All of Heaven.

Tonight I am weary.  

It has been a long couple of days inside of this house and inside of myself.  So much of it has been well and right.  I have sat holding my girl and watching her expressions diligently.  She has clung to me so desperately that there is no rest for my body or my mind.  She only wants me and I'm just so tired.

 I can't believe how long she can cry.  I can't believe how the time passes from when she wakes up in the morning to when she sleeps at night with no rest for her in between.

She doesn't nap.  Her brain doesn't tell her that there's a need for it.  Her body doesn't stop moving and the sounds that accompany her are all too much most days.

She hangs loosely on me and depends on me to restrain her body.  I find myself wrapped up in her and the confliction never ceases.  I want so badly to hold her, comfort her, to do anything at all to ease this life for her yet I want so desperately to be able to put her down, take a break, breathe deeply.  

 I finally cried tonight.  After our appointment on Thursday, lots of crying and emotional eating between then and now and many days of Daniel working...it was just inevitably time.

 Sometimes it is easier for me to think about how it must feel to be someone who loves me rather than how it feels to actually be me.  The reality of it all is sometimes so horrific for me that I lay in bed at night and try to imagine how it must feel to be on the outside of this.  When I think about one of my friends' kids being sick and I think about having to watch them endure life knowing their future truth, my heart races and aches for them.  And then I stop myself and have to quite vividly place myself back in the picture as the one who actually is going through it. 

It doesn't make sense when I type it out.  It doesn't make sense that it's easier for me to think about how others are feeling for me because I can't know their position.  But the empathy that I feel when I go there inside myself is indescribable.  Sometimes it leads me to be sad for them, being sad for me.  Other times it draws me back to feeling sorry for myself because this is actually true and real.

It is actually my life.

 One of my dearest friends wrote me an intimate letter and gave it to me tonight. Inside were her words, written with beautiful curly letters.  She explained to me that Mabel and I led her to find a true peace and a true relationship with God.  

I fell to my knees in humbled sobs.  

The truth is she sees me at my worst.  I can't understand how God somehow thought that I was worthy enough for a life as big as this.  I can't wrap my mind around how He knew to bring out of this dust a beautiful masterpiece that would lead others to the foot of the cross.  

And yet, in all His Godliness, that is exactly what He is doing.  What's so inspiring about it is that I am not good enough.  If it were up to me I would fall short every time at showing His goodness.

His truth.  His mercy.

But He uses the least of these.  He uses the broken-hearted.  He uses the authenticity.  

Somehow, before my life became what it is today, I thought that I was living right.  I thought that my portrayal of the Lord was enough.  And then I began walking down a path of unknowns, and slip-ups with some downright ugliness mixed in.  

 God removed everything that I thought was good enough.  He literally burned it down to ashes.  And when I step back and take a look at my life I can see the Father reaching down with His strong and mighty hand and  forming out of those ashes a divine and perfect product of Him.  

It's a little crooked.  It's sometimes dirty and needs a good dusting.  It's often cracked.  

But this time, the sculpture of my life is moldable.  It's able to be shaped and chiseled into a newly formed object.  One that is plausible and one that can conduct the work of Jesus.

This life is no longer a stiff, rigid, knock off.

No, no.  

Now it is a true, authentic, hand-made model of the King.  

Cracks, bruises and all.

 As I was laying face down on the middle of my kitchen floor tonight, crying out for Jesus in a tired, shaking cry, I thought to myself what a beautiful mess this is.

If someone can see me in the weariness and draw near to God in that? 

Well then that's surely a God worth knowing and that's a beautiful thing.

 I said to the Lord tonight, 

"You created your Son knowing that He was going to die for us but you are God.  He was your Son and you had a choice whether to create Him for that purpose or not.  She is my daughter and I didn't get a choice."

I felt Him gently say to me, "She is my daughter too."

And I quieted to His presence, knowing that it is true.  

She IS His and He is God.

He is God and that's enough.

 I'm never going to understand how the unending cries and the trembling fingers of my little girl hold a significant secret meaning in this life.  It doesn't seem fair and it doesn't seem right.  She seems tormented and frustrated much of the time.  I feel like it's so much work for her to even be living, breathing, drinking, and even sleeping.  I find myself angry at God many nights when she and I are pacing this house trying desperately to find one thing that may calm or comfort her.  

But somehow out of the anger, praise rises.   

 She has been crying for hours.

I can still hear her upstairs wailing in her room.  

She has no rest and she is oh so tired. 

I can relate to my little girl.

I am so thankful for the hope of Heaven.  An eternity where rest is all we will find.  An eternity where our King will make all things new.  

She deserves that.  All of it.