Translating the World
giving the meaning of everything in a language you are learning as you go
When you first become a parent, something you don’t know you will be doing everyday forever after is translating the whole world to your children. You are the person who tells them the definition and meaning of everything.
When they are very small, it sounds like: This is a book. See the ball? This is food. It’s yummy. There’s your sister. She loves you so much.
As they grow, the language you use changes. Are you angry right now? When you are angry, sometimes you feel like yelling or hitting someone. If you throw that rock at your brother, it can really hurt him. Blood can come out of his head. At some point on the timeline, these kinds of sentences have to change to say words like that could kill someone. And then you have a whole new daunting task of being the person who translates the meaning of death into appropriate language for a three-year-old, five-year-old, ten-year-old.
What happens when you die?
You try to explain that mystery in language that expands, year by year as your children grow and begin to learn that loss is a part of the human story. Their story.
You are crying. You are crying because you are sad. Your heart hurts. You will feel better soon. It’s normal to feel like this. We lost someone we loved. And that is one of the hardest things to experience in life. Sometimes it will feel better, and sometimes it will ache again. The words you speak change as the years go by. This is grief. Grief is like a cold wind that blows right through the very center of your being, like someone left the back door to your heart open on the coldest night of the year. You are going to be okay. You are going to make it through.
Every day opens up a million new questions—What is this? How does it work? What does that mean? What is going to happen? What if…?
In some ways, you are a pioneer. Entering a landscape inhabited by a people group that has never yet been encountered by another soul, trying to translate the meaning of everything in a language that you are learning as you go—the language of innocence, of wonder, of possibility. And you are trying to keep as much of that beauty as you can in your lexicon, while you explain this broken world in simple, understandable phrases. And though you have years of experience and the definitions of weighty words etched into your very body, you are still trying to grasp the meaning yourself.
How do you explain the horrors of this world to your children without striking their hearts with fear? How do you tell them the truth when you know it will hurt them? How do you interpret the world for them as a place where life is exquisitely beautiful, even though at every moment, we are living only one heartbeat away from gut-wrenching loss? How can you tell them that life is not going to be okay, but it is going to be okay? That grief and joy can fill the heart simultaneously. That love and sorrow can mix and give way to a glorious hope?
How can you say all of this: Life is hard. God is good. Life aches. God tends to the wounds of the broken-hearted. This world is coming apart at the seams. God bends over, mending. How can you speak this in words that they will understand? And will you ever understand it yourself?
Will I ever understand it myself?
Oh, God, give me the grace to translate the world through the language of your love and mercy. Help me to give words of hope, even in moments of despair. Help me to give words of comfort, even in seasons of grief. Help me to speak life over these children. To give them words that will form the foundations of life that is lived in fluent communion with the Maker and Sustainer of it all.
Amen.
Friends,
Thank you so much for reading these letters. It means so much to me that you are here. I have been thinking about how much words have helped me to overcome many of my fears in years past. I wanted to share a few posts from last year on this theme.
Sending love and peace and a fearlessness that can only come from surrendering to the truth of God’s promises. And a hope for beautiful days ahead.
Love,
Mackenzie
Becoming Brave
Sometimes people don’t know what to say. When they see us in the grocery store–three little ones in the buggy, three bigger ones swarming around my waist, two walking beside me--I can actually see them doing math in their heads. Is it possible that all of these children could belong to the same mother?
Fear Comes and Asks Me for My Life
When I climb to the top of the highest point of my life and look out over the vast landscape before me, instead of awe and joy and overwhelming gratitude for all God has done to bring me to this holy, beautiful place, sometimes all I feel is fear. Even though deep down, I know I have been carried by God to this very moment, and I know by heart that He w…
Passing Through
There were places you already passed through that you thought would kill you. The things that actually happened, out of all you feared and tried to face bravely, the things that blew in and rolled over you like some great hurricane came and passed and here you are, still standing.
Wow! I have never thought about this idea until this evening. And then I encountered it twice in an hour. I just got off the phone with my friend Ryder doing two-person-book-club. We are reading and discussing Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. In this book, he talks to a race of aliens and asks them why they do not yearn to be young again. They answer:
"how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back– if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day.
When he is young he has to look for his mate; and then he has to court her; then he begets young; then he rears them; then, he remembers all this and boils it inside him and makes it into poems and wisdom." And they share this wisdom with their children.
What a great blessing and challenge we have been given to help build a new humans worldviews. Do you ever have moments where you don't know what to tell your kids? What do you say? That is definitely one of my concerns for my future that hopefully includes me having my own kids.
Thank you so much for adding your perspective at the perfect time.