Today was rough….no I don’t think rough properly describes how I feel about today and yet a Lesson emerged from the day….
There is nothing worse than hearing your child crying and screaming “I want to hug my mommy!” and being stuck behind a wall and not able to hold her and hug her and make it all better. Nothing can ease the pain in a mother’s heart when you know your child is hurting and scared and reaching out for you but you are unable to step in, hold her hand, heal her wounds and ease her fears.
Monday night my small group and I watched a Nooma video…if you haven’t seen any of them, you should (Nooma: Rain). In this video a man was telling a story of when he was hiking through these beautiful woods with his infant son in a backpack on his back. As they began to march deeper and deeper into the trees a storm suddenly came upon them. He lifted up his sons jacket hood, and his own…then kept on walking to get to their destination. Not long after his son began to scream and cry and the rain was coming down heavier and harder than before. He took a moment to look back at his son and realized that not long after he pulled up his son’s hood he pulled it down and had spent all that time having the pouring rain come down on him unprotected. The man pulled his son out of the backpack and cradled him in his arms as he continued to walk through the storm. He whispered into his ears “I love you son, everything is going to be alright. I will never leave you.” The child was cold, wet, scared and confused. His father held him tight and understood that this was all he could see. As a baby his son didnt understand that they would get back home soon, that they wouldnt be out in the storm forever….that he would do everything in his power to protect him.
Suddenly we were taking this emotional imagery and reflecting it on God’s love for us. There are so many times in our lives we are lost, scared, hurting, confused or afraid and God is trying to cradle us in his arms and love us and whipser to us, “I love you. Everything is going to be alright. I will never leave you.” More often than not I get caught up in my fear or my pain that I dont remember God is there for me, holding me, loving me, protecting me and providing for me. As i was forced to stand back and watch my daughter in pain, struggling to understand what was going on, afraid of what was going to happen next I couldnt help but think this is sometimes how God feels when I choose to ignore Him in my life. When I refuse to ask for help or come to him when I am afraid. He is standing there reading, willing, waiting but I wont open the door and let him in. So he is forced to watch through the window as I suffer and cry… fighting alone.
God is aching to love you and protect you. He is yearning to cradle you in his arms and provide for you. Will you let him?
i love that video. i think it was the first nooma i ever saw. and your impression of God in that is right on! it’s so easy to go to others with our pain or to just hide it away and try to nurture it ourselves, but God’s comfort is so much better and always available waiting for us to take him up on it.