Blessings and Cursings for the Scapegoat and His Mother

It is tax time again, and the battle rages once more between my ex and me over things financial. Funny how when we lived under the "law" of custody requirements in our divorce agreement we got along alright, but now that we are two years into our son's being an "adult" but not yet financially independent, suddenly a war rages where there was no war for a decade before. Now the struggle flares again and again: Who pays what for college? Who gets to claim him on taxes?

I could limp through a one-sided story, justifying why we think we've been in the right all the way through, but M.'s biological father could do likewise, and probably does with great rage. Instead, I stand here looking at the gates of Your throne room after a long sleepless night knowing strange prayers shroud Your pavilion--prayers filled with blessing and cursing over my name. Some are the prayers of people who are finding me again after many years of silence, people from long-ago and who are forgiving me for my childish pride in the days before You really began to work on me, these prayers float alongside prayers of people from long ago whose curses have only grown to rankle more vigorously, seeking to tap You in Your role as avenger against me. (And I remember reading in a Psalm about how You put down the avenger, and I wondered what that meant that You might choose not to avenge. I begin to understand.)

I wonder, do the angels stand by and debate and consider: just what action do we take in honor of Your name regarding the things that have to do with this woman? So many blessings, so many cursings and in the middle of it all a son who has indeed been the stronghold I felt called to bless him to be in that dream long ago; but now not only is he a stronghold, he is also a scapegoat as his father's curse toward me lands squarely on the head of our son instead. That same son goes willingly and of his own design into a time of wilderness wandering regarding his relationship with that father. All ties are cut between them for now. College support is suddenly left completely to us on our side of the child's "family" equation. For years, the balancing of that equation has challenged the boy, molded him, ultimately worked for his benefit in many ways. But never has the rift run so deep. What comes next? What does it all represent of Your heart, God? What is the bright hope and the future You have planned for my son and his father? I know it is there waiting to be uncovered.

You look at me as the clamour of blessings and cursings make the very air both sparkle and twitch. You look at me, and so do the angels. "What would be your prayer to throw into the mix?" You ask.

"I don't think it prudent to throw my own righteousness into this melee. If my 'circumcision' these last weeks has taught me anything, I have learned that I can not stand on my own achievements nor my own wisdom. In the height of my potency, I am cut down. In the fullness of good-will, hatred blossoms. Well-tended grape vines produce sour grapes nonetheless. I only dare hide in Your Son's skirts when He longs to be as a mother over Jerusalem."

The Great Physician nods and adds, "That is your prayer for yourself then, but all these prayers are from others cast up here in regarding you. If you were to make a responding prayer to them, what would it be?"

This is what has kept my sleep restless this night. Funny how once you come to believe that your prayers are deeply powerful and (though sometimes slow in the manifestation) profoundly effective you become more careful and sober in what you ask, seeking to pray the very heart of God into being rather than praying according to your own fancy. For me to hear the question "What would you pray?" is the equivalent of hearing: "What would I pray if I were praying through your voice?" So my prayer becomes more of a measure of my knowledge of Your heart and less a measure of my hope for some specific outcome in some specific situation. In time, my prayer was formulated.

"Whether they be lifting blessings or cursings on my name, my hope and prayer is that in the end of their season of seeking Your intervention in things of me--in the end I pray they live abundantly in a better knowledge of the heights and depths and breadth of Your love as their Lord and Savior. I pray that they might be ever nearer to seeing this world as but a shadow of the great hope that is eternity spent with Thee. If they bless me, may the blessings return double upon their heads, but if they curse me, well...may they learn to be sustained by Your love and learn the blessings of communing with You in suffering if they suffer because of me. I leave it to You to determine what to do with these cursings, which ones to use to shape me more into the image of Your Son and which ones are simply darts that should spatter against the shield You've set around me. Such knowledge is higher than I.

"And above all and over all, may my Lord and Savior be somehow glorified in every one of those prayers by the time You are finished answering them. That is how I would respond to the prayers flung to heaven with my name stamped somewhere in them."