The Well Without Fences
The water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
It was unseasonably cold for a late March morning, but my two-year old’s bright orange fox hat with matching mittens was perfect for his first Knee-high Naturalists program. My son, Aiden, loves being outside, the wilder the terrain, the better. He is not one to stick to rules or structure, at least not for very long, and his free-spirited approach to life was on full display at the nature center that morning.
At the beginning of our walk, Aiden insisted on holding the program leader’s hand, but almost took her down in the creek with him every time he made a sudden lunge for the water. Instead of admiring the trees and looking for birds’ nests in the branches with the other children on the path, he wanted to walk through fallen limbs and thorny vines. And when our program leader pointed out the hole in the ground that might have belonged to a cozy mouse, my son walked right up to it and plunged his hand down inside.
It was ironic when later that same day a friend, knowing full well my struggles in wrangling Aiden, recommended the documentary The Alpinist— a film about late Canadian solo climber Marc-André LeClerc, who from a very young age was drawn to nature and the mountains, a passion that was encouraged by his mother, Michelle Kuipers.
When Marc-André was growing up, Michelle packed bookcases with adventure stories and created a home school routine of in-home study in the morning and outdoor exploration in the afternoon. But when his love of the mountains led him to technical climbing, Michelle let him climb, trusting his sense of direction and self-confidence.
“If you’re never given free rein to have your little adventures as a kid you never really learn who you are,” Michelle says in the documentary. “You don’t learn what your strengths and weaknesses are, and you never learn that you’re capable.”
As scenes of Marc-André hanging from jagged and icy rock faces rolled across my screen, I asked myself if I could ever let Aiden do the same. If his present love of dirt, trees, and thrills led him to scale mountains would I have the courage to release him to the wild?
That morning the program leader had asked me, “You knew this would be difficult, didn’t you?” I chuckled and nodded.
A stranger saw and touched on my deep, interior struggle. Something deeper than creeks and thorns.
Before Aiden was born, I had visions of us sitting at library story time and attending all the typical mommy and me events. Instead, he screamed and fought me through his first (and only) gymnastics class, not wanting to follow the predetermined course for the day. I had paid for four classes, but we never went back for the others.
So, yes, I knew that day in the woods would be difficult, but the true root of that difficulty stemmed from my questions on the nature of God and what He believed about me.
Do I have the courage to release myself to the wild?
Does God want me to be in the wild?
Do I have the courage to walk without fences?
Does God want me to walk without fences?
I knew the words about God’s grace and love being sufficient, but I didn’t really believe it. They said grace was a gift, but I was still trying to earn it. I continued grasping predetermined laws and rituals and put fences around my life because I couldn’t be trusted.
But He could be trusted.
In her book The Forgotten Feminine, Denise Jordan writes:
“The law empowers sin but grace and love remove its power. A friend of mine described it beautifully like this. She told me that in many of the large cattle ranches in Australia there are no fences – the land is so vast that it would be impossible to fence it. It is also very dry. But there are pockets of water here and there and the cattle never stray far away from the water. They don’t need a fence because they will die of thirst if they stray away from the water. You see, there is no need for the law when our thirst is quenched in the pool of grace, in the river of love. There is freedom but it doesn’t go beyond where this love will allow you to go. Love imposes its own limits out of consideration for the object of its affection. If we stray from the love of God, we get thirsty and then we are drawn back to drink deeply from that love again.”
“The law empowers sin but grace and love remove its power.”
The same lesson Jesus tried to teach the woman at the well.
Jesus is tired from a long journey and chooses to rest at Jacob’s Well in Samaria. A woman comes out to the well to “draw water” and he asks her for a drink. But the woman is surprised at the request because not only is she a Samaritan, and Jews didn’t associate with Samaritans, but she was a woman and had a lower social status than men of that time.
“You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
“Sir,” I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (NIV)
Jesus was offering to place himself, the Living Water, inside her so she could become a well without fences to no longer draw water, to no longer draw the love and grace of God from a physical location, but directly from the source itself, Him, who dwells inside His people in the New Covenant.
The Samaritan woman struggled to understand these deep spiritual truths then just like I struggle to understand them now in the 21st century. Our fences are different now, and yet they remain.
Toward the end of The Alpinist, Marc-André’s mother says, “I am thankful that at least God granted me the grace to understand this about my son, to not stand in the way of his passion for the mountains.”
Aiden’s five now and still very much the same and yet time has allowed the great wisdom behind Michelle’s words to seep down to the roots of my darkest fears about dishonoring God and incurring His wrath if I was to step outside the fence.
I’ve come to believe something very different now. In fact, I think God’s parenting style is similar to Michelle’s.
“You know who you are in me.”
“You’re capable.”
“Why do you doubt?”
“Love imposes its own limits out of consideration for the object of its affection.”
I’ll never stray far, because the well of Living Water is inside me.