This is the last picture of my boy with all his teeth.Yesterday afternoon as I sat nursing my baby and talking to Noah, he fell forward off my bed and caught the corner of the footstool with his left front baby tooth. After an afternoon at urgent care, we found that there was no major damage to his incredibly swollen upper lip and bruised gums and bloody nose. I'm thankful for that. But it bothers me that my little boy will have to spend the next 4 or 5 years without his front tooth. I feel like I should have prevented it from happening. That I'm a bad mom for what happened to him.
I, of course, realize that there is no way to prevent this sort of thing, especially with an extremely active little boy. It's just that these children God put in my care started out with such a clean slate. I didn't want them to mar the beautiful little bodies God gave them. More than that, I wish I could protect their minds and hearts from evil. The older I get, the more I see how this life has broken the people around me. How long can I protect them from the realities of a world full of sin?
I'm also amazed that I was so protected, so sheltered in a cocoon of grace. I was born into a family with a mom and dad who loved Christ more than anything else, who loved each other unconditionally, who sacrificed and labored to send me to a school that taught me about Jesus and gave me friends who were also part of Christian families. I grew to adulthood in a tiny Midwest town in a country where we had absolute freedom to worship God in our little Baptist church. I am aware that I was blessed by God.
Now I am the parent who must depend on prayer, who must do my best to provide these little ones with a shelter as you would shelter a tiny seedling until it is grown into a strong and healthy plant. It is my husband's and my own responsibility to protect them from evil. I don't exactly know how to do that, other than teach them the way and pray without ceasing that they will follow it. So far, they have followed wholeheartedly and without question. It is my deepest prayer and highest goal for them to love Jesus as much and even more when they are grown than they do now with the precious faith of a child.
May we not be weary in well doing. May our country continue to provide a haven of freedom to worship God. (Please, Lord!)
But I also pray that I would be willing to enter the stickiness and the heartache of those I love that were not given such an easy path to the Lord. Who still lack the courage to follow him with their whole heart. May I love as Jesus loved, not only when it is easy, but when it is difficult to do so. Because what would I be, and where would I have ended up if not for his grace in my life? How can I then not be an instrument of that grace in the lives of the people he has placed around me that I might reflect the face of Christ in all his brightness, shining into the darkness of the prisons of despair around me?
I am nothing without Christ. May I never attempt to be.
I wish I was more of a man
Have you ever felt that way
And if I had to tell you the truth
I'm afraid I'd have to say
That after all I've done and failed to do
I feel like less than I was meant to be
And what if I could fix myself
Maybe then I could get free
I could try to be somebody else
Whose much better off than me
But I need to remember this
That it's when I'm at my weakest
I can clearly see
He made the lame walk
And the dumb talk
He opened blinded eyes to see
That the sun rises on His time
Yet He knows our deepest desperate need
And the world waits
While His heart aches
To realize the dream
I wonder what life would be like
If we let Jesus live through you and me
What if you could see yourself
Through another pair of eyes
What if you could hear the truth
Instead of old familiar lies
And what if you could feel inside
The power of the hand
that made the universe
You realize
He made the lame walk
And the dumb talk
He opened blinded eyes to see
That the sun rises on His time
Yet He knows our deepest desperate need
And the world waits
While this heart aches
To realize the dream
I wonder what life would be like
If we let Jesus live through you and me
All our hearts they burn with hate in us
All our lives we've longed for more
So let us lay our lives before the one
Who gave His life for us
He made the lame walk
And the dumb talk
He opened blinded eyes to see
That the sun rises on His time
Yet He knows our deepest desperate need
And the world waits
While this heart aches
To realize the dream
I wonder what life would be like
If we let Jesus live through you and me
-Big Daddy Weave "What Life Would be Like"
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