Keep it Simple, Saint

Mark 12:30-31  “‘…and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Right around the time I had a mental breakdown from doing so much paperwork that I forgot my own address—you know, the one I had just written on various forms over 700 times—it was time to take a break from all the forms and frantically deep clean the house in preparation for our first home study visit. The agency was going to send a social worker to our home to make sure we were ready, our boys were ready, and our house was ready.  

Step one: Talk to everyone we knew who had ever gone through a home study visit in order to know exactly what we would need to do and say.  

Step two: Freak out.  

Step three: Try as best as we could to prepare.  

I cleaned out every inch of every closet, per advice received, and cleaned the inside of the oven, which was the first and most likely the last time I will ever do that. After all, heat kills germs, right? I even organized our attic. We made a fire escape plan for our family and held multiple fire drills at various times of the day and night.  

Then, we prepped our kids with a practice interrogation that took so long Will started to grow facial hair and Michael threatened to run away.  

Finally, Marc and I stayed up all night quizzing each other over any and every question we thought the social worker might ask. Our friends had warned us that the interviews tended to be invasive, asking about everything from the details of our past to our current level of satisfaction with, well, the more intimate parts of our relationship.  

I was a hot mess by the time our social worker arrived, which, to be honest, was how I spent many days in preparation for our adoption.  My heart wanted to trust God, but my mind was too busy creating all kinds of “what if” scenarios that kept me awake at night and made me bite my nails all day long.  

Our social worker was very nice, a young mom herself who came across as quiet mannered and very laid back. We had put a movie on for the boys in our family room and settled into our “fancy living room” for adult conversation. After initial small talk, she dove in deep with her first serious question: “So, how would you guys define your roles within the family?”  

We were ready.  

We’d spent from midnight to 2:15 going over all of the Bible verses that applied to the divine order for the family.    

And so, Marc started in on a 30 minute presentation. Around the 18 minute mark, when he took a deep breath in preparation for his shift from servant leadership to scriptural submission, our sweet social worker put her hand up to stop him.  

“This is really great,” she said sweetly, “but all I need to know is who mows the lawn and who does the dishes.”  

The three of us laughed, Marc and I blushed, and we realized that, even though our very well meaning friends had meant to help us by giving us a boatload of advice, we had come in slightly over prepared. Our extreme knowledge had, in some ways, complicated what may otherwise have been a relatively simple process.  

Thank God we figured that out before she got to the sex question.  

In the end, our social worker only spent 10 minutes alone with our boys, and she didn’t even open a single closet door. In fact, she didn’t see any need to go into the master bedroom or the boys’ bedroom; she wanted to see what we had planned for our girls, and that was about it.  

Okay. So now for the profound life lesson.  

You know, life can be a lot like our home study visit. We can listen to everyone around us and become overwhelmed and consumed with advice that, in the light of eternity, might not be all that helpful.  

We can forget about the supreme simplicity of the Bible’s instructions for believers: Love God and Love Others. And we can wrap ourselves into weariness by trying to do daily family devotions like the Smiths and weekly hospitality projects like the Millers and service each Sunday like the Johnsons and donations worth a bajillion dollars like the Joneses and marriage intensives like the Burmeisters and on and on and on.  

We can cling to those “extra” things so tightly that, when the Holy Spirit prompts us to do something simple to show His love, we say no because our religion has become ritual instead of relationship. We replace the eternal with the temporary, the essential with the unnecessary. We rely on our accumulation of accomplishments instead of relying on God’s grace.  

We think we need to have the right answer, when all God is asking us to do is cling to Him, the God of all answers.  

The solution, my friend?  

Go back to the basics. 

Get on your knees, and ask God to show you how He wants you to love. And surrender to Him all that you’re already doing.  

Be willing to resign as preschool Sunday School teacher in order to spend more time taking care of your own kids. Be willing to hand over the keys to the Soup Kitchen to someone less tired so that you can give the best of yourself to your spouse. Be willing to let go of what makes you feel prepared or accomplished in order to do what makes God and others feel loved.  

Train your brain to believe that you are loved by God just the way you are, and then let Him love others just the way they are, through you.  

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