Anticipation. A Calvary Love Story

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“..that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself.” ― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

LOVE

Today is Dan and I’s anniversary. We are leaving for Tucson, Arizona early tomorrow morning. I can’t remember a time in our life together, even waiting for our babies, when we have longed for something in this way. The past few weeks have been full of wistful conversations about our upcoming trip. We have been flirting. We have been writing love notes and texts. We have been aching in anticipation of eight days of vacation from the long hard here. I am excited to take Dan back to a place I traveled a year ago following my shunt revision. I healed and tasted wellness there. I want him to see me this way. I want to be only one thing during this time. I want to be his Monica.

Song of Solomon keeps coming to mind. It is a book in the Bible I have mostly skipped over. Since I was a child I felt like reading it was akin to sneaking into the 612.6 section of the library to learn what I could about sex. It’s full of strong erotic imagery telling a story of lovers. Chapter two explores the expectation of them running away to be alone together but also speaks to restoration after a bleak time in their relationship and lives.

The voice of my beloved!
Behold, he comes
Leaping upon the mountains,
Skipping upon the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Behold, he stands behind our wall;
He is looking through the windows,
Gazing through the lattice.
My beloved spoke, and said to me:
“Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away.
For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of singing has come,
And the voice of the turtledove
Is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth her green figs,
And the vines with the tender grapes
Give a good smell.
Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away!
O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
In the secret places of the cliff,
Let me see your face,
Let me hear your voice;
For your voice is sweet,
And your face is lovely.

When I think back over the last sixteen years of my life there is one constant thread binding the story. Before I really knew what Calvary love was; Before I had tasted real Grace that changes you from the inside out; God gave me Dan. I separate my life into chapters easily. I know telling the whole truth out loud about those years before Dan will someday be important. For now, I can only tell you Dan’s love saved my life as surely as God’s love saved my soul.

On a one night anniversary trip in 2012, two and a half months after my brain surgery and fusion and a month before I would head back to Maryland for my tethered spinal cord surgery and Tarlov cyst removal, I laid on Dan’s strong chest, my happy place, in a beautiful room at Gervasi. I was feeling ever discouraged with the never ending pain and suffering. I listened to him talk of his dreams for our family. He shared his new found peace with where we were. He asked me if I believed we would really move past all this in the future. He told me why he did.

My heart trusted him. To hear him verbalize something about our tomorrows besides being “stuck” gave me the very hope I was needing to move forward. He rescued me and faithfully loved me when I was so unlovable. He has always believed in the promises we made. He has laid down his life, his wants and his needs over and over again to care for the girls and I. He’s shown me Jesus when I couldn’t see Him anywhere else. I look at my husband, Dan, and see more than human love. I see Calvary love.

We will keep dancing.
We will keep sailing.
We will keep doing hard things because we promised, and His promises are true.
We will keep dreaming.
We will keep expecting good things.
Our Hope remains.

(Thank you to those who generously made this trip possible. You know who you are. Thank you to those who are genuinely rejoicing with us. God has been so good to continue to give me a measure of health since my December plasmapheresis. Will you please pray I will stay well and be fully physically present during this trip? Will you please pray for safety in every way for our sweet Delaney and Danica as they remain here? I will be offline except for sharing photos on social media because so many of you have asked to see glimpses of our happiness. I will return writing here soon and will resume my “If” series and giveaways. LOVE.)

This is one of our favorite love songs by Andrew Peterson. It plays often in the soundtrack of our lives.

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If . . . then I know nothing. Day 5. And a giveaway

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If when an answer I did not expect comes to a prayer which I believed I truly meant, I shrink back from it; if the burden my Lord asks me to bear be not the burden of my heart’s choice, and I fret inwardly and do not welcome His will, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

The entire month of February I will be posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book every Sunday this month and a little olive wood cross. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

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If . . . then I know nothing. Day 4. And a giveaway

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C4

If I am inconsiderate about the comfort of others, or their feelings or even of their little weaknesses; if I am careless about their little hurts and miss opportunities to smooth their way; if I make the sweet running of household wheels more difficult to accomplish, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

The entire month of February I will be posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book every Sunday this month and a little olive wood cross. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

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If . . . then I know nothing. Day 3. And a giveaway

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C3

If I am content to heal a hurt slightly, saying Peace, peace, where there is no peace; if I forget the poignant word ‘Let love be without dissimulation’ and blunt the edge of truth, speaking not right things but smooth things, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

The entire month of February I will be posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book every Sunday this month and a little olive wood cross. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

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If . . . then I know nothing. Day 2. And a giveaway

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C2

If I belittle those whom I am called to serve, talk of their weak points in contrast perhaps with what I think of as my strong points; if I adopt a superior attitude, forgetting ‘Who made thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou hast not received?’ then I know nothing of Calvary love.

The entire month of February I will be posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book every Sunday this month and a little olive wood cross. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

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If . . . then I know nothing. Day 1. And a giveaway

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C1

If I am soft to myself and slide comfortably into the vice of self-pity and self-sympathy; If I do not by the grace of God practice fortitude, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

The entire month of February I will be posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book every Sunday this month and a little olive wood cross. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

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Calvary Love. A Month of If

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heart book

Three years ago, while I was recovering from my brain decompression and fusion at a friend’s beautiful lake house, I had the blessing of entertaining angels. In May, 2010, a girl across the world reached out to our family. She became one of the most faithful to love and pray for us on this journey. We became friends in a way that I never thought possible without meeting face to face. She and her mum traveled here from Australia to get her settled so she could begin her call to seminary. That snowy January night we shared a meal together. After dinner we moved to the living room and sat across from one another in front of the crackling fire. The fellowship was sweet. I found myself bearing my heart to them with an ease I rarely feel because of my pride. We wept. They prayed with me. They asked things of God for me that I have never really been brave enough to ask for myself. The time slipped away, and it was very late when we headed to our beds. I loved having a place for them to stay. My particular gift of overnight hospitality had been buried because of circumstances, and it meant so much to be able to offer them such a pleasant place to sleep even though it wasn’t my own home. In the morning dear Bethany came down and gave me a gift. It was a little blue hardback book. I gasped when I saw the two gold letters imprinted on the binding.

IF

When I was a little girl I found my mother’s copy of this book by Amy Carmichael. I didn’t know much about Calvary love then, but I was drawn to the simple paragraphs and the pressing of the heart. I was drawn to the white space left on each page as if to say,

“STOP HERE.
YOU CAN ONLY ABSORB THIS TODAY.
MEDITATE.
PRAY.
LIVE THIS BEFORE YOU MOVE ON.”

In the short time we had together Bethany reminded me how powerful words are, and how my words here on the screen had changed her. It was God once again speaking to me about how this journey is definitely not just about us. He is working in ways we may never know until eternity. He was asking me to keep telling the truth and pointing to Him. He was asking me to suffer awhile longer because He suffered for me.

I keep the beautiful vintage copy of Amy’s book on my prayer bench. I return to it over and over again.

She writes this in the opening of her soul searching book:

There are times when something comes into our lives which is charged with love in such a way that it seems to open the Eternal to us for a moment, or at least some of the Eternal Things, and the greatest of these is love.

It may be a small and intimate touch upon us or our affairs, light as the touch of the dawn wind on the leaves of the tree, something not to be captured and told to another in words. But we know that it is our Lord. And then perhaps the room where we are, with its furniture and books and flowers, seems less “present” than His Presence, and the heart is drawn into that sweetness of which the old hymn sings.

The love of Jesus, what it is – None but His loved ones know.

Or it is the dear human love about us that bathes us as in summer seas and rests us through and through. Can we ever cease to wonder at the love of our companions? And then suddenly we recognize our Lord in them. It is His love that they lavish on us. O Love of God made manifest in Thy lovers, we worship Thee.

Or (not often, perhaps, for dimness seems to be more wholesome for us here, but sometimes, because our Lord is very merciful) it is given to us to look up through the blue air and see the love of God. And yet, after all, how little we see! “That ye may be able to comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge” – the words are too great for us. What do we comprehend, what do we know? Confounded and abased, we enter into the Rock and hide us in the dust before the glory of the Majesty of love – the love whose symbol is the Cross.

And a question pierces then: What do I know of Calvary love?

The entire month of February I will be posting If questions from this powerful little book. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book every Sunday this month. To enter please share one of the daily “If” posts on social media (facebook or twitter) and comment here on the blog post you share. Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

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Gorgeous Possibilities

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worth

I’ve been quiet about the results of my latest plasmapheresis treatment for many reasons. I posted a small update on my gofundme account, but I have been holding much of my progress close. There are moments and sometimes hours of certain days when I feel completely well. I’m afraid to even speak of these for fear they will vanish into thin air.

This was my third round of treatments in a year. If I weigh the good days with the bad they still lose in numbers, but they win in every other way.

Today I received my statement for the treatments in December. The above is just the hospital portion. It is staggering. God found a doctor and hospital willing to take this chance on me. Part of the deal was I would be responsible for the difference between the contracted rate with an in network provider and their rate which is much higher. When you consider my shunt revision in February, the first round of pheresis that was inpatient for twelve days, the IVIG at home, the Meningitis and more hospitalization, the second round of pheresis, the fusion surgery in October and then pheresis again it seems impossible to say 2014 was a “good” year. But it was.

Living with EDS and all means makes for a kind of bipolar existence. The depths are incredibly dark and desperately painful. During these times you doubt the fight is even the right thing to do. It is the heights that convince you every better day might turn into a best. You hope no matter what the cost.

I’ve had some of these days lately. I’m floating in ordinary I count as pure miracle. I cry at the craziest times. The things bringing me the most joy are completely counter intuitive. If you are annoyed by it or dread it I’ve probably been longing for it.

A woman from Alaska who read Team Danica for years panicked when the site went dead. (I’m truly sorry I was not savvy at all about my switch to this site. I’m finding out many I never knew were reading and praying, and I left the story abruptly. Forgive me.) She eventually found us here and contacted me. She was waiting for the right time to reach out. Her gift was a year membership to our local YMCA. This is something we never would have given ourselves, but it has become this beautiful way for all of us to venture outside these walls and grab at something called wellness. Dan is able to continue his fitness which has been a lifeline for him. The girls can swim which is the closest thing to vacation they’ve had in a long time. I can walk. My puffy flesh and crumbling bones are remembering how to move. My veins are pushing blood to my head and heart. I breathe in and out with a mantra, “Thank You. Thank You. Thank You.” When I think we’ve seen every possible kindness someone appears like an angel and finds a new way to remind us we are not alone.

I’m picking my girls up from school faithfully. Every time I see Danica in the car rider line and Delaney breeze out of door one I tear up. I’m there. I’m waiting with a smile and love. Delaney used to say she would anxiously approach our front door every afternoon when my mom would drop them off. They would ring the bell, and I would appear in the sidelight. She said she could tell how much pain I was in by the expression on my face. Do you see how life altering these normal everyday things are to us?

I’m out of bed when Dan gets home. I’m doing little things around the house to ease his load. I’m able to control the insane OCD behavior that was always my downfall before and find gentle ways to reclaim my home. We are falling in love again. Every time I come out of the dark Dan is waiting there. He never forgets the person I am. Underneath the train wreck eighteen surgeries has made of my body and the wasteland this kind of suffering inevitably has made of my mind and heart he believes in me. He finds me again and again.

I’m meeting people face to face. Oh how I’ve needed this. I’m inviting others to come sit on my yellow couch and remind me how to do relationship outside a screen or a phone. I’ve met friends for coffee, had brunch, gone to the movies, prayed holding hands and hugged them all. Yes, if you touch me I will cry. I’m convinced sick people need to be touched to be healed. Failure to thrive is a real thing. I made a new rule in our house that every hug has to last at least thirty seconds. We count it out. If two of us are hugging and someone sees us they pile on. I don’t yelp in pain when someone touches me. I’m less prickly, and this makes all the difference.

I have doubted what my breath is worth when held up beside the ledger of debt and the great emotional cost to those who love me. It is in these days when the sun burns through the clouds I know for sure I must press on and save the life I can. My God wrote this story before I was a human thought, an act of love and a stirring in my mother’s womb. This relief, however long, is a miracle.

Christa Wells wrote this awhile ago on her blog, and I hold it close as I continue to tip toe through what I believe about beauty from ashes. I can still smell the burning. I know for sure He will ask me to walk through the fire again, but today all I see is redemption, restoration and renewal. All I see is Jesus paid it all. All I see are the gorgeous possibilities giving me healing and life.

My Hope remains.

When something life-giving falls from us who are riddled with want.
A word of kindness or sympathy.
An inconvenient act of generosity.
Isn’t it a miracle?

If something touched by our trembling fingers grows gold and winged, soars . . . finds entrance to another human soul. Isn’t it a miracle?

When a child looks you in your tired eyes and reaches a small hand, adoring.
Isn’t it miraculous?

When a friend hears the pained confession,
And stays.

When we find ourselves swept off our seats in laughter, even though.
Is it not the most welcome kind of miracle?

When work comes along, finally.
When the work is completed.

When an improbable friendship is born.

When we find a fragile opening to forgiveness.

When something lost is found.
Something broken healed.
Something caged released.

When one creature carries and nurtures another in the caverns of its own body.
When the crocus smiles from snowy earth,
And strangers share a meal.

When brothers and sisters pave new ways.

When suffering sweeps over and still we see light and truth and love and hope.

When the artist creates.
When the creator loves.
When the lover saves.
And the Savior lives!

May we be moved to see the marvels of things in motion here.
The miraculous, gorgeous possibilities which rise from the ashes of ”reality”
Providing what is needed for life.

“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” Ephesian 3:20

What ordinary miracles are you celebrating this week? What gorgeous possibility are you hoping and praying for?

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Learning and Healing in Relationship

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“Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.” –Wendell Berry

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One of the most remarkable and constant threads in our family’s walk through suffering is the amount of love and support we have received from others. This began with just a few local friends. It bloomed and grew to span all the way across the United States and the world. We have been wrapped in a network of love much larger than our geographical location could provide because of the power of story and the internet.

Early in our journey we had a home bound and wheelchair bound child with a year ahead of us in restrictive healing. I was a very sick mom in and out of the operating room with a very long road of surgeries and treatments ahead of me. Church was impossible. Book club was impossible. Participation in the charity groups who had loved us was impossible. I received countless cards and letters and emails but very few phone calls or actual visits. People naturally felt uncomfortable talking about their next planned vacation, big home improvement project, new shoes or even silly little gossip around a family that was literally just trying to survive the day. I understood this. Over time it caused an aching desire to participate in real face to face relationships and not just those behind a keyboard and screen.

We need community. This same girl who has always in some way loved being alone was drawn into this scary place of sharing in the blogosphere. It connected my family and me with people near and far we never would have known without technology. It brought many of the prayers and much of the provision we desperately needed. In all the good growing from the blog the lack of meeting and knowing face to face brought a hollow understanding of how God intended us to see our ultimate need for Him. In the flesh is where the work and the reward of relationships are really cultivated. Tim Keller wrote in his book King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, “If this world was made by a triune God, relationships of love are what life is really all about.” The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a continual reminder we are not soul freelancers. We need corporate worship. We need to physically be with the Body. We need to understand our brokenness is shared in some way by the whole.

In November I attended The High Calling retreat in the Texas hill country. It was a stretch for me in every possible way to join a group of people for an entire weekend in this intimate setting. I’d been begging God to restore some kind of community in my life. This was my answer. Everything God had given me, shown me and blessed me with needed the breath of life that could only come from opening my heart and being with people again. It was in this place my story began to take its’ final shape and became ready to be told beginning to end. I needed to come together with others to make my healing viable. I needed to taste the fruit that only comes by taking the risk of letting people into my life through the door of my heart to remind me how to do fellowship, friendship and love.

I am fumbling through this new found realization. As I have periods of being more well I need to relearn life from others. I need real relationship. I promise you I will be the strange lady who bursts into tears at the most inopportune times. I will not be good at small talk for a while. You will be surprised how quickly I want to talk about heart matters and soul issues. You will need to remind me to not be so serious. You may have to ask me to quit talking about the minutiae of neurosurgery and science of autoimmune illness. You will need to share your joys with me, because I DO care about your beach trip or your new countertop. I really do. I want to hear about the conversation you had with your kids in the car or your latest and greatest crockpot recipe. It will take some time and some effort, but I need you to heal.

It is authentic knowing and being known that points to the life sustaining relationship I have been given by Grace with Jesus Christ. Real bones and real flesh given in sacrifice for me encourage me to live and love more like He did in relationship. I need to finally get comfortable wearing the sign that calls me out as the poor and the brokenhearted. I need to surrender in the most uncomfortable places where I believe He does His greatest healing. Adele Calhoun sums it up beautifully in her chapter on community in her Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us:

My life has been shaped by men and women who loved me and handed me something of God in their very human lives. Their spiritual practices were woven into the fabric of their lives on the loom of relationships–both with God and with me. They had no halos. They told me the truth about the good, the bad and the ugly while passing on the lore of the spiritual disciplines they had traversed. I believe this is the way spiritual disciplines are to be learned. We are to learn them in relationships.

Has technology slowly siphoned your participation in face to face relationships? Do you use the availability of media for worship and teaching as a replacement of gathering together with a community of believers on a regular basis? What is one way you could tangibly reach out and touch someone today?

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

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Dear Mom. A Letter from Delaney

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“I heard once that the average person barely knows ten stories from childhood and those are based more on photographs and retellings than memory. So even with all the videos we take, the two boxes of snapshots under my desk, and the 1,276 photos in folders on the computer, you’ll be lucky to end up with a dozen stories. You won’t remember how it started with us, the things that I know about you that you don’t even know about yourselves. We won’t come back here.

. . . I think about your futures a lot. I often want to whisper to you, when we’re tangled up together or I’m pinning your poetry to the bulletin board or repositioning the pillow under your head so you don’t get a crick. ‘Remember this. This is what love feels like. Don’t take less.’ But what I end up saying is ‘This was my dream. You were my dream.’ I’ve said it too many times though; now when I look at you all soft and gushy and say ‘Guess what?’ You say ‘This was your dream. I was your dream.’–Kelly Corrigan, Lift

Laney Trees

Every mother bears some kind of false guilt. There is no way we can live up to the expectations in our heads and hearts telling us all we are supposed to be for our children. For a sick mother, especially a chronically sick mother, the real or supposed guilt comes in constant waves. Not an hour passes that some kind of message from the world doesn’t remind us of how we are failing.

I have written privately to my girls since they were in my womb in journals I will gift them someday. Dan too keeps a journal to them. We have amazing little rituals like writing notes to one another, especially if we are mad, sad or sorry. We have a treasure box where we keep them all. I know there are so many things we share that busy “soccer moms” might never get to with their kids. We snuggle a lot. We read and talk about what we read. We collage our visions and hopes and prayers for the seasons in our lives. We pray. Since writing “Gauntlet With a Gift” I have had this fresh perspective on the gifts that are wrapped in ugly packages like chronic illness and pain. I do believe our slow life, early bedtimes and lots of talking and listening to one another has shaped us. The compassion I see growing in both my girls for me in my suffering is forming their character.

I’ve also written public letters to my girls on Team Danica. This is a little snippet of one I wrote to Laney during my brain surgery year:

I’m sorry. I ache to give you the normal ebb and flow of life. I am so sorry I can’t get out of bed so many mornings and you always have to find me lying down. I long to be the fun and energetic mom you want. I wish I wasn’t always so tired and on edge and just plain grumpy. I have felt like we are all on autopilot for so long just to get through. So many important things I want to do with you I have not. So many things I’ve said I wish I could take back. So many things I wished I had said, but I never did.

At the end of every day I crawl into bed with you. We read or watch old episodes of Andy Griffith or The Waltons. We pray and then snuggle and chat while “Sleep Sound in Jesus” plays. I see you cling to me, your mommy, no matter how many times we have tussled during the day. Tonight you looked right at me. I am so haggard and tired and broken. You asked, ‘Mom, Do you remember what you looked like before?’ It hurts me, but I understand. Danica still looks at me the way you used to, like I’m the most beautiful woman in the world. I knew this would fade and you would begin to see my flaws on the inside and the out. I want you to know this is beauty too. This taking one painful step after another to care for you is love.

And here is one I wrote her after missing another Christmas program because I was so sick:

I am so proud of you. You have worked so hard at everything you have tried. You have taken all the responsibility for your heavy school load, extra curricular program and your music. You are thriving, Delaney. Even when you come home, and I have already clocked out for the day because of pain, you remain cheerful and helpful and loving to me. You meet me where I am probably more than any other person in my life. You never make me feel guilty or manipulate this very difficult situation. You still love to be with me when I am grumpy or sad. When I look in your eyes I know I have to keep fighting so I can see what happens next.

You are everything I dreamed you would be. You are kind. You are generous. You are brave. Oh my, you are so brave. You are strong like I wish I could be. You are wise way beyond your years. You are funny. You make me laugh out loud. You are crazy creative. You are bright. I mean like the sun. You are smart too. You are tough as nails but have the most tender heart. It’s a perfect mix. You are grateful. You are a leader. You know who you are. You know who God made you to be. You are so much more. You are the most.

When I look into your piercing blue eyes and try to count the cinnamon sugar on your nose and cheeks and when I kiss you on your head and touch the gold in your hair I still catch my breath. When I see you first thing in the morning, you are a bubble floating into my day. When I tuck you in at night, you are a perfect punctuation mark to all the good and bad and in between. When I doubt why God could have put me here. When I ask Him why He is keeping me here. He answers with you.

I love you Laney. There has never been a minute in your life I wasn’t carrying the awareness of the extreme treasure you are. I worry sometimes that you won’t know how I feel. I feel afraid I can’t love you well enough because I am such a different kind of mom than most everyone else. That’s why I’m writing this now. Maybe someday I’ll be healthy again and will attend your daughter’s Christmas programs. Maybe I will be sicker or even gone, and you will have to navigate even more life without me physically present. However it goes, I need you to understand my heart for you.

It’s LOVE. Simple. True. Forever.

Last night Delaney brought me a letter. It was not a grandiose gesture. She had been asked to write a thank you letter to someone as a class assignment. She chose me. She spoke to me in my favorite love language, words. Every single reason I’ve felt sad or guilty about being a very sick mom for oh so long melted away as I read her genuine affection for me as her mama just the way I am. I never expected this from my twelve year old. Perhaps when she headed off to college or maybe on her wedding day or after she had her first child but not now. I certainly never expected her to be able to separate the wheat and the chaff from our complicated life and hold on to the good stuff like she so clearly is doing. I was blown away.

Dear Mom

One of the beautiful lines I’ve plucked from Joe Rigney’s book The Things of Earth: Treasuring God by Enjoying His Gifts speaks of guilt.

“False guilt kills true joy and ruins us for fruitful ministry . . . To feel guilty for something God does not regard as sin is itself a sin.”

Moms, read this again.

“False guilt kills true joy and ruins us for fruitful ministry . . . To feel guilty for something God does not regard as sin is itself a sin.”

I am the mother God chose for Delaney and Danica. As my friend Jennifer Dukes Lee would say, “I am PreApproved!”

Do you ever feel like God must have gotten it all wrong when He chose you as the mother of your children? Do you feel inadequate? Do you feel guilt? I’m here to tell you it’s just not so. You are perfectly matched with the hearts and lives of the children He wants you to love. Lean in to the fruitful ministry of motherhood. It may not look anything like your dreams for motherhood or like your best friend’s journey as a mom, but you are finding your way and your children are okay. Your children will be okay. And one day they will “Rise up and call you blessed.”–Proverbs 31:28

Photo by Grace Designs Photography

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