Lego Lessons

We were about to leave for church this morning, and for the first time in forever we were on time.  I was smiling.  My son was not.  In fact, he was running around the house simultaneously screaming and crying, waving his most recent Lego creation in the air. 

"Honey, what is wrong?" I asked. 

Through hysterical sobs I deciphered, "It broke, and I can't put it back together!  It's supposed to have two holes here, and it was smaller on the bottom, but I can't put it back!  It'll never be the way it was before!"

At those words, a bombshell went off in my ears.  "It'll never be the way it was before."  Those were the same words he had uttered over six months ago when I explained to him what it meant that Mommy and Daddy were getting divorced. 

This was not about Legos. 

I sat on the floor and held him as he cried and yelled and kicked his feet, but not at me or his sister or the dogs.  Just at the floor in anguish.  I praised him for not hurting others while he was hurting.  I crooned the meaningless things mothers do when their little ones are in pain and there is no way to take it away, when the only thing to do is to participate in it. 

As he flailed, I said, "Sweetie, I know how hard it is to want something to be a certain way and not to have it that way.  But you can come back and work at it later.  It might not look like it did, but I'll bet you can make something even better." 

Deaf ears. 

After a while he calmed down, we left the Legos on the dresser, and we went to Sunday School, albeit ten minutes late.  (Some things are more important than the clock.)  By the time we got home, I had put the morning's events out of my mind.  There was, after all, lunch to get on the table. 

I was suddenly reminded when my son came running into the kitchen wearing an ear-to-ear grin and waving a totally different Lego creation. 

"Look, Mom!" he cried.  "It's even better than before!  And I made it with all the same pieces!" 

I almost wept, at his exuberance, his resilience, his wisdom.  My words had not fallen on deaf ears; they had fallen on fertile ground that needed the rain of grief to allow them to take root.  And in the process he had gleaned a little nugget of his own: with all the same pieces. 

Our family is different now.  It will never be what it was before.  But I honestly believe it will be better than it was before, because God is in the business of transforming rubble into masterpieces . . . using all the same pieces.