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| Abigail Batty, and Felicity DeVries, born March 19, 2013 |
This morning I greeted life with a bouquet of flowers and a Jesus Storybook Bible, in hospital room #33, where my friends had both given birth on the same day, and both to girls.
And one, the sister to Savanah Grace, the girl you prayed for, the one with the genetic disorder, the one who passed away just over a year now and Felicity Grace is her sister, carrying on the middle name.
And tonight I wept on the elliptical, a wind storm outside and Matt Redman’s Endless Hallelujah on the laptop. More than weeping, really, it was an intercessory sort of sobbing, the kind where you raise your hands limply and ask God to lift them higher because they’re weighted down.
I cried for the fragility of it all. For the subtle line between life and death and the infant skin that I had kissed that morning, all new and soft and that’s how Savanah’s skin had felt too, before she died.
And there’s the Steubenville rape trial and those boys and that girl.
Sometimes all you can do is cry on the elliptical because of the darkness. And our own flames seeming so fickle.
How do we rise up against death and sin and horror? How do we combat the evils in the schools our children attend, how do we equip our sons with the qualities to treasure and cherish a girl in a world that rapes her? And on the flip side, how do we raise our boys up to be respected leaders in a feminist society? How?
I’m reading a book right now, Why Men Hate Going to Church, and on the back cover, it states that men are the world’s largest unreached people’s group.
I see evidence of this in the football players who took advantage of a passed-out girl and I see it in a leaderless society that glosses over the value of a life and I see it in a justice system that cheats and sympathizes with sinners.
But I also see a girl that got so drunk that she passed out.
Our children, our sons and daughters, are stumbling around in the shadows.
How do we fight, while putting down our swords?
How do we, the redeemed, turn the other cheek while protecting the innocent?
How do we let our little lights shine when we’re terrified of the darkness?
And then I remember my walk, two nights ago, even as evening was falling, and me asking God if he saw my dreams, if he cared.
Winter is SADS for me, is long dark hours in cold Alberta, and even now, the snow is piled high around my house, but the days are lengthening.
And God said this to me: “Emily, sometimes I slant the sunlight, just so that it will shine through your living room windows. Don’t you think I care about your dreams?”
The elliptical slows, and I’m realizing, we don’t have to fight the darkness.
We just have to let the Light of the World shine through us.
It’s about being open windows, so the world can catch a glimpse of Jesus.
And the cleaner the glass of our souls, the better the world can see him.
(I will be taking the next week off, friends, to rest. Monday, my friend Elora Nicole will be sharing her story for The Love Dare… join us? May you know Easter in your hearts and lives.)