Getting Out

We've been here before, getting the tough news about our girl.  I feel a lot of the same old feelings and fears creeping in...actually not so much creeping but flooding back in. We've also learned from and have grown during the hard times of the past years.  Yes, it takes us to our knees but not to our knees where it incapacitates us but to our knees before our God...this is the place we know.  That familiar hurt, that ache in our soul that we know all to well, but also that safe, protected spot under His wing...pulled in close to Him as He determines our steps, sets the path and leads us on this journey. 

I've learned from the darkness of the pit that first and foremost I don't want to go back there.  Surely I've come farther than this in the last 5+ years that the next bump in the road won't send me back to despair...but I feel the pull to go there.  So I practice the things that got me out of the pit the last time and the time before that and the time before that...then I remember that it's not me that got me out of the pit, it's God.  It's His presence there in the depths, His realness, His tenderness...His healing.  His healing of a mother's broken heart, Him speaking words over pain that should have killed me.  It's Him setting the course and then setting my feet under me so that I can accomplish what must be done during my day.

It's Him catching each tear that falls as I sit with her, hold her hand look into her eyes and tell how how beautiful she is and how much she is loved.  He's there in the darkness and aloneness speaking His truth and love over our family. And it's for our family that we do this, it's for those boys that we persevere, that we pray and that we talk. They need to see how we handle this, they need to see what it looks like for a God centered marriage to weather the storm.  

My daughter appears "broken" to the world, but in my sinful, human brokenness I am far worse off than her.  But because God saw me in my pitiful state and loved me anyway and sent His Son to die for my sins I can now stand before Him redeemed by His Son's blood.  That's the hope that lifts me from the pit, God has conquered sin and death and one day we will live with Him in paradise.  For that I give praise and thanksgiving to the One that's bigger than all this.  This is our story and we will live it out under His Lordship as long as He gives us breath to do so.