Reverse Engineering a Life

Our family enjoys “Phineas and Ferb”. . . and I don’t just mean the kids enjoy it.  I’ve found it to be one of the few current cartoons that encourages creativity, hard work, and family relationships.  And it makes me laugh.

So there’s this one episode where they introduce the concept of “reverse engineering”.  Technically, it refers to concepts way too complicated for me to grasp (how to understand software and machines and other techy-type stuff), but the concept itself is very familiar to all of us.  You know when you go out to eat and think “I could cook that!” and then you go home and you do?  Reverse engineering- you saw the finished product first and then figured out how to recreate it.  Cute find at a craft fair that you realize you have all the skills and components for at home?  Reverse engineer it!

This is also how I think about my life.  When I’m faced with a parenting challenge I don’t just ask myself how I want to see this current situation resolved, but what kind of men and women I want to raise.  Sometimes that means committing to a harder road because I want to see deep change and not just a peaceful current situation.

I was thinking about this “reverse engineering” concept a lot this weekend.  On Saturday I found out my aunt died.  My dad said when they watched the monitors and saw her heartbeat slowly come to a stop, he felt like applauding.  It may seem a strange reaction to the death of somebody you love, but for my aunt this was a release from a lot of physical pain and now we trust that she is receiving the rewards of a life well lived.  Applause for her life of faithfulness right to the end would have been appropriate.

When I get to heaven, I want to hear “Well done good and faithful servant.”  That is the end result of the life I want to live.  How do I reverse engineer that into what my Monday looks like today?  Am I living a life that would warrant that kind of praise?

I think we often see our lives as the major accomplishments or bitter failures.  I am starting to see My Life as the result of a million tiny choices- words spoken in kindness, diapers changed without grumbling, faithful discipline of my kids when turning a blind eye would be easier, hospitality offered when I’d rather be alone.  And that’s the example I see in my aunt’s life.

She wasn’t famous or extravagant in her life, but she was good.  And she was faithful.  And it wasn’t an easy life.  I could tell you about how she did the alterations on my wedding dress (and I’ll never forget how she said, “We’re letting it out, but when your kids see it someday the tag will still say 6.” and she winked and laughed) or how she hosted my sister’s bridal shower or how she taught piano lessons and Sunday School, or how just last year she embroidered a baby blanket for my son.  I could tell you those things, but unless you saw my aunt, they might not seem as extraordinary as they were.  You see, for as long as I can remember my aunt has had crippling arthritis.  This arthritis bent her spine and twisted her fingers.  It made every simple act painful and complicated.  And yet she never let the limitations of her body make her grow weary in doing good.

So many of us experience the pain of a fallen world.  We experience it in physical pain, in emotional hurts of sad childhoods and broken relationships, in mental illness, in watching our children suffer, in infertility, in marriage woes.  This will always be as long as we are waiting for Jesus to return.  The question isn’t if we will suffer or how we can avoid suffering.  The question is:  How do we honor God WHEN we suffer.  How do we be good and faithful in a world that is broken?  How do we use our greatest sorrows and struggles to please our God?

I know for me, that isn’t my first response.  I want to take my pain and turn it into excuses.  I can’t help in the nursery because I’m infertile and it makes me sad.  I can’t host a women’s ministry event because I have four little kids and they are too much work for me to do anything else.  I can’t watch other people’s children, I can’t make a meal for a friend with a new baby, I can’t afford a shower gift.  I have a reason for every good thing I don’t do.  (I DO think this is a season in my life where I have to be wise about how I use my time because my kids do require so much of me, but I think there is a difference between being wise and making excuses.  I know I make excuses far more than I ought.)

Ultimately I am accountable to God for how I use the gifts and resources he’s given me.  It is beautiful to see the lives of my sisters who exemplify service and quiet faithfulness even as they struggle through deep pain of their own.  Their suffering makes their acts of service all the more meaningful to the Body around them, and to their God.  I want a life of ease and I work to avoid suffering, but that has not been God’s plan for me (although my suffering seems so small when compared to some of my sisters).  He has pulled me through times of hardship which have strengthened my faith and allowed me to better love my community.  Like a patient Father, he has reverse engineered my life, allowing me to suffer so that this testing would produce good fruit.  The path to get there is hard, but so worth it.  And I can easily recognize its worth in the women around me who have learned long-suffering by suffering long.  They are an inspiration and a joy.

So I will miss my aunt and her deep laugh, her busy hands, her strong faith.  But I wouldn’t want her back today.  She made those many quiet choices of faithfulness (and had her fair share of sins too, praise Jesus for forgiveness!) and at the end of her life was able to confidently say, “I want to go home.”  A home with no more tears, or pain, or suffering.  And for a woman who didn’t make excuses for her limitations, no excuses have to be made for how she lived her life.  She leaves a legacy worth admiring and worth reverse engineering.