“i think God wants us to have more,” she says.
we’re eating pizza and everyone has a kid in his lap and it’s suppertime at oma’s house.
the trailer’s never been so full with seven boys under the age of five and we’re a motley crew. everyone with a cold, and oma just done her final round of chemo and opa lying on his mattress going on ten years with a slipped disc and arthritis.
the kids slopping sauce and cheese and grabbing sippy cups and playing trains.
trent shakes his head around his pizza, “i don’t buy that prosperity gospel stuff,” and his sister is quick to say, “not more material things.”
we look at the sides of the trailer caving in, “but more,” she says. “always more.”
“more pain?” trent asks.
i’m listening, feeding jin who eats better when he’s held, when he’s safe.
“more heartache? more hardship?”
and his sister is quiet but it’s hard to tell for the bedlam of boys.
“always more,” she insists now. “and even if it’s hardship, it’s always, in the end, to bless us.”
we nod, held close in this place of family, in this clutch of a home that’s known so many hard-knocks it’s shaking, but it stands. it still stands.
and it’s bursting at the seams, with new life.
“therefore we do not lose heart. though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” (2 corinthians 4:16)
(you, friends, you give me more… so much more love than i ever deserve. thank you. i will be visiting your blogs once my five piles of laundry deplete :). thank you. thank you. for everything.)