There is something recognizable, the same, about people who have an amazing mother. It seems like a part of their inherent personality, but it’s more than that. It’s what they’ve had instilled in them, day after day, by her example and teaching. OH, to have people see that in my children. This is a loved soul, I think, when I meet them. A soul well-loved. Too many people in the world don’t get to have that sense that someone is there and crazy in love with them no matter what. Sometimes an aunt or a friend or a cousin or a grandma fills that gap, showing the child what true Love really looks like, and sometimes no one does. At night I pray in my kids’ rooms. That they will feel wholly loved despite the times I have failed at showing it. That whatever is in the way, in them, would fall away […]
She had been up and down all night, sick and burning up. We spent the day tied together with a sling that she still fits tucked in. Either that, or rocking in a chair, her head on my shoulder, mouth open with heavy sleep. When we’d walk around the house, her on my hip in the sling and her head still on my chest, her arms dangled limp like they were lifeless. She needed me a lot. I cleaned up her sickness, from the floor or her crib or her clothes, over and over. I held a towel in front of her to catch her sick over and over and softly repeated, it’s going to be okay, it’ll be okay. And then my heart would follow that whisper with its own prayer for it to be okay. Her fever was 103 and she wasn’t keeping anything down, and it was going on four days. […]
empathy, sympathy, compassion a passion for helping and then… empathy and sympathy and compassion fatigue. There’s just too much. But we can’t stop talking about it and we can’t close ourselves off from it because if we do, we’re doing nothing and everyone loses. I don’t know how it happened, but some years back I became quite passionate about the human trafficking crisis, especially the sex trafficking of children, of orphans. Around that time, through the music and message of Sara Groves, I came to know International Justice Mission. Ryan and I then became Freedom Partners, financially supporting IJM’s work to end slavery, trafficking and other injustices. But that sponsorship and the support of two children through Compassion International is all our family is doing. We allow a small donation to be removed from our account one time a month and that’s it…we call it good enough, and it’s not. What happens? What […]
