The Foolish Tortoise

“You never know what may cause them…But of this you can be sure.
Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well
to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret
of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them
of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where,
if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.” – Frederick Buechner

My tears came suddenly one Sunday morning as my son picked out hymns at the piano. One, in particular, touched a very tender place.

‘’Please, please, anything but that one!’’ I sputtered. 

He switched to another, but it was no better. 

‘’Classical music please! I just can’t handle the hymns right now!’’ I interjected again, trying to keep my mascara from running all over my face. We were meant to leave for a new church in just a few minutes. 

My poor son’s compassion matched his frustration, and he graciously stopped playing. I knew I wasn’t making sense though. I also knew it wasn’t his fault. Why, in this season of transition between churches, do hymns destabilize and dysregulate me? 

My husband asked me the same question several times that day. Not unkindly, but truly without knowing why. A vague idea came and went all day, but it wasn’t until nighttime that the truth came to me with greater clarity: hymns remind me of my Eden. 

As a young teenager, I played those same hymns for comfort. Very much alone in my insecurity, I had made the church, hymns, and the orderliness of orthodox worship into an Eden of safety.

Now, newly ruptured from yet another failing church, my Edenic vision of the church lay in ruins all around me.

The innocence and beauty of my son’s playing reminded me of my pre-fall illusion that the church was necessarily a safe place for me and always would be. 

Later that week, my son asked, ‘’Is it okay if I play hymns right now?’’ 

‘’Sure, buddy, thanks for asking,’’ I told him. ‘’You know, I thought more about why that upset me so much on Sunday.’’ 

‘’Oh yeah?’’ he asked. He wanted to understand. 

‘’I used to play those hymns when I was your age. I never thought church could be an unsafe space. It makes me really sad to realize that I didn’t know that.’’ 

He listened attentively. Then he climbed off the piano bench and hid between it and the piano, just barely poking his head out of the crack between the two pieces of furniture. 

‘’Mom, I’ve been feeling like a turtle, and I’ve been peeking out of my shell to see if it’s safe to come out,” he explained. “I’ve been feeling like that at church for a long time now. I really want to be somewhere where I can come all the way out and walk around, like I felt last summer at the church we visited in Vermont. And when it doesn’t feel safe, I just climb into my shell and wait.’’

I stared at him a while, pondering and wondering. My surprise must have shown in my eyes.

‘’I’ve been running around without a shell all my life!’’ I realized, out loud. 

No one gave me permission to step back and say, ‘’No, I really don’t agree with this.’’ I was taught to obey, submit, and keep the peace. I’ve been the Foolish Tortoise in Richard Buckley and Eric Carle’s children book, only I didn’t take my shell off on purpose; I’d never been given one. 

Throughout my parents’ cross-cultural ministry, I was part of a strategy to build trust with others. ‘’Children are natural barrier-breakers,’’ my dad told me during a counseling session. ‘’By sending you off with others, we showed we trusted them.’’ 

I learned to allow others what they wanted in the name of ministry. The set-up for harm is so obvious to me now. But as a child, it was the air I breathed and the water I swam in. 

I learned to morph and blend and adapt to whatever culture, whatever school, whatever church environment I found myself in without questioning the intentions, goodness, or safety of the persons involved. If the organization was Christian, then it must be right. 

I need a new shell. I need a shell, period. I need permission to step back, observe, and judge for myself. I never knew the categories of ‘’garden-variety sinner, wicked, and evil’’ could exist within a Christian organization. No wonder my flesh is raw, bleeding, and broken. 

Piece by piece, Jesus is building a shell for me through the tender, fierce hands of other women who’ve done this hard work, training and strengthening my hands in the process. How I’ve needed to hear His voice through their voices, feel His touch through their touch, and learn to take His wounding seriously through their taking my wounding seriously.

Here is a way through. It is back through the pain, to the mystery of where I have come from, that I am summoned forward ‘’to where, if my soul is to be saved, I should go to next.’’

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Rebecca Jacques is wrapping up a decade of homeschooling and wondering what God has in store for her next. She’s an artist and a novice maple syrup producer. Though new to story work, she longs for hope, integration, and healing to take root and grow in safe, Christ-centered communities in the French-speaking province of Quebec, Canada. Her husband is calm, her teens are neurodivergent, and her German Shepherds are wild.