Matt. 15:21-28. Dogs and Lost Sheep
Jesus said he was sent to the lost sheep (24) and it wasnamprsquot right to give the childrenamprsquos bread to the dogs (26) when the Canaanite woman persistently cried out to him to heal her demon-possessed daughter.
This passage highlights what I have recently seen about myself, an understanding of how I am both a lost sheep and a dog looking for crumbs, an understanding of what discolored my life so early and so deeply that I didnamprsquot really see it or could look at it objectively. This Spirit-guided insight helped me see why I have behaved the way I have in my relationships, causing hurt to others they couldnamprsquot understand. I also saw I have been carrying an accumulated burden of grief that has warped my view of life.
The dominant event of my childhood was saying goodbye. Every three or four years, I said goodbye to my friends and places and things I loved because I had to move. I never saw any of them again. It was like a big funeral every three years. No one ever thought much about my being sad. Their talk was always on how excited I should be about going to a new place, seeing new things and meeting new friends.
Let me describe the basic facts of childhood moves. I was born in Ottawa, Canada. A year later my military father was posted to Vancouver Island 3700 kilometres away. We lived there three years. My mother didnamprsquot like my dad being in the navy, so he transferred to the air force. He was posted to France where I went to my first school for three years. Then he was transferred to Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada. We lived in the country for one year, and I went to an old fashioned one-room school with a black, pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room. All twenty-five of us elementary students from grade 1 to grade 5 were in that room. I loved the country and I loved that school. The next year, my family moved into military housing on the base. My school was huge and my grade 4 class had as many kids as all of the one-room school. Four years later, my dad was transferred to Ottawa 1500 km away where I finished my middle school and completed high school. Then my dad retired.
The result of this life was that I never had any roots, I never belonged anywhere, I never fit, and I was always suffering from grief over people and places I had to leave without really saying goodbye. I was a lost sheep. I was always feeling that something was being taken away. In middle school I stopped making friends because what was the point? I would leave or they would leave.
Yesterday morning I started describing this to my wife because I had hurt her feelings by the way I said something that couldamprsquove been said far more gently. Suddenly I saw that I never expected any of my relationships to last more than a few years so what did it matter how I said anything? Through a childhood of having to hide my feelings of grief and pretending not to care about leaving everything and everyone outside my immediate family, I had learned not to care about anyone too much or too deeply, including my family. From a sense of being abandoned by the world, I grew into someone who abandoned others.
As I shared this with my wife, I started crying out of pure grief, overwhelmed by memories and hurts. Even though sheamprsquos grown up in one place in one country and still meets her friends from elementary school, she had enough empathy to cry with me. I have no roots, no home. I belong nowhere and anywhere. Moses said he was a stranger in a strange land, and as Christians we are encouraged to think of ourselves that way because the earth is not our home, heaven is. I grew up knowing the truth of being a stranger in a strange land because thatamprsquos the story of my life. In a way, God prepared me for him by making himself the one I live and move and have my being in because I had no one else.
I lost my high school girlfriend because I didnamprsquot really expect her to stay and didnamprsquot care deeply enough for her. I helped push my first wife to alcoholism for the same reasons. I wasnamprsquot really surprised when, at my motheramprsquos funeral, my present wife said she had decided to divorce me but changed her mind because of Pastor Kimamprsquos sermon. I have been disappointed but not surprised that my children all left me, at least for many years, and Iamprsquove worked hard to repent and repair that break. Iamprsquom still estranged from my youngest daughter.
I grew up grieving and not expecting anything to last, rootless and restless at the same time. I am a dog who needs Godamprsquos crumbs. Now that I know what has warped so much of my life, I cry out like the Canaanite woman for the healing of this demon in me. This is my desperate prayer.
Application: share my story with those I have hurt and grieve freely for what was taken away from me because of all my moving.
Lord, heal me I pray and let me repent of the sins against others I have committed out of my lack of love, my reluctance to risk my heart.
