It's been nearly a full month since my last post. Still, we are waiting. The seas I watched Him part have refilled, it seems, and again I'm left windless and wondering, "how long? Oh Lord? How long?" For every inch towards home, we take ten yards back. Our littlest appears to have caught his first cold; little bodies like his don't simply fight it off, they usually take a beating first. Cannula. Again. When will he be able to breathe again? When will I?
Alder's due date was Sunday. Time, once our friend, is now undoubtedly enemy. When he was tiny, it was a consolation to remind myself he was so young, and that the time we were spending together was "bonus" time. Not so anymore. Now every day he spends in the hospital is one day taken from a "normal" babyhood, from the chance to mother my newborn. (Well, if not a newborn, at least one who resembles one.) Every day for the past three and a half months I have kissed him goodbye. Every day I have explained to my older two that I need to visit their brother and kissed them goodbye...Too many goodbyes for a mama to handle. Which one of my children could I live apart from for a few months? That's the terrible decision that's been made for me every day for months now: live apart a little from each...I felt sure that the goodbyes would be nearing their end, that it would be time for the hellos to begin. That by now we would be restored to a single roof, a single city, a single life.
I've been turning over a phrase I read some time ago, "the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." (Frederick Buechner) For the longest time I thought that my "calling" was essentially gifting, gladness, listening, and choice. Our current situation has turned that idea on its head. What do you do with the idea of "call" when you are "placed?" And, since the place where He's placed me is incredibly painful, what of deep gladness? And how can I meet the world's deep hunger when I'm so starved? And how do I trust and follow a God who sails me into a sea deeper than I can swim, and hands me no floaties before tossing me overboard?
Tonight I read the story of Joseph in Egypt to the children. It struck me in a new light, the way Joseph was called to repeated and extended suffering. Plucked from his family, sold into slavery, thrown into prison; his story isn't a pretty one, and it spans decades. Those are years he doesn't. get. back. Those are years his dad and brother don't get back. His one and only life is spent in ways he doesn't choose. And yet, in spite of his heart ache, Joseph thrives, eventually meeting the world's deep hunger in the very most literal sense. (See Gen 47.) And he doesn't become bitter or soured to his brothers, to God, to the world around him that is so unjust, or his situation so relentless. Joseph sees his circumstances as personal and global mercies, as God's provision. "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." (Gen 50:20) There is purpose in his suffering, there is a plan greater than his own.
I don't know what God's purpose is in this story, but I do know that God has chosen me to be Alder's mama, and He's placed me in a situation with so much pain but so many mercies. So many privileges. And sometimes my head is bowed and my back's bent and I'm looking down into my empty hands wondering how to give and receive from their dredges, when Jesus places His scarred hands in mine and clasps tight and says, "just trust me and watch."