Cries of the Heart


Today, I was lucky enough to accompany my daughter and granddaughter to music class. I watched my little Lyla marching around that room to the beat of her own drummer. She didn't follow directions. She didn't sit when she was supposed to, walk in the direction we were all walking, sing when she was supposed to, play her instrument the way other kids were playing theirs, do the response to the call and she just generally did what SHE wanted to do. My daughter was wishing she would do as the other kids were doing. I was beaming! Lyla knows her own mind. Already at 15 months, she isn't afraid to be different. She is a leader and she's vocal about it! She's persistent and difficult to cajole when she doesn't want to do something. I love it! (I don't have to discipline her!) She is her own person to the nth degree!!

Later in the day, I went along to her 15 month doctor appointment. This was an appointment with those dreaded shots - 3 of them. (They now get shots in their thighs, mine got them in their arms.) My daughter wanted me to go to help her. She hates those shots the same way I hated when mine got theirs. Of course, no loving parent wants to see/hear their child get hurt. We were both up by her head, holding her still and gently talking to her and stroking her hair and at first, she was just squirming, not enjoying the firm control we had over her. Then, the shots, in rapid succession. She screamed and cried so hard and it was awful. It took me back to 28 years earlier when that succession of shots started for my children. That little sweet girl gave into the pain and lost all the fight in her and we couldn't scoop her up fast enough.

I flashed back to when this whole horrible thing (separation and then divorce) started for me. I literally screamed and wept and pleaded for Jesus to help me, to comfort me, to quiet my tears, to hold me. He must have because here I am, almost 5 months to the day later, and I'm still here. I  literally thought I was going to die of a broken heart but I didn't.

My Parent hated seeing and hearing me screaming in pain. He couldn't wait to scoop me up and whisper words of comfort in my ear. I heard Him in many of the Bible verses I have heard and/or learned over the years. Some of the verses I didn't realize I knew, word for word. But there they were, words from my loving Father and those words comforted me in the same way my mother's arms used to (and still do!)

Oh, I needed those words from scripture. Words that one day I might gloss right over and other days they seem to be speaking straight to the brokenness in my heart. These words from Psalm 55 strengthen me today: "But I call to God and the Lord saves me. Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and He hears my voice." So, in the same way Lyla got poked with needles and my heart was pierced with arrows, we both had loving parents to scoop us up and bring us comfort.

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