What You Can Not Know

A lump rose in my throat as he reached for the giant pliers that would break open the hopes and prayers of the past, kept safely, for a time in that box. 10 years ago we stood together, pregnant with our first, anticipating parenthood and our growing family and future with a naiveté that makes that lump now swell just a little more.  We sang wholeheartedly of His faithfulness, His friendship even in our uncertainty, His guidance. We wrote our prayers for the future and placed them in a tiny envelope with our names on the front of it. But we couldn’t have known.

We couldn’t have known the joy and emotion that would come as we held our first daughter and fell so deeply in love with her. We couldn’t have known the loss of his Grandfather was close. We couldn’t have known the fears and stress that would accompany our second daughter’s birth and how that would force us to come together, hunker down and fight.

Fight for her. Fight for us. Fight to do it together.

We couldn’t have known the life and laughter and business of a full house. Of baby snuggles and baby giggles and crashing into bed to grab just 20 minutes of deep, deep sleep that only comes from that “I’ve got a newborn exhaustion.” We couldn’t have known the sacrifice of putting the other first with a busy family at home, to take that trip, take that job, volunteer where your heart beats, follow your dreams. We couldn’t have known that a flight of faith to a foreign country would mark our future so significantly and change everything again and we would need to learn how to cling.

Cling to Him when it didn’t make any sense. Cling to His promises when it hurt too much to breathe. Cling to each other when nightmares raged, when fear enveloped and when we were changing.

We couldn’t have known the extreme joy in a blessing that breaks your heart open on the heels of such heartache, until we welcomed our son into the world; or that God offers healing in the tiniest bundles sometimes. We couldn’t have known we would say goodbye to so many, to family, to friends, to babies and seniors. We couldn’t have known that we would learn that brokenness, be it emotional, spiritual or physical, offers us the opportunity to retreat into ourselves and die or learn to reach out to each other and ask for grace even when it means seeing our darkest places.

We couldn’t have known.

And tonight my daughter scribbles madly on her paper by my side while the pliers crack open all we couldn’t have known.
“Mama, will you help me fold this and put it in the box tonight?”
“You have a lot written there baby.”
“Yes. I pray for God to keep us safe, for our family to love each other, for my cousin to come back home and our family to be together again…” she trails off as the tears fill her eyes. I rub her back.
“There’s no time capsule to fill tonight hun, but we can make one of our own at home if you like.”

She nods and I know her heart beats faith even though it has learned real hurt. But God is faithful, sweet girl, we believe this. We choose to believe this. My eye sweeps by those sitting in the rows beside me, in front of me, behind me. Yes, we believe this together. These are the people I want surrounding my children. These are the people I want surrounding me. In these last 10 years, their stories bring tears to my eyes. I see hands raised, eyes closed, voices lifted saying it again, “God, you are faithful, you have been faithful. Though the heartache has threatened at times to take us, your faithfulness has held us.”

Tonight we stand again together, our family is bigger, our littles at our side. We are so thankful for our many gifts, especially our little people. But we are less naive 10 years later, and this makes the lump in my throat threaten to close in as we sing wholeheartedly of His faithfulness, His friendship even in our uncertainty, His guidance. She lifts her beautiful little face to me and smiles as she sings and I am fully aware of all that we can not know but also of the one who does, and that makes all the difference.