Contentment

If I had to sum up what 2010 brought for me it would be contentment. The year I stopped striving for I don't even know what and finally looked around and saw with fresh eyes what God is doing right in front of me. It's strange because after the earthquake I was so broken and sad and guilt ridden. I wanted to be in Haiti and I had this sort of sick jealousy that those who were there are now part of a brotherhood of suffering that I will never know. And I gieved the loss of the only Haiti I knew. My dreams of taking Daniel to St. Josephs and showing him the room we slept in when we finally held him in our arms, of taking him to the chapel on the roof where I held him and wept and cried wordless prayers of praise and gratitude, of walking the streets and seeing the places familiar to my heart, those dreams were gone. And for a while were replaced by nightmares of what could've happened to his family, to the countless others I have loved there. I thought of the children who stole my heart and how I may never know if they lived. Sweet Johnson and his sisters. All these years later I still ache for that boy, and he was first in my heart when disaster struck. Does he live today?

So, how did the contentment come? I'm not sure except to say that through my wrestling and arguing with the Lord He didn't chastise me. He only somehow unveiled my eyes. He gave me a vision for the ministry right in front of me. And the year of contenment was topped off with the most blessed Christmas we have ever had. We throttled back our checking account giving and tried to point our children toward worship instead. And despite my fears of rebellion and mutiny my kids blessed my socks off. Christmas Eve we worshiped at church and I watched my kids love on Bean's birth mom. At home all snuggly in jammies they gathered around Jason as he read the story of Jesus' birth. My sweet little Daniel pondered the theology of grace vs. works in his precious six year old way. "But mom, I'm confused how that works about going to heaven."
"Well, honey remember when you asked Jesus to come and be Lord of your life and promised to love and obey him?"
"Yeah, but I did lots of bad stuff again."

Oh my heart. The joy of eternal salvation swept over me fresh and new as I was able to say to my son that when God looks at him he sees perfection in Jesus and nothing could keep Him from bringing you to heaven with him. His wide moist eyes said it all. May we all feel that gratefullness and may it never become mundane.

Christmas morning, for the first time in my memory, before presents were opened my children were glad to retrieve our baby Jesus from his treasure box and place him lovingly in the manger of our nativity. And I saw them, all four of them, pause and ponder. A moment, that lasted perhaps seconds, will live forever in my Mother Heart as I continue in 2011 to nurture in them that sense of awe and wonder at a Saviour who came and died.