They had this argument fairly often. Argument’s too strong a word. Debate maybe? A point of periodic tension? Anyway, here’s how it usually went down.
“I love you Jerry,” she'd say.
“I know Sally!" he'd respond. "I know. You said it this morning and when I came up the stairs from the garage and when I got home from work and then again when I left for the grocery store. Do you think I’ve forgotten? Or I don’t know? I’ve never met anybody who says ‘I love you’ so much. Isn’t there a point in a relationship where you just know it’s true?”
He was a PhD theoretical and particle physicist with more degrees than a thermometer who married our touchy feely whimsical Irish mother after our dad died. He was all about science and probabilities. Her behaviors really didn’t compute from a logic perspective.
But to her, the practice of saying ‘I love you’ all the time was as logical as math. She was born in South Africa in 1941 when the world was struggling through the terrors of WW2. To say her early childhood was nomadic would be generous. Her dad, our grandfather, was the Chief Civil Engineer assigned to supervise various water systems under British rule around the world. He had four daughters. They moved constantly so their early educations happened variously in parts of India, Pakistan, Africa and Ireland. Eventually, all four girls ended up in boarding schools away from both parents, in part, to avoid the chaos caused by such a transient life. But also to afford them great educations.
Our Mom was about kindergarten age when she and her younger sister were sent to Dominican Convent Cabra Saint Mary’s Dublin. It was actually a school for the deaf, but also, a boarding school for kids whose parents lived remotely. Except for holidays and breaks, she lived at that convent until she graduated high school. Can you imagine? K through 12, being away from your parents that much? It caused a gaping abandonment wound in her. My sisters and I heard the stories so frequently, all of us can paraphrase them like the words to a legendary ballad. The ballad of an orphan child.
“Imagine,” she’d say.
“Imagine being that little and being left in a strange place away from your parents. I remember watching the car leaving the school and realizing they weren’t coming back that day. I ran after that car screaming, ‘Mum, Mum, Mum. Don’t leave me Mum.’ I cried myself to sleep at night. It was devastating.”
Sally Alderman
She does remember the nuns being very good to her, but the melody of her childhood was sorrowful at best; the lyrics, tragic. She ached for the things a parent gives a child when there’s access 24/7.
Basic things like comfort. Can you imagine going through measles in an institutional infirmary without a parent? She did.
Essential things like encouragement. When she was afraid, there wasn’t someone who knew her temperament, her talents and weaknesses, her dreams and fears, to cheer her on. To cheer from an I’ve known-you-from-the-womb perspective.
Stabilizing things like assurance. When she finally realized her parents would come running if she was in some kind of trouble, she started to misbehave. I’m sure she had no idea at the time that what she was really doing was seeking assurance -- assurance that they hadn’t abandoned her. Assurance that they wouldn’t forsake her. Assurance they weren’t gone for good.
“I decided that when I had children I was going to scoop them up every single day, look them in the eyes and tell them how much I loved them. I decided I was going to be there to kiss scraped knees, listen to dreams, celebrate victories, be their advocates.”
Oh, and she did. And she was.
Hearing her stories as a child, I didn’t understand her abandonment wound, but later in life, a friend gave me Heidi Baker’s book, Compelled by Love, and a light bulb went on in my heart about my mom’s pain and how God reaches us in abandonment.
Here’s the back story. Heidi and her husband are missionaries in Mozambique. They take in orphans and love them like Jesus. They’ve taken thousands of abandoned children into what they call Villages of Joy.
In the book, Heidi talks about talks about a boy name Ramadon. To her, his story exemplifies the transformation that happens when a child goes from the pain of abandonment to a realization that they are absolutely loved. He’d lost both of his parents. He was angry and rebellious pushing back against any kind of affection. Literally, he kicked and bit people. He was miserable when they took him in. This boy was so full of shame and sadness, he didn’t make eye contact with others.
Heidi began her relationship with him this way. She got low, to his level, and she told him clearly and unequivocally, he had access to her. He had access to her husband. He had access to the things in the group house. She told him clearly and unequivocally, that he was a real part of the family. Beloved.
And then she did something curious. She pointed to a refrigerator and she told him this:
That fridge has a Coke in it. You can get that Coke whenever you want it. I’m going to tuck you in and sing you a song. I will look you in the eyes, and I will love you.
Heidi Baker, Compelled by Love
She did. Again and again. But he wouldn’t go near that fridge. Because the fridge was for insiders. The fridge was for children who really belonged in the house. The more she told him that she loved him, tucked him in, sang to him, and treated him like a son, the more he softened. Until one day he:
“… walked up to that fridge and took the [Coke]. The first time that he opened the fridge door and realized that he belonged to the family, joy hit his heart and spiked across his face. He realized that he had full access to the house.”
Just like all the other kids. In the most convicting riveting description of something we aren’t quite sure how to name, Heidi goes on to tell us, the readers of Ramadan’s story, how we might be suffering from an “orphan spirit” like him. How we might not know what to call it or how to let God heal it. Here’s how she describes it:
“Most of us stand at the fridge door, wondering if God is going to slap our hands if we dare to open it and feast in the Father’s house. Or we think that God is low on Cokes and wants to save them for the special children – or at least save them for some other time when we are really good. So, we timidly step away from God. This is an orphan spirit. Orphans compete with each other, always comparing and worrying that there is not enough, worrying that if God blesses someone else, they will miss out.”
Heidi Baker, Compelled by Love
She nails it, doesn’t she? Spiritual orphans don’t behave as if they have full access to the Father and all that He makes available to His kids. They have a scarcity mentality. So they live scarcely. They feel lesser. So they live lesser. But the scriptures tell us that when we receive the Spirit of the living God, we are not orphans, we are heirs with full access to our Father’s house and everything in it. Romans 8:15-17.
Over and over God tell us the dangers of forgetting the truth of who we are. The danger of forgetting to remember who God is. Listen to James as he paints a hilarious picture of someone who lives like an orphan when, in fact, they are a fully adopted child.
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
James 1:23-24
It’s funny, not-funny isn’t it? When we catch ourselves forgetting we are sons and daughters not abandoned children?
My mother was effusive in her determination to tell us how much she loved us, but not just with words [which she wasn’t afraid to use] but with actions that demonstrated her belief in what she was saying. She knew she was beloved by God, said I love you others and she lived I love you with her very life. She lived loved.
After her funeral in 2019, my uncle David was talking about what he loved most about her.
“She was always telling you girls how much she loved you. Over and over. No matter how many times I came in or out of your house, she always said ‘David, do you know how much I love you?’ I didn’t grow up like that? I didn’t hear those words all the time. It never got old. She never let anybody forget how loved they were. I’m gonna miss that.”
David Clarke a/k/a Uncle Awesome
She treated him like a son. And he behaved like one. When she was dying, he was with us every day. Even now, as we soldier on without her, he shows up in good times and in bad. In plenty and in want. When it’s convenient and when it’s 0-dark-thirty and the need is great. He’s not an orphan. He’s a son and he behaves like he knows he has access to the giver of all good things.
Before we introduce our responsiveness mission this month, here's an epilogue to Mom’s story. An important bit of context that, I hope, will help us realize we aren’t alone in our struggle -- broken, just different broken, growing into the likeness of the Son. All my mother’s life, she struggled to completely release this orphan spirit. She, like us, lived in the “almost but not yet.” While she was enormously generous in the way she gave herself to others, she had a hard time receiving from others. Sometimes, she had a hard time being good to herself. But as she aged, she would repeat much the way she repeated the words I love you: “can you believe how good the Lord has been to me? Can you see it?” She was seeing her own journey in context as she grew in faith, not just seeing God’s hand in her later life, but on the whole of her life. And when she died, she was surrounded by the people who loved her the way she loved.
Which brings us to our June Mission:
In your mission pack, you have a piece of twine and two sticky notes that say “Don’t Forget to Remember.” Both of those notes are attached to something that looks like a check list. The first list says “To Do” at the top and has 12 lines.
During the month of June, consider writing 12 truths about who you are in the Lord. Maybe the first one could be “an heir” with access to everything in my Father’s house. You’d find those promises in Romans 8:15-18 and Luke 15:31. For each truth, spend some time meditating on these questions: How do my actions reflect my belief in this truth? When I find myself acting like an orphan without full access to Father and His promises, how can I move away from lip service to living loved?
Consider taking that piece of twine and tying in a bow and putting it in a place that will help you to remember not to forget to practice living loved. In the truth of whose you are and who you are.
The second list has lines as well with the same sticky note at the bottom – Don’t forget to remember. Give that one to someone and ask them to help you remember not to forget who you are in Christ. Ask them to share as many truths about our identity in the Lord as they are willing to list. Meditate on those. Can you find these promises in Scripture? Do you live as if those truths are absolutely real? How? When you catch yourself behaving like an orphan, can you move away from an orphan spirit to a spirit of son-ship or daughter-ship? Let that twine remind you to take steps in the truth when you feel lost or abandoned.
And if you aren’t getting our mission packs in the mail and you’d like to receive these equipping pieces, just go to the contact link above and we’ll get them out to you right away. They are free.
