Devotion 322 - Grip

It is strange how the Lord walks us through life often answering questions we didn't know we asked.

Often taking a hand we didn't know we offered.

Often giving us a word of encouragement we didn't know we needed.

April is around the corner and with it comes the memories of the first moments with my youngest daughter.  We had missed her second birthday waiting for the appointed time to travel to China.  With that birthday my heart grieved for the party I would not give, the gift I would not purchase and the cake I would not bake.

My heart steadied with the thought I would soon meet her, but my heart shook with the realization she would be a month older, a month wiser.  The person that filled my computer screen would now fill my arms. 
It is a dance between fantasy and faith but sometimes we cannot hear the music of the Master.

The day arrived - three long years in the waiting.  I wanted to be polite and compassionate to her caregiver but I wanted my daughter more than my very breath.  When she was offered I took my child and turned away from the caregiver.  This was our moment. 

I held her up against me and whispered every word I could muster in my tears praying she would find some comfort in her fear.  My husband watched; I loved him dearly for that.  He would have his moment, but he knew she and I needed this.

Finally, our oldest son caught sight of the two of us.  He had been filming another family whose child had arrived long before ours. 

It was their turn.  I couldn't let go of this little girl but I sat on the floor so her daddy and her siblings could drink her in.  

We had prayed having our children there would help her.  It did.  Her first easy breath came, then her first smile.  It was slow and steady.  My Lily offered Ava something to drink that is when I saw her little hands.  Everything about her was smaller than I envisioned.  

When a child has filled a 17” screen for so long, proportions are skewed.  She tried to hold the bottle Lily offered but in one hand she clasped a sweet, bread roll.  In the other clenched tight a tissue.  The question I had asked all those months, “Was she loved, did she love?”  A caregiver, a nanny, had given these things out of love.  Nourishment for her body and tissue for her tears, questions answered.

I noticed how tightly she held the bread, even three years later, still her favorite snack.  Her and I…  we grip things.

We grip what we know, even tighter when we are faced with the unknown.  I seek, I read, I pray, I ask, always wanting more.

I am the child who is served cake and wants ice cream.  I am the daughter whose answered prayer leads to more questions.  I pray continually for how I can serve the Lord, yet the opportunities come and I have trouble prying open my hand.

I like same.  I like the sweetness of the life I know and the reliability of the schedule I keep.

You see when we open our hands, we open them to change, to vulnerability to perhaps something that doesn't fit as comfortably and perhaps takes a bit of prayer. 

I grieve what I have known and wonder was my prayer to serve truly sincere or was it prayed because that’s what the servant is supposed to do?

A day passes to a week and then I turn the page of the calendar to another month.  The unfamiliar is becoming friendlier.  Perhaps prayer is not about more or different or better, but about opening a hand to Him and letting Him walk ahead and not just alongside.

The thoughts, the fears of the cannots and will nots have silenced as I listen for the questions He is answering and the encouragement He is offering.

He agrees I cannot, He confirms WE can.  The unfamiliar sitting in my hand is still foreign but He translates it to His own, our own.

 It is the opening of the hand, the extending of our fingers that point us to his grace and away from our pride.  It is the opening of the hand that allows us to hold more of Him.

For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”

Isaiah 41:23