Clinging

Ella was desperate to go home.

She'd been in care for six years. For half her life. For half her life, she'd yearned for home. She talked about her mam all the time. Planned to buy her presents. Wrote her letters. Hoped she'd come to her gymnastics competition. Imagined how surprised she'd be to see her long hair, or her unbitten nails, or her new shirt. Talked about her memories. Dreamed about the future. "I'll drive over and see you, Bob, don't worry, you know, when I'm eighteen and I'm living with mam again."

You'd hardly expect it to be different.

And most of the time, that yearning didn't seem like such a bad thing. She enjoyed chatting about home, and revisiting her old photos, going through the album with everyone she met. Making presents and drawing pictures and trying out new recipes she could share with mam kept her engaged and gave her goals to look forward to. Hey, writing the letters was one of the few ways she was willing to engage with literacy...

And yet. And yet.

I'd be picking up the dirty clothes from wherever she'd thrown them the night before, and I'd find little notes tucked under her bedclothes - the names and dates of birth of all her seven siblings, written out, over and over again, when she was meant to be going to sleep. She only actually knew one of them. She would talk about the photos of her nana - and I thought for ages there must be more tucked away somewhere - but it turned out she only had two; one showed her left leg as she walked into the foreground of the shot, and in the other she was a blurry figure at the back of a group, her head cut off the top of the frame. She desperately missed her brother, who she'd been separated from when they came into care, but he found her obsession with home really difficult and avoided spending much time with her. And although she wouldn't talk about any of the hard stuff with me - the loneliness and sadness and anger - she did cry her eyes out in church week by week, and I would find pages of impassioned scrawl addressed to the school counsellor, tucked into notebooks, her poor aching little heart poured out in near-illegible spiders' webs of pain.

And actually, all of that wasn't just sad. It was tragic.

Because the mam she longed for didn't exist. The home she dreamed of returning to wasn't real.

Ella had spent half her life clinging to something that was a mirage.

Her mam wasn't someone she could ever go home to. Her mam had had all eight children removed; all contact with those who still saw her was supervised by social services. Her mam didn't buy her Christmas presents (and claimed they must have got lost in the post, every year). She was late for the sessions they were allowed to spend together (and claimed they'd had car trouble, again). She disengaged part way through (and Ella worried for the next six months that she must be sick). She preferred her son over her daughter. She laughed at mistakes Ella made, scolded her for next to nothing. She was disinterested, or cutting, or sarcastic, or just absent.

Her home had been a place of serious neglect. They hadn't always had food. Many of Ella's stories described situations that should never have happened.

Her brother had moved on. He was ambivalent about meeting mam, sometimes deciding just to stay at home. He didn't expect his birthday to be remembered, or that she'd care about his basketball team. He was settled in a long term placement, where he called his foster parents 'mam and dad', and had engaged with some therapeutic support to help process his early life story.

Unlike Ella.

Six years in care had meant three placements, and a year in to her time with me she was struggling again. This was meant to be her big chance to settle - before she turned teenage and school disruption became more significant. The previous two placements had helped social services understand what she really needed, we thought, and it seemed we were a great match. We'd had a week together one Easter for respite and got on like a house on fire. My family liked her, she fitted in to the youth at church, and so when the possibility of a long term match came up we were both really excited. We both said yes. We talked about how we'd chosen this, chosen each other, about how we could make a special new home together. Her social worker, the school counsellor, even her brother's carers held their breath... Was she finally going to settle?

The answer was no.

Because she was still desperate to go home.

Clinging to a home that never existed was sabotaging her chance to belong.

There were two issues for Ella - issues she couldn't understand, but that had tremendous power over her.

First she had tied her identity to her mam. Being neglected as a child had triggered deep shame in her, and the only way for that shame to be cleared was to look forward to the day when it could all be put right - when she could live with mam, and be loved, and wanted, and to prove, once and for all, that there was nothing wrong with her after all. Children are fundamentally self-centred. That means children who are neglected believe the rejection is about them, not about their carers; they internalise a deep sense that there's something wrong with them, they aren't worthy of care. Ella needed her mam back in her life to declare that inner voice wrong.

But if she settled with me, she was accepting that she wasn't with her mam. To settle meant giving up on the dream that reunification promised, that being back with mam would show Ella was worthy after all. The love I offered her wasn't enough. The love of a substitute couldn't clear the rejection she'd been through. And so she couldn't bring herself to settle. Just as other kids would have started to relax, to feel comfortable, to trust - she felt the opposite pull. This is dangerous! You're slipping away from your mam - from who you really are - from the love you really need.

And secondly, Ella's experience of belonging had been full of pain. The place where she had most belonged had been the place where she had most been hurt. When she tried to prove she belonged, she got pushed away; when she made demands on her mam, they weren't met - demands for comfort or kindness or even just enough to eat. Where she should have experienced care and nurture she got rejection and pain.

And - tragically - it continued in the care system. She loved her first carer but when her rivalry with the birth daughter became unbearable, she was rejected all over again. She refused to bond with her next carer who was hurt and withdrew, leaving them both angry and isolated. The message was clear. Belonging meant you got hurt. It wasn't safe to try to love.

So, eight months in, when she started to feel settled with me, the alarm bells went off loud and clear. No! This is dangerous! This is when the pain starts - this is always when the pain starts... you need to get out, get away, get back to somewhere safe again... somewhere you can just wait for your mam...

And so Ella started to undermine all that was good in her life.

It started with little lies about home. I was only letting her eat pasta. I had given her a nasty nickname. I started swearing at her when I got her out of bed in the morning. Sometimes her claims were clearly ridiculous; sometimes they were just bizarre. The school counsellor and I spent hours on the phone unravelling whether she'd misunderstood something, or was applying bad memories from the past, or was reporting what she was scared of, or was simply saying things that got a reaction. At times she would admit she'd made it up. Other times she was convinced it had really happened. Her behaviour got more difficult. Out and about she'd be clinging to me, pulling me in, demanding hugs - but at home she'd withdraw, or get stroppy, or just sit refusing to do anything at all. When she started making threats to run away, or to hurt herself, the system kicked in and we agreed that she probably did need to move.

Sometimes she had flashes of clarity. "I'm just not happy," she told the counsellor one day. "Everything is good but I am just not happy. I need to move." And then, shortly before she left, "All I want is to be with mam. I'll never be happy anywhere else. I refuse to be. Why won't they let me be with mam?"

When she knew she was moving, it was a relief. She could stop fighting. She relaxed. She even started talking about how she felt. Now that she knew it wouldn't last, she could even receive some of the love I offered her. She was happy.

All she wanted was to go home. It was a mirage, it could never happen, it was taking what she needed most from her... but still, she clung to her dream with all the strength she could muster.

All she wanted was to go home.

Ella's given me a glimpse into my own messy, messed up, mixed up heart.

I so often think I know what I need. Actually, I don't think I know... I know I know. I know exactly what would make me happy. I spend a lot of time thinking about it - meditating I guess, imagining the world with my desires granted. Clinging. I bring those desires to God. Over and over again - didn't he tell us to pray persistently? So I nag him as if he was the reluctant neighbour already tucked up in bed, unwilling to get up and answer the door. And just in case God doesn't come through, I do what I can to pursue what I want too. And I stress about the bits I can't do. And nag God some more.

Persistent prayer is good... but persistence while pretending to pray is not. Ella's persistence got her what she wanted, but it wasn't what was best. Prayer is meant to change us too, to bring us into line with our Daddy's best. Real prayer helps us to move towards 'your will be done'. If my prayer is more like Ella's scheming, if my fingers are firmly in my ears against any murmurs from God that this might not be the best for me... I, too, may be trying - with all my might - to walk down a road that leads nowhere good.

"There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death" warns Proverbs 14:12. Jeremiah adds, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure" (Jer 17:9).

There are times I make myself miserable in my efforts to realise unmet dreams. I organise my time and spend my money and even build bits of my identity around stuff that hasn't actually been given to me. Like Ella, I cling desperately to the thing I think I need. The thing I know I need.

Jonah knew what he needed too. He needed God to give him a message of destruction for the evil Ninevites. Failing that, he needed God to let him preach to someone else, somewhere else. Then he needed God to stop the storm. For goodness' sake, he'd be ok if God would just leave him alone!

And God gave him a whale and nothing to do inside it...

From inside the whale - a pretty extreme retreat centre - Jonah recognised, "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that should be theirs." (Jonah 2:8).

What a verse.

Those who cling

to worthless idols

forfeit the grace that should be theirs.

Ella's idol - being at home with her mam - was worthless because it was all a mirage. And when she clung to it, she forfeited the grace that should have been hers - a safe home, a family to love her, a secure base from which to rebuild.

Her idol wasn't unexpected, or unreasonable, or extreme, or bad. It just wasn't true.

And clinging to it still changed her life. Not in a good way.

Just like my idols.

It's easy think of idolatry as something obvious and ugly. Bowing down to a statue, taking part in rituals from other faiths, paganism, witchcraft. Stuff other people might do, but not me or my friends.

That's a very powerful lie. It numbs us from seeing the real idols in our lives - the things that are actually getting between us and the one true God. Our idols are probably not obvious or ugly. They may well be perfectly normal desires, reasonable dreams, respectable ambitions. They are probably good. But if they are not what God is actually giving us - at the moment - then they have the power to pull us away from him, to make us wonder if he truly loves us, to cause us to doubt whether he's really all-powerful and all-loving. With Eve, we begin to question him. "Did God really say...???". We become slightly less-than-wholehearted in our commitment, our submission, our love.

What dreams do you hold right now that have the power to pull you - ever so slightly - away from your identity as a beloved child, walking with her daddy?

What desires would make you doubt if your daddy really loved you as much as you thought, if they didn't come true?

What ambitions make you pause when you sing words like 'I surrender all?' What things cause fear to rise if you think he might ask you to give them up?

We all have idols. God made his people to dream, to desire, to plan and hope and imagine; when we see what is good, we too, like God on the days of creation, are delighted. We love what we think is good. An idol isn't usually something bad. It's something good that we might start to love a bit too much.

It's when we cling to the idols that we have a problem.

No-one would ever tell Ella that dreaming of a loving mam was bad, or that desiring a stable family home was wrong. Her idols didn't have to be bad things for them to stand between her and what was good. She wasn't doing anything wrong - she could buy the presents and write the letters and show everyone the photo album. She just had to accept reality rather than clinging to a dream. She had to stop fighting for something unattainable so that she could enjoy the good she was offered.

It sounds easy, but it wasn't. Because deep down it was about her identity.

"Usually we have sunk the roots of our identify into things that, in and of themselves, are part of God's good creation, yet they are things that are never sufficient ground for our identity... in order to detach our identify from those things we must yield ourselves to God in love precisely at those points of attachment". - M Robert Mulholland Jr*

He asks us to yield ourselves to him and to his love.

How gentle our Daddy is with our idolatry - and how serious too.

He knows it's going to happen. It doesn't shock or surprise him. In fact it's the opposite - he made idolatry the theme of the first two commandments, and watched his people bow down to a golden calf even as he was writing the laws out on Moses' tablets of stone. The issue runs right through Old Testament history, denounced by the prophets, warned against in the wisdom literature, portrayed in the shocking drama of Hosea's marriage to Gomer. It leads to exile and the destruction of the Temple and the scattering of God's people. It ends with the Son of God dying on a Roman cross.

Our Daddy knows we'll cling to worthless idols. And he weeps that we forfeit the grace that could be ours. And he pays the price himself, bringing us back to him again and again and again as he shows us our idolatry and leads us to repentance and helps us yield to his love; as he teaches us to love him with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength.

Jeremiah talks of the day when the idolatrous, scattered people will return to the Lord. He paints a vision of signposts so they can return, prosperity in the land, the cities rebuilt, everyone knowing the Lord for themselves. You know what accomplishes this? Not their repentance or seeking or coming to their senses. No, the people can't do it. It is God who brings them back: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness." (Jer 31:3).

Ella couldn't do it, and she wouldn't let anyone help. We can't do it either, not by ourselves. But there is help if we will accept it.

In Romans 8, Paul declares that 'The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children... And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (v17&16).

"Abba" - the word a child would have used. We need to learn to cry, "Daddy". Like a child, not trying to solve it ourselves. Imagine a three-year-old, arms up, reaching out to be picked up and carried and soothed and to know herself loved.

Because we can bring those idols to him. He already knows they're there... and he is gentle with us. With his help, and only with his help, we can stop clinging, perhaps just one frightened finger at a time. We need to look at his face, his smiling face, and hear his voice, the voice that reassures us, "Yes, you are mine, you are my beloved children. I love you with an everlasting love, with a death-beating love, with a love that went to hell and back for you. I have grace for you. Let go, little one... with me there is more grace than you can ask or even imagine."

There are real reasons we cling to those idols. We've been hurt and we're afraid and we've constructed our identities around them. He can deal with all of it. We don't have to do it by ourselves. We just have to be willing to stop clinging - just a bit - and we'll see the full flow of our Daddy's grace, grace that is truly amazing, grace that is ours.

* M Robert Mulholland Jr, 'The Deeper Journey: the spirituality of discovering your true self' IVP 2016 p145