HEAVY

My heart is just so...heavy. The news was all so weighty...so much to take in and accept.

 

 

I sat in the waiting room quietly afterward watching, no, marveling at my beautiful babies as they played, so innocent, so unaware, so intensely precious swelling my love for them to new heights. Sweetest little ones looking expectantly to Mom and Dad who surely will take care of them. The look in their eyes tells us they believe this with their whole hearts, already. And, we're doing our very best, that's for certain. No one could fight for them more. Jesus loves the little children, this we believe with our whole hearts, same childlike way.

 

But the unknowns, there are many. The complications, they're complex and lifelong. And they are terribly heavy.

 

My eyes wept uncontrollable yet restrained while I tried to maintain composure. "Is this too much for one day?" the surgeon asked, and I blurted out, "No", absorbing silently. But my heart wailed loudly within, thumping my chest, covered in sackcloth and ashes, fighting to find peace in the reality of it all and the future unknown and the thinking of how to protect when I'm so entirely unable. And...

 

"He is able."

2 Corinthians 9:8

 

“'Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm."

Mark 4:39

 

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

Matthew 5:4

 

What a compassionate nod from the Lord that I should be reading Matthew 5 today as a new dawn glows with yesterday's stings still alive and thrashing. As I read, my heart releases some of the burden and I allow myself to surrender responsibilities to protect in ways

that simply aren't mine. Though, they are His so I tell myself again that Jesus loves our children.

 

He is their Protector. He is their Provider. He adores them astoundingly more than I.

 

"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!

And that is what we are!"
1 John 3:1

 

That is who they are. Our Bea and Beck, they are His children and His plans for their lives include us. We can see that. But more importantly, His plans for their lives include HIM. He is who they really need and why they've been born to existence. He is the reason they are here with us, that we might adorn them with mere glimmers of His love for them. He is who we want them to know for the sake of their eternal lives, the ones that won't be broken and will not perish...and only He knows how soon that will be.

 

"What if I put up walls, afraid to love, paralyzed with fear of loss?" I asked my husband calm and strong in grave contrast to me feeble. His quick reply, "That's not your style," with a wink and reminder so kind, so knowing me.

He's right. That's not my style at all and that's the unsettling part.

 

So today, as the heavy diagnoses and surgeries swirl dizzily around my mother's mind, still reeling

from yesterday's news, I set my heart and eyes intentionally on God's Word and I believe what it says.

 

God created Bea, fearfully and wonderfully made in His image.

He created her in love and with purpose, my daughter.

 

God created Beck, knit him together in his mother's womb knowing full well

all the days He had planned for him and that they ALL are good.

He created him in love and with purpose, my son.

 

Though she may be a "miracle baby" eventually living with someone else's heart and he may have survival statistics no parent wants to hear, we will love and adore and cherish these gifts from God for the days that He gives us to do so. May every one of them count and point our little ones to Him, that they may know His love intimately when they meet Him face to face in the exact minute of time that He deems best and right and perfect. And may we accept fully those realities, no matter what, loving full of hope and trusting in a good God even when life feels fragile and prospects weakeningly bleak. May we praise Him even then.

 

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,

for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

Psalm 23:4

 

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

2 Corinthians 12:9