Redeeming the Moments

Tired, exhausted, worn, young mom with a deployed husband.  He was 6 months gone with just as many more left.  How could I watch all of my baby girl's special first moments and not think of all he was missing.  Every single time she hit a milestone I was filled with joy and a hint of sadness.  He was missing it all.  I sat down at my computer and threw my feelings into a poem:

You are missing all the moments that are so special. 
You missed her
first crawl
first step
first "Dada"
first birthday
first ...
I don't know how many more moments I can stand for you to miss. 
Hurry home, Chris, so that you can see how big your little girl is. 
She gets bigger everyday. 
And while everyday that passes we get closer to your return,
we will never get back these precious moments.

I posted my poem.  It made me feel better to express it, to write it down, to see it in print.

Then I received this wise, thoughtful response:

Not with this one you won't, dear friend, but there will be others.

One of the sweetest blessings of God was watching Andrew's reactions to all of Andie's "firsts". They weren't so spectacular to me - I'd seen Curtis grow from baby to toddler. So while I appreciated her development, I'd "used up" my firstborn awe and wonder. Because of deployment, Andrew had not. Watching him enjoy our 2nd child as if she was the first was a delight.  

Remember that God promised a desperate Israel that he would restore the years the locust had eaten. He's more than redeemed our deployment years and I pray he'll do the same for you.

I wanted to believe her, but I didn't.  I didn't know how.

What if we had no more children?  We did.
What if he deployed again?  He did.
What if he never saw any of our children's first moments?  He did.

It didn't come the way I expected.  I wanted it for our second child.  How could the military take him away again for the exact same moments he missed the first time?  He missed them all again.  The first baby and the second.  He never saw a first crawl, first step, first birthday.

Our second baby girl talking to Chris on her first birthday.

Then something happened.

Our third little blessing.  She was my third.  I had seen it all before, but he hadn't, and I saw it.  I saw the wonder in his eyes.  I saw the pure joy in his face.  I saw every single moment through the eyes of a brand new parent.  He had never seen it before, and it amazed him.  That's when I remembered what my wise friend said.  Those moments were redeemed, made more special, filled me with wonder.  My heart was full, it overflowed, joy abounded.  All the missed moments, redeemed.

Frozen Beauty

Here I am sitting in the cold, the wind, looking to the ocean.  I look out, and I see.  I see the slow waves, the icy beach, and the snow beneath me.  If I look hard enough, I can see a lighthouse in the distance. I love it and everything about it.  I love the cold; I love the snow; I love to see the smile and joy in my babies' faces as they take it all in.  

If you had shown me this picture exactly one year ago today, I would have thought you were crazy.  There is no way I would ever live in a frozen land like that.  I love the beach, a warm white sandy beach with refreshing water lapping at my bare feet.  The beach in this picture is not that beach.

I try to tell God what is best for me, for my life, for my kids, but I have no idea.  In my limited view of this world, how could I ever think that I know better than the One who created it?  I have learned that when I don't like the path that God has given me to walk, I need to find the beauty in it.  When I start to count the beauties, I fall in love with the God who knows me better than I know myself.  

I want what is easy: the path of least resistance.  How can I get from where I am to where I want to be with as little pain and suffering as possible?  That is not what God wants.  He knows me better.  He wants to mold me, shape me, chisel away at me, until I look and act and behave more like His Son, His perfect Son.  He wants to put me in places where I feel uncomfortable and give me tasks that seem too hard all so that I turn to Him, rely on Him, and learn from Him.  When I let the uncomfortable happen, and I trust God through it, that is when He changes me from within. 

I look out at the lighthouse, and I silently voice a prayer, "Thank you, God, for not giving me what I thought was best because if You had, I wouldn't have experienced Your best.  Thank you, God, for sending me to this place so I could see more of Your beauty."  It really is beautiful here, so beautiful, and if I would have had my way, I never would have seen it.


Looking Up,
Lindsay