Devotion 294 - Missing

“But I was missing you.”

My daughter looked at me with her almond eyes and said it again, “But I was missing you.”
This wasn’t supposed to happen.  Bedtime is the time we giggle and rub feet and read books.  Then we kiss goodnight and say our prayers.
I had uncovered a book I hadn’t read to Ava since we were in China.  It is a story book.   A book that probably every adoptive, China mom knows.  It beautifully depicts the journey of a momma and a baby girl, a plane ride and a reunion.  

It’s lovely and it gently introduces how some families begin.  Ava was thrilled to see the book, overjoyed to read it but when we got to the page where cribs were lined and nannies were in charge, Ava stopped me and said, “But I was missing you.”  I stammered and my eyes filled with tears.

There was a time when Ava probably didn't giggle at bedtime and where books were not read to her and now, two years in our home, she remembered it too. It was hard.  

I mustered my courage and said, “You are right, momma wasn't there but Jesus was.”

As if singing the line of the song we have sung a thousand times, Ava responded, “Yes, I know.”

My heart, instead of my voice now stammered.  I remembered the moments late into the night some three years ago when the weight of adopting again and the thought of another trip half way around the world would rock me awake.  I would sit in bed for long hours, sometimes kneeling at the side of my bed and pray for the Father’s presence at the side of Ava’s bed, but I had never contemplated the answer to that prayer until now.  

He was there then,  and He is here now.

No sooner had we finished our reading when I saw my son Beau climb up on the foot of the bed.  He too was teary.  
All week he had been tormented by the thought of whether heaven was a place he truly wanted to go.  At the start of school we had watched a movie.  It was a young boy’s interpretation of heaven.  It had stirred something in Beau, something not particularly good.

My son, the one that had seemed to build his wall of faith at such a very young age was seeing that wall shake as if caught up in an earth quake of doubt.  

My daughter was missing her momma, my son was missing his Jesus. For nights on end we had wept and prayed with Beau.  It was decidedly going to be one more of those nights.  I reminded Beau that doubts are the mortar by which greater faith is built but when you are twelve or fifty and the clock strikes tired, it is hard to muster the strength to believe much less build.

We prayed again, yet this time I had a new tool, Ava’s faith.
I prayed harder, longer and deeper realizing the same God who was in China three years ago at Ava’s bedside was here now.  

He might feel absent to Beau’s heart but God remained ever present with us here.
He is both in the seeking and the finding.  The harder we must work to find Him the clearer He becomes.

Paul reminds us that we must “work out our faith with fear and trembling.”  Is this part of what he meant?  The working when His wonder fades to bring it back in focus?
Is it a lack of faith when we miss our Beloved Savior?   Is it the devil trying to steal our joy?  Or is it the Spirit allowing shadows such that we crave light?

I reassured Beau that we have all have experienced doubt.  It was not easy to admit.  Should mommas have doubts?  Should they lay awake at night and wonder if Jesus hears little girls in their Chinese cribs and big girls in their American beds?

As I sat looking at Ava sleeping as if embraced by angels, I was for the first time grateful for the doubts, grateful for the hard stuff, grateful for

the ugly that pointed me to the beautiful.  I was grateful for the missing that directs me to the Presence.  Not the Presence I can feel or touch or smell, but the Presence I can hear.  The Presence that beats in my heart, the Presence that causes the wind to blow and the sun to shine.  The Presence that promises missing only lasts for a day and joy comes in the morning.


Be brave. And do not pray for the hard thing to go away. But pray for a bravery to come that’s bigger than the hard thing.  
       Ann Voskamp

“ I am sure that neither death nor life, angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of god in Christ Jesus our Lord” Romans 8:38-39.