into womanhood), I put away childish things.

I spiritually stopped sucking my thumb.

I often see memed “The struggle is real.”  I disagree. The struggle feels real just like all things of this world. But we are called to not be of this world but merely (merely?) in it. God's love is what is real and the only thing that has true reality to it. The struggle is smoke and mirrors, a distraction to keep you from the greatest Love of all.

So what happens when the self-medicating spiritual thumb is popped out?

Perhaps, perhaps, the breath of life flows in where there was a childish cork. Stillness and the uncertainty of a new armor replaces the toy, the blankey, the infant milk. You begin a new journey with new food of sustaining power, wisdom, faith, courage. It takes an enormous amount of courage to move forward without the dependable comforts – without the pacifier.

So we pray for grace.

What is grace again? When you feel the goodness of God wash over you - and you had nothing to do with it. You didn’t have to do a thing. A free gift.

It comes. It flows. It tingles. It tickles.

It delights.

You will, because of the very obvious fact you're human, get “it” wrong. But God gets it right. He always gets it right. Pray for the fearlessness (a bold prayer) of a warrior spirit; filled, overflowing, with love and mercy. We need much more of that in the world, and it starts with you. (Well, not just you – Jeez, that would be too much pressure.) But in your life…yes…it does begin with you.

Here is my question. (Not only to myself but to you.) Where are you too comfortable?

Where are you lulling yourself to sleep not because you’re tired but because you are frightened?

Sit up. Take the thumb out. See that the struggle is a fog. Love yourself into a standing position. Shields up (the kind that let the love in but keep the attack out.)

Now?

Proceed.

Yes, Friend. Press. On.

1. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

2.  I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13.