“A thousand words could not explain, a thousand worlds could not contain every perfect gift comes from You.”
(~Chris Tomlin)
Every time I think about it, I choke up.
This passage of time. The fleeting of days.
She is five.
Five?
Soon she will be skipping off with her daddy to be dropped at the school door’s edge, and my days will have considerably less sparkle.
I will be honest.
This is the hardest one to bear.
She was 16 months to the day when my cancer diagnosis came.
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held
(lyrics from Natalie Grant’s “Held”)
“Moooommmmyyyy!” she cries, untwisting herself from her spot on the floor and running to curl next to me on the couch. “I don’t like this pawt,” she whispers as she pulls the blanket to cover us both, “Hold me?”
I love holding you.
I whisper into her hair. She is fresh from the bath, smelling of coconut and wrapped in her white towel. She is curled on my lap for warmth, shivering and soaking my clothing through with her wetness. I rock back and forth on the floor and cuddle her tightly.
How long have we been sitting this way?
Quiet.
No words.
Just rocking and breathing and warming.
There are no clocks in her room. Nothing to say, “Hurry up! There are things to be done! It’s lunchtime or snack time or time to do this or be there!”
This morning as I pulled out our Children’s Bible, I teased my boys in my best Aussie accent (yes, I am a dork), “Oh, we’ve reached the part about Jesus’ birth. We don’t need to read that! It was just Christmas.”
Smiling back at me, Bear yelled, “NO!”
And Ash said, “You can’t skip parts of the Bible, Mom, we need all of it.”
Really? Why?
I love my Bear’s heart, “Because, Mom, it never gets old.”
I could tell it had snowed. There was a stillness settled around our house, so I checked to see and found a two-hour delay for the boys’ school. Rolling back over, I reveled in the quiet. Then I heard his steps–my Bear, coming to me. He leaned his head on my shoulder, “Mommy? I just don’t feel good.” As I turned, I pulled him to me. “My throat hurts.” I immediately felt the fevered head and knew I had a sick boy.