Cross Appointments

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

LUKE 9:23 (EMPHASIS ADDED)

IN 1924, THE THEN-TWENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD C. S. LEWIS TOOK in the mother of a friend who had died in the war. His relationship with Mrs. Moore was frequently a difficult one. Finances were tight, and they had no domestic help. As Lewis performed his academic duties, Mrs. Moore had a strict opinion of how he should help around the house.

One day, young Lewis had just about reached his limit. After doing some shopping, he no sooner arrived home than he got sent back out to deliver a message. After these two trips, Mrs. Moore met him with a cross word for not taking the dog along with him in order to give the animal some exercise. In his diary, Lewis wrote, “After lunch the nervous irritation bottled up inside me reached such a pitch and my thoughts became so irresponsible and foolish and so out of control that for a moment I was really afraid that I was going into hysteria.”^a

Lewis felt so frustrated and enraged that he could scarcely manage it. But in the turmoil he had to pass through, a mature Christian leader was being shaped—a man unusually in touch with the vagaries of the human heart and the complexities of the human soul. Lewis had to learn how to die so that he could learn how to live. Lewis’s biographer George Sayer observed, “Later on, [Lewis] came to regard domestic life as a school of virtue. He found it quite hard to acquire the necessary cheerfulness and self-control and did it only gradually.”^b

We don’t grow easily into maturity. Most of us get dragged into character formation kicking and screaming, because character growth usually occurs by means of persevering through difficult times (see Romans 5:3–5; James 1:2–4). It’s often the most unpleasant parts of family life that foster the greatest work in our hearts. Difficult times alone don’t guarantee character growth, of course, but if we embrace them with the right attitude and with hearts surrendered to God, they can certainly scour our souls in ways happiness and affluence can’t.

As a parent, then, I must learn to appreciate even the hard things about raising a family. I may not enjoy the constant cleanup, waking up late at night, giving up something I want to do in order to go on an outing with the whole family, or struggling to resolve the tenth dispute in less than two hours’ time between three children—but as a Christian called to die daily, I can certainly appreciate and respect these “cross appointments.” I don’t resent them like I once did; I recognize their place and their role in my life.

For instance, I used to become irritated when the kids opened a new tube of toothpaste before emptying the old one. As soon as the container was four-fifths completed, out came the brand-new, fully bloated tube of Colgate. That left me to squeeze the last few helpings onto my toothbrush for another couple weeks. I tried to put the new tube away so the kids would have to use the old one—but invariably they’d find it or, even worse, open yet a third tube!

It finally dawned on me. Kids’ thumbs aren’t as strong as Daddy’s thumbs. It really was a pain for Allison, Graham, and Kelsey to unroll the tube and reroll it with a bit more force, just so they could get another twenty-five cents’ worth of toothpaste out of the tube. And I finally saw this as one of the ways I could serve my family.

Such a small and trivial occurrence—but I’m sure most parents could come up with a dozen similar stories without even trying. It’s the combined weight of these small events that weigh down our souls. Notice, it wasn’t just that Mrs. Moore asked Lewis to make a grocery store visit, or that she asked him to deliver a message, or that she chided him for not walking the dog—it was the combined pressure that caused such angst.

That’s what family life does. Little irritations build on each other until they become larger than any of us could have imagined. If you had told me as an eighteen-year-old that I’d eventually resent my kids for not draining the toothpaste tube, I would have told you, “I’ll never be that petty.” But I wouldn’t have realized as an eighteen-year-old that it’s never just the toothpaste; it’s everything surrounding the toothpaste that sets us off. The toothpaste is just the trigger, not the ammunition.

That’s why we sometimes need to rethink those things that really “annoy” us, and then see if the problem isn’t really our annoyance. Maybe we’re being selfish. Maybe we’re being unrealistic. Maybe we’re being uncharitable. Maybe we’ve allowed bitterness to build up to such an extent that something really small suddenly becomes very large. In any case, instead of focusing on changing and lecturing our kids over these issues, perhaps we should really think about changing ourselves.

The reason family life so excels in bringing up these issues is that the very act of actually living with someone guarantees rubbing up against each other, having to serve each other, and being put out by each other—all of which require us to die to self; hence my earlier phrase, cross appointments.

Modern movies and romance novels look at romance as the place where we will truly live out all our unrealistic expectations: unconditional love, constant encouragement, unflagging affection, roaring romance, and perpetual appreciation. But family life is real, and from a Christian perspective, family life is the place where I learn to die—to my own selfish desires, my addiction to comfort, my pride, and my sense of entitlement.

I value family life in part because it so frequently points me to the cross—God’s provision for my sin and my family’s sin, and God’s metaphor for me to die to myself on a daily basis. Any situation that so readily reminds me of my calling—to live by the gospel—takes on transcendent importance in my life. It gives me a context to value not just the laughter but also the grueling, rarely appreciated, and often unnoticed acts of service and selflessness.

Maybe you, like me, entered family life with a laundry list of expectations and hopes. This week, consider what God is calling you to die to. What point of selfishness does he want to slay? What resentment is building up in you that needs to be crucified, lest you explode? What character quality is God allowing to be tested? How hot must he allow the heat to grow to before you finally accept your role as a cross-carrying servant?

Heavenly Father, help us to understand that the very things we often resent most about raising children are the very things that you use to shape our souls. Let us embrace these chastising moments rather than resent them. You are doing a great work in our souls that we don’t want to miss out on. In Jesus’ name, amen.