these days we’re weak all around. we hug each other more than usual and cry a lot, and look at our children as though they have just discovered gold. they’re so beautiful, and we don’t want this to end. these days of sanctuary.
soon there will be double the number of snow boots in our entrance and double the beds and double the runny noses and we grip each other, strung out on compassion. because we know what the right thing to do is, and it’s just so hard.
but it wasn’t hard, when she called. when she called, we knew. we had no choice but to help, for “i can’t be a mother anymore,” she wept, this mother of the boys who stayed here at christmas. and you know them, joey, and jin, and they will be coming to live with us soon, and we don’t know when they’ll be going home.
four boys under the age of four, and i only have two arms, trent away at school all day.
we fed the deer today, trent’s dad knowing every antler, tenderly tracing tracks in the snow and he’s set a camera up to take their portraits. sometimes he sits out there for hours, studying the deer, the way they interact, and he’s built them a corral to keep the moose away.
we fed them and there was peace in the woods. in the sun and the sky and my boy stepping carefully in the snow. and he left footprints, bigger than i’ve ever seen him leave and i know i need to follow. for he’ll lead me straight to the love i’m looking for: the love that will transcend any physical weakness.
and he watched us feed the deer and he’ll watch us feed these boys and together we’ll form a cross: trent, aiden, kasher and i. each of us a limb, a board, nailed to the other. and we’ll bridge a gap between joey and jin and God.
we’re hugging each other more than usual, these days of sanctuary. and maybe it will all be easier than we imagine.
anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins. james 4:17
(pray? please? this is so, so hard… this working out of our salvation.)