Our new Green Machine is a lightweight dream, easy to store in the cellar and bring up the stairs and leave in the back hall once snow season begins. There's only one major drawback. You need an outside electrical outlet and a one hundred foot extension cord to operate it.
Last Winter, my husband, gallant man that he is, insisted on going out alone to do snow clean-up and get to know his new compadre. Unfortunately the cord tends to get lost in the snow so that it's easy to lose it and run over it with the machine. It also gets tangled between the operator's legs, making it easier for him to trip.
So, after our orange cord sported several lengths of black electrical tape and my husband came close to taking snow baths, we evolved a plan. I would accompany him outside as Keeper of the Cord. It was the best way to make sure my husband and his Green Buddy would get back inside as soon as possible, both unscathed by their mighty battle with the Snow Machine.
We resumed that partnership today as we tackled our new five inches. I walked behind Paul, paying out the cord. I kept it as high as his knees and to his right side. Sometimes he got ahead of me and yanked on the cord, asking for more slack. Other times, I pulled lengths of cord back so that it didn't slacken too much; otherwise Paul would have tripped over it.
I kept coiling and re-coiling, working to keep the tension just right and the rest of the coils out of the snow blower's way. That cord was Paul's and my connection, source of our partnership, requiring movements intricate as a spontaneous dance. I couldn't take my eyes off of him or our cord or a dangerous mishap would have occurred.
As I worked I thought of how the orange cord I was paying out was so similar to the umbilical cord that first feeds a child and which never does get completely snipped. The partnership between parents and a growing child is an intricate dance of tightening and paying out that now-invisible-but-just-as-real cord. We try to keep at a distance behind him, gently paying out the cord, trying to respect his independence as he learns to "operate" his own life.
Sometimes she yanks on the cord, asking for more slack. She thinks we're doing too much micromanaging! Other times she moves into crisis mode and we move closer, tightening up the cord as she cries in our arms over a failed relationship. Parents and their growing children move in this intricate dance, and we do not dare to take our loving eyes off them lest they trip or get tangled up.
But, just like the Green Machine and us, our child will always need that cord, that connection with us, need to know it's there. It's the essence of our unconditional love - always there. In fact, let's face it. We're all little Green Machines who can't run without a cord of love binding us to someone who cares.
And if we're all little Green Machines, it's God Who is paying out our spiritual umbilical cords. We literally can't operate without Him. He gives us our freedom, tightening and slackening the cord of our independence, ready to quietly support our choices of which way to go as we operate our lives.
It's an intricate dance with Him. Sometimes we give a yank, signaling we know which way we're going and we need some slack. Other times, He quietly tightens up the slack and pulls us into His loving arms so we can sob out our heartbreak. When we turn away too far from Him, in sin or rebellion, we run the risk of damaging the connective cord between us. Then, it takes yards of the black electrical tape of repentance and forgiveness to unite us once more.
As we worry and anguish over our growing children, so God worries and anguishes over us. How many times He saves us - and we don't recognize His Presence. He never wants us to sever the umbilical cord of His Divine Love.
"Yet it was I...who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; yet, though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer." (Hosea 11: 3-4.)
It's only by allowing God to pay out His cords of love and keep us close that we and He can come in together out of the bitter cold of false independence!