Leave Your Mark

Every morning, I take my dog Hammy for a walk.  This morning, there were a few other dogs playing together at the end of the street.  Hammy stopped, they all sniffed each other, and we continued on our way.  On the way back down the street, thankfully we did not encounter the other dogs.  There's actually quite a little canine hierarchy--Hammy barks at Wimberly, Georgia snaps at Hammy, Trestle chases Hammy, and Hammy abuses Hazelnut.  To my great relief, they had all gone home for breakfast.  Still, Hammy stopped where they had been, sniffed, then promptly peed on that tiny piece of earth.  He just had to leave his mark.

It's the same way with our kids.  As they grow older and work to distance themselves from us, what they're really doing is screaming, "I'm here!"  They're territorial over the things that belong to them and work tirelessly to prove that they have their own style and sometimes even their own language.  I don't mind it.  I don't always understand it.  But I don't mind it.  I want them to spend the years they have with me figuring out who they are and their purpose in the world.  Better to do that now when Gavin and I can help guide them than when they leave our home for good and find the world a cold and selfish place.

I guess all living creatures share a desire to "leave their mark."  We all want to make a difference in the world.  I think that's one of the reasons why it's so patronizing for a stay-at-home mother to hear the words, "You have the hardest job in the world.  You are right where you need to be."  Those words carry some truth, but in addition to leaving my legacy to my children, I also have a desire to do something great in the world. 

To that point, I am in the midst of a fascinating book called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  Lacks was a cancer patient at Johns Hopkins in the 1950s when her cells (named HeLa) were taken without her knowledge,  then grown and sold and multiplied a million times over.  Her family, living in poverty and without health insurance, found out about the cells more than twenty years later.  In this book by Rebecca Skloot, they assert that what they now want most of all is for the world to know that Henrietta Lacks was a real person.  Her cells made her famous, but to her children, the heart and soul of the woman they knew as "mom" matters most of all.

The Bible teaches us that God is enough, that we don't have to spend our days proving to ourselves or anyone else that we are capable of great things.  Even though I know that's true, I've also always felt the faintest bit of discontent.  It's one thing to know that God is all I need, but it's quite another to realize that he made me to do something and to be something.  Just because the Holy Spirit lives in me doesn't give me permission to sit around on my rear all day and contemplate life.  Quite the opposite.  The Holy Spirit in me should literally be inspiring me to be everything God intended. 

One day, my children will want to know who I was and what I did.  What did I care about?  Who did I love? What did I fight for?  How did I live?   I want them to know that God was and is enough for me and that all the things I ever did were not in an effort to please people but to experience for myself and share fully with others the blessings God gave to me. 

Where will you leave your mark, and how will you make it count?