On learning to skateboard

Do you remember last year’s John Lewis Christmas advert?  The one about the foster dad learning to skateboard so he would have something in common with the teenage girl arriving around about Christmas time.

It made me howl.

Partly just with the pain that was still surging around my system four months after the ending of my most recent placement.  I probably just needed to cry some more about it, and the advert being sprung on me in church on Christmas morning – I’d managed to avoid seeing it up till then – was the shock that opened the floodgates.

But also because it made it all look so easy. 

Sure, the foster dad had fallen off the skateboard a few times.  He’d been laughed at by the teens in the park, got a scuffed knee and sore muscles and spent some lonely hours in a car park trying and trying again.  But 70 seconds later, he’d learned a couple of tricks, and the doorbell rang, and ‘Ellie’, hugging her own skateboard like a medieval shield, gave a tiny smile as she saw his, and loosed her grip, and - hey presto! - it was happily ever after.

It just isn’t like that.

I’m glad John Lewis did the ad.  The care system needs all the advocacy it can get, and if anyone who watched the advert had an ounce more understanding for foster parents, or foster kids, it was worth it. 

But it just isn’t like that.

And the idea that a few hours’ effort, learning a few tricks, can undo the layers and layers of trauma that kids bring, and make it all ok, felt insulting.

And so I howled, and in my head, I replayed my own 'learning to skateboard' moments.

 Fostering has seen me:

learning to cook some passable Vietnamese food, and mangling a lot of other recipes

breathing as shallowly as possible in the vile atmosphere of nail bars

watching endless youtube videos of adults pretending to be teenagers and screaming at each other as if their combined IQ was in single digits

going on my first ever holiday in a caravan park – it might be the last

plaiting and straightening and curling and crimping hair – my hair, their hair, their friends' hair...

learning to set up a playstation, then enduring it being played nonstop from morning to night

phoning every school within an hour’s drive trying to locate another Vietnamese teenager

playing about a thousand games of Uno – often having to lose on purpose because my teen really needed to win

ruining my Apple Music account with artists I’d never choose to listen to

missing friends’ and family social events that really mattered to me

driving miles to activities I don’t like with people I don’t care about, keeping a smile plastered on the whole time

pretending I didn’t hear the words just muttered, didn’t see the gestures pulled, and wasn’t broken inside by the rejection of whatever I’d offered – often simply my heart. 

And at the end of it all... none of that made it OK.  My placements had ended.  The kids had gone.

I know, every parent has a similar list, never mind every foster parent.  Mine isn’t anything special – or maybe more accurately, we all do lots of things that are special; the stuff on my list isn’t extra-special. 

Bottom line: I tried. But it wasn’t enough.

And it's not hard to know why.  This surface stuff of activities and interests is just a means to an end.  And the end runs deep, deeper than we can fathom. 

The kids need us to enter their world. 

To leave the security of our fairly-stable attachments, and understand how it feels to be adrift of any containing relationships. 

To leave the familiarity of our activities and routines, and understand how it feels to ride the waves of a life that is in total chaos. 

To set aside our experience of being warm and well fed and safe, and understand how it feels when our basic needs are met one day, but we’re cold and hungry and fending for ourselves the next. 

To recognise that our self-efficacy, our hope, our confidence in the goodness of life are not a given, and to understand that the kids live in a world where their actions have no predictable effect, where hope has been dashed into a thousand shards a thousand times over, where life has been hard and sad and lonely and dangerous.

The kids need us to enter their world.

We can’t find them – the real them, not the bravado-projection – unless we leave our world, and enter theirs.  Unless we find them where they are. 

And they need us to do that repeatedly, surprising their learned expectation of harshness and shame with empathy and kindness again and again and again.  Because their wounds have been opened up again and again, and so the scar tissue is thick and deep and hard.  One moment of connection – wonderful as it is! – won’t touch down in the depths.  We need to be there for them, surprising them, over and over. 

The kids need us to enter their world, and to stay there.

Mine didn’t give me enough time.  I tried, but I didn’t get to know them well enough; their worlds were still full of mystery, and I couldn’t go when they needed me to.  Sure, we were learning.  But it wasn’t enough, not yet.

So hear me, John Lewis… it just isn’t like that.

I howled in that church car park on Christmas morning.  And someone was there who understood.  Someone who had entered my world.

Jesus.

Boy, does Jesus understand.

 Foster carers try to enter into a child’s attachment disorder.  Jesus left a perfect face-to-face relationship with his Father, which they had enjoyed from eternity past, and became human.  He had to learn his Father’s will through the Scriptures, and carve out time to seek his Father’s presence in prayer.  He had to battle to submit his will and overcome his temptations.

And then, in the final days of his life, he faced a depth of fear we’ll never know, and experienced total separation.

Jesus gets it.

Foster cares try to enter into a child’s chaos.  Jesus left the glorious splendour of heaven, the worship of thousands of angels, the light and purity and joy and shalom, and experienced a broken world instead.  He knew limitation and ignorance.  He faced demons and hate and self-interest and folly.  The Word himself had to learn to talk, chose not to turn stones into bread, endured dark nights without creating light and bore with the misunderstanding and sin and pride and selfishness of his friends. 

And then, in the final days of his life, he went through abandonment and betrayal, torture and injustice, mockery, pain and the ultimate chaos of death.

Jesus gets it.

Foster cares try to enter into a child’s insecurity.  Jesus left his heavenly home, where he is honoured, where there is no night, no cold, no lack, and was born of teenage parents, far from home, with no midwife, in a cow-shed cave.  His life was in danger as an infant and he was a refugee before he could walk.  He was poor, uneducated, recognisable by his provincial accent.  He spent years as an itinerant teacher, homeless and living off charity, despised and scorned by both religious and political leaders. 

And then, in the final days of his life, he stepped into utter lovelessness – hung out to die on a Roman cross, stripped naked and taunted and utterly alone.

Jesus gets it.

Foster carers try to enter into a child’s hopelessness.  Jesus left glory and splendour and absolute goodness, and came to dwell in a world where the voice of God had not been heard for 400 years.  He came to a people whose hope was so shattered their understanding of ‘Messiah’ was twisted out of all recognition.  He gave up all power except for the works the Father gave him.  He didn’t heal where there was little faith.  He taught crowds who didn’t listen and disciples who didn’t understand.  He wept over Jerusalem. 

And then, in the final days of his life, he chose not to call down legions of angels, chose not to come down from the cross and save himself, chose abandonment and punishment and separation from God – the worst hopelessness there is.

Jesus gets it.

Oh, how he gets it.

He gets us, because he’s come.  He’s truly entered our world.  The Creator of all things became a creature; the divine became mortal, the infinite, finite, the all-powerful, limited.  ‘Lo, within a manger lies he who built the starry skies.

He entered our world.

And he came to stay.

Not for a few weeks or months, but for decades.  Not with his own bedroom to retire to, but dwelling among us.  Not with respite weeks and peer support groups but fully incarnate, fully committed, fully engaged, fully human.  Fully one with us.

And it got tough, and he didn’t end the placement.  He bore our sorrows, carried our shame, took our punishment and died.  The immortal, pinned to a cross, dying my death and yours. 

This is how we know what love is.  He stayed, all the way to the end, all the way to death.

 And when it was all done, he ascended – and sent his Spirit to dwell in us forever.

How mindblowing is this? 

God himself

God the Spirit

enters us

each of us

you and me

for now

for always

dwelling in us

filling us

Emmanuel-ing us

Forever.

Like the kids, our wounds are deep.  Our scars are thick.  We don’t put our shields down 70 seconds after the advert started. 

And he shows us again and again.  He’s here – here to stay.  This is a lifelong journey, and he’s coming the whole way.  Whether we’re listening or sticking our fingers in our ears, searching or running in the other direction – he meets us again and again in the unexpected places.  He knows what we need.  He surprises us with his empathy, his kindness, his wisdom, his understanding.  He’s entered our world and he’s here to stay.

Our wounds are deep.  Our scars are thick.

His wounds are deeper, and he bears the scars for all eternity.

And so we really can give a tiny smile, and relax our grip on whatever is our shield – just a fraction more.  And we can do today – whatever today looks like – with him.  And tomorrow.  He’s not going anywhere.

We don’t know the twists and turns of the days to come.  But we do know the end. 

In the end, he takes us home, to the place he’s prepared for us, to the place where he wants us to be – where he is.  We’ll be fully known, we’ll walk face to face, there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.  He’ll make all things new. 

John Lewis did get this bit right.  In the end, we’ll come home, and he’ll open the door for us and welcome us in, and the grins will spread, and it really will be happily ever after.

Unto us is born a saviour. 

He’s entered our world, and he’s here to stay.

Happy Christmas.