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Heart expansion <3

When we greeted our first child after a rather exhausting process of labor that caused me to take a full year before I could even speak of the possibility of a sibling for her, I felt a bursting wide in my heart of places I had no idea existed. 

As we did eventually decide to add to our family and we waited out the second pregnancy with fear and trembling for the labor and delivery portion, I wondered how on earth I would be able to muster up some affection for this next one since I was sure I had poured all the possible love allowed for this fragile and weak heart to hold onto our first born. 

But the Lord does something amazing in us and when I saw Sarah’s sweet little face, my heart grew exponentially so that when these two girls were joined by their brother a few short years later, I knew that love has far bigger boundaries than I ever could have imagined. 

Now we have added spouses and significant others along the way and grandchildren and sometimes I have to stop and breathe deeply because the expansion of the heart can bring a kind of joy that hurts at times. 

With grandchildren, there is not only the level of love you have for the actual child, but the encompassing love of knowing the child is the offspring of your child.

For someone like me and my wiring, this means a lot of emotional wear and tear as I not only feel the experience of the child but now my child experiencing the experience of the child. 

Prime example would be this text I got in December:

followed by…

My mom had one of those green ceramic Christmas trees with little “ornaments” you could insert in the holes fashioned at the end of the thick angles on each level of the tree. At the top was a star to insert.

Mom and Dad’s friend Daisy made the tree for them and as a child, Rachel loved taking out the various plastic decorations and moving them around the tree at her grandparents’ home. 

There were some butterflies, and bulbs and two choices of stars to insert at the top – clear and gold – as I remember. 

Somewhere along the way, we inherited the tree and although it is not my particular jam, we put it out every year as I knew Rachel loved it so much. The tree rested on a base that held an aquarium light and the wiring grew a bit dicey over the years, plus the light was expensive to replace and hard to find. 

Eventually I asked Rachel if she would like the tree for her children and so it moved to its new home where a new generation played with the ornaments and a new mom prayed that the dang thing wouldn’t set fire one day. 

When I saw her text, I pictured her little hands taking those ornaments out and putting them in, me trying to remember every year where I put the bag of them this time with the extra pieces in, the photos she would send of her own little ones when they got the tree out each year.

All of it. 

I cried for missing my mom. 

I cried for the loss to our daughter. 

I cried for the loss to her daughter. 

I cried for her crying for the loss to her daughter. 

Honestly sometimes I have to just stop where I am and crawl up into God’s lap and be a child myself for all that I can carry for the children we have. I have to just let Him hold me and lean into Him. 

It is at these times when I realize how much higher and holier and better His love for us is. 

If I, a frail human, can feel love this intensely, how much more does He love us and our children and grandchildren? 

Sometimes as people we weigh loss as less than what someone else has lost.

We feel foolish to be grieving something that seems trivial in comparison to what someone else is suffering. But when our hearts are broken by something that has been taken away from us, even it is a ceramic Christmas tree, the safest and best place is to just go to God and tell Him of your heartache and let Him hold you. 

If you are wrong in what you are feeling, He will show you.

But mostly I have found His love to be comforting and accepting and gracious.

Somehow He strengthens the places that have worn thin and expands my heart a little more wider to love better and more wisely. He seems to know what to do with my earthly sorrows and He reminds me that this is not all there is to life. 

There is a day coming when there will be no more sorrow, no more tears, no more death, no more loss. He will make all things new and all things right. He has given us His word on this. Revelation 21: 4 

Blessings today my friends. Keep your hearts soft and tender and when you are hurting, carry that wounded heart to the God who wired you to be the way you are.

He knows how to care for you and those you hold so dear <3

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