As brand new parents, we have these dreamy ideals of what life will be like when we bring our children home for the first time. They are always sweet and happy and snuggling. They play and make funny faces when you feed them a lemon, and if they HAVE to be crying it’s as a result of something small. We just look on with amusing smirks, right?
Well that all goes out the window pretty quickly. Couple hours in maybe? When all we want is ten minutes of sleep in a row where something isn’t leaking or crying or rustling on their leak proof sheets. When we are too tired too sleep but too delirious to do anything else. But we work through it. We figure out sleep schedules and how to multitask.
Then it gets really crazy when they are sick or do something out right illegal or we get a phone call that the school nurse caught them cutting. This is when we realize in shock that we control nothing. We realize our grasp is very very small.
What seemed like a nice safe rug is not just ripped out from under us. It’s set on fire behind bullet proof glass, and there isn’t anything we can do to put it out. We just sit and watch it burn to bits.
It was all a sham anyway. We weren’t keeping that rug in place. It wasn’t holding us up. Because it is a rug. It’s superficial decor.
You know what’s real, though? Peace. Real, Jesus given peace. I am sitting in a hospital bed right now. Not mine. My daughter’s. Her eyes are welling over with tears as she works to remain calm, so her heart rate stays below what the doctors keep calling, “concerning.”
She’s had her blood drawn four different times today, and she tries so hard to be tough, but those tears just spill right over her cheeks. I watch, and soothe, and pray. I say the promises My Maker wrote to me.
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.
Our hope isn’t in health or doctors or luck or rugs. Our hope is in the God and his promises to shield us. His promise that maybe we will hurt and stumble and that pain may exist but also that he will soothe and comfort- hold up and cover- and that joy comes in the morning.
So go ahead, rug. You go ahead a shimmy and pull and rip and dance a jig if you want to. I stand on a solid foundation, not sinking sand. And that means that I am untouchable, and so it my baby girl. She’s snug under the cover of his wings.
