while everyone is waking up with heads and hair all fuzzy.
when we bump into each other unintentionally and some laugh
and some snarl.
it's in that moment, one of the first of our day, that i look up and see...
the way the morning light catches me off guard and sends me searching.
and i find it's starting point
and watch it wrap around this kitchen...
from a high place up on that wall
right down to the the quiet edges laid low.
and i think how He wraps my days in His Light.
how His beauty catches me off guard...
and then i find myself breaking open.
first in humiliation as i find myself holding a thrashing child caught up in a tantrum nothing can tame.
she roils wildly against me, screams so loud and i feel so exposed, as though all my parenting sins are laid bare for all to see.
i want to crawl under the nearest rock,
anything to get me away from the embarrassing spotlight i find myself caught in.
later, i strap us all in as the moon paints the air all blue.
when emotions have settled and a bit of motion is needed to ease the tension that has settled around us all day.
and it's when i hear their sweet voices singing behind me,
singing praises to Jesus that i find myself breaking open again...
because from the time she was tiny, we have been broken, she and i.
broken in ways i have never known how to heal.
she was born into arms limp and heavy with depression and she has been fighting for my heart ever since.
this, i realize, as we drive down that road,
as she sings out that we are the light of the world...
and all she is fighting for is my love.
i read it, somewhere this evening, as i desperately combed through articles and pages and blogs on parenting a child whose will is oh-so-strong.
i read the words that sink deep and break me open just a little bit further...
a child wasn't made for a parent, but a parent is made for a child...to love and to serve and to guide.
where did i forget this along the way?
when did i begin to think that my children were for me?
when did the beginnings; the feedings, the changings, the burpings, the coo-ings...when did those change from delights to drudgeries?
when did i lose the wonder and instead begin to shatter?
we've been broken, she and i.
she has my heart, but does she truly know it?
her actions, when i enter into them instead of trying to quiet them, might reveal what my eyes don't want to see.
my spit-fire child, the one so loud and crazy...is our relationship, all healed up and whole, worth fighting for?
could something new be birthed from out of the ashes of the old?
yes. oh yes. a hundred million times yes.
and even here,
even now...
He so gently starts at the highest point and wraps around to the broken hearts laid low.
He wraps us both up in His Light that reveals,
holds us both close with His beautiful Love that heals.
