This morning as I sat with Alder, hand over his heart, watching him sleep and praying blessings and healings and growings over his body, I recognized another trait he inherits from his mama: Alder wants to do things by himself. Alder is fighting the ones trying to help him. There is an easier way, but Alder is battling submission, fighting his own weakness.
This trait has been mine, too, since childhood. I want and I will, whatever the cost or the effort. All these years, I thought my worry could generate outcomes, my efforts could make me heroic, my goodness could make me desirable. I have clung to that which was actually never mine to control. I have been slow to rest in the arms of the Saviour who promises to rescue me from sin's grip, from the creator who breathed life into my soul and made the whole of creation beautiful for me to behold, from the physician who knows the cause of every pain and who has the power to heal.The illusion of control is a burden, as I have said so many times these past few weeks. When we are weak, His power is made perfect. The relinquishing of control to the one who holds the universe becomes a beautiful transformation of the soul. Come to me, says Jesus, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I have begun the journey of recognizing the power of this truth.
As I sat with Alder pondering and praying, it occurred to me that my son must learn in his earliest days of human existence what took me 30 years to acknowledge: this letting go. I found renewed fervor in a prayer of hope and power for my Alder: the prayer that he would not just simply rest into letting medicine do its work, but that he would receive and reap the greatest blessings of knowing this easy yoke of Christ. We will learn together, my Alder and me.