Who's the Boss? (Part 2)

In a previous post, Who's the Boss?, I began to reflect on the possibility of Jesus being okay with us bossing him around in prayer. I recalled my delight for my daughter when she was confident of what she wanted. She would make up her mind about something and then respond to her own desire as if I had suggested it to her. She would say, "Down the slide? Yes, okay!" To the slide we were going to go. It had been decided.

Since writing that original post, Jesus has said to me with certitude, "Boss me around, Kelly. Boss me around." So I've been practicing putting on my Julia hat and saying things to Jesus like, "This is what you're going to do. You're going to speak tenderly to me and Mike right now. You're going to give us another child, and you're going to make conception and pregnancy and delivery easy for us and you're going to give that kid a very long life. Yes, okay!"

Other times when I try to pray, I find myself unable to finish my prayer. I start to say, "Jesus keep us safe as we drive" but then I stop and say, "But Jesus I don't trust you to protect us. I know you're a comforter, I don't believe you're a protecter."

I've been thinking about my options in prayer. Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to believe that God is either absent or cruel and that the universe is just random. Nothing happens for a reason, it's just random. So perhaps I don't even need to pray. Or, I can believe God is good and someday this trauma will all make sense in light of his master plan. So I can thank him for his goodness. Neither of those options seem helpful or true to my experience of God right now.

There is another option: I can pray to the God who gets down on his hands and knees and washes our feet. Since losing Julia, Jesus has not once told me that he is good and that he has a plan. People tell me that all the time, but Jesus hasn't. Instead, he has intentionally made himself lower than me. He tells me to put the blame on him. He tells me to boss him around. He tells me that it's okay to think he's cruel but that he won't leave me even in those dark places (Psalm 139).

Jesus, who does hold all the power in and beyond the universe, who is good, and who could say he has a plan, decides instead to get down on his knees and become my punching bag. He doesn't care if I'm praying in the "right" way. He wants me to be with him in whatever way I want, in whatever way I need. I love that about him.

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. - John 13:3-5