Tag Archives: motherhood

On Introverts and Extroverts

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Linford’s family visited us on the weekend of Jenica’s birthday. As everyone was packing up to leave on Sunday evening, I collapsed on the sofa and said, “That was fun, but I’m exhausted.”

My sister-in-law smiled. “All the people.” It was not a question; she knows how it is.

Belatedly, I realized I should have saved my comment for after their departure. “I’m glad you came. It’s been so long since everyone was here, and Jenica won’t forget this birthday for a long time. I wish all the planning and the people wouldn’t wear me out, but it does.”

From across the room, my brother-in-law said, “That’s what I don’t get. The way you portray yourself in your writing—that’s not the Stephanie I know.”

“You mean because I say I’m an introvert, but I’m not shy and quiet?”

Shy and quiet? Far from it. The meek will inherit the earth, but my unconverted self could barely lay claim to a small, well-rounded pebble of it since I’ve spent my life with big, square-shouldered opinions. Redeemed, I have acquired a little meekness, but only a little and it is not my native land.

Am I an introvert or an extrovert? I struggled with this in the years prior to my marriage.

When the occasion called for it, I could be (still am) outspoken and opinionated. I loved teaching fifth grade for three years at our local Christian school. I could hold my own in any conversation I cared about and did far too frequently.

But I would come home, and in my quiet room, alone, I felt like I could finally breathe. During the school year, I would often go to bed on Sunday afternoon and sleep until Monday morning, exhausted by the teaching I loved. My best friends were books.

And my deepest, darkest secret: I hated slumber parties and hated hating them because it felt so abnormal. I just wanted to be light and vivacious and not care so much about whether I looked silly in my pajamas. Instead, I brooded in a sofa corner, conflicted because if just one of these girls would sit down and initiate a deep conversation with me, I would have no trouble finding the words I couldn’t scrape together in the crowd.

I felt like a bone yanked between Introvert and Extrovert. Which one was I?

I settled on introvert because I preferred books, learning, and one good friend over parties, hanging out, and many friends. But sometimes I would get these blank looks from people like the one my brother-in-law was wearing. What do you mean, you’re an introvert? You just got done hotly debating the state of Mennonite publishing.

I said to my brother-in-law, “Not long ago, I read Quiet by Susan Cain, and she had the best definition for introverts and extroverts that I’ve found. Extroverts draw energy from people. Being alone drains them. Introverts draw energy from solitude and quiet. Being with people drains them. Introverts aren’t necessarily shy, and extroverts aren’t necessarily loud. The difference is in how we are energized.”

The look on his face. “You mean I might be an introvert? When I’m in a large crowd, I go home with a tension headache.”

I looked him, outspoken, opinionated, a voracious reader who wasn’t above publicly disappearing into a book. “You might be. If people wear you out.”

Opinionated introverts often appear to be extroverts. This past weekend, I attended a writers’ conference. Although I can’t see myself from another’s perspective, I’m guessing I appeared to be neither shy nor reserved and definitely not unopinionated. But out of what felt like 376 conversations, I initiated maybe 4 of them.

And I came home exhausted.

To be greeted by a small man in red rubber fire-engine boots who hurled himself into my arms and squeezed.

Children are people, too.

I used to think I was a terrible mom because my children wore me out. Surely, if I loved them like I should, I would not crave an hour of solitude even more than my morning cup of coffee. A good mom does not plot seven different ways to escape the house without being seen.

But now, I understand. The constant stimulation of people, large and small, wears me out. I don’t choose to be this way, any more than my husband, the unopinionated extrovert, chose to be stimulated by people, and the more the merrier. Let’s invite the whole church while we’re at it.

I didn’t choose to be this way, but I can choose how I allow it to affect my relationships.

So I’m working on saying “Sure, sounds good” when my husband suggests last-minute company. This one is hard; I prefer at least twenty-four hours to prepare myself.

I’m working at finding five intentional minutes throughout the day and exalting in that wee bit of solitude, before returning to my children, who are ransacking the house for me, with a smile instead of a snap.

I’m learning that if I want enough energy to be a wife and mom, I can’t have a full social schedule. I stay home as much as possible.

I try to meet my children’s eyes and smile when they come to me, so they feel welcome and accepted.

In friendships, I’m learning that quality beats quantity for me every time. It used to be bother me that some people had 279 best friends and I had only one. Now I realize that I have only a few close friends not because I’m weird (well, not only because I’m weird) but because I’m wired that way.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I want to write about a topic that is tied closely to my introversion.

Because if you know me in real life and are as baffled as my brother-in-law, I’d like to you know even introverts can be loud and obnoxious. Introverts just wear out faster, so it’s over sooner.

Because if you see me in a public place somewhere, I want you to come over and introduce yourself. I am not a snob; I just initiate few conversations. I’d be thrilled to talk if you want to. You might regret it; don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Because once I understood the why, I could deal with the how. Being an introverted mom is hard. I can’t escape my people. I’m on call 24/7. Linford drives around all day by himself and comes home ready for Family Time. I’m thinking he looks like a pretty good babysitter, and he says, “What do you mean? We want to spend time with YOU, too.” That has been a recipe for a lot of frustration, but understanding why I feel overwhelmed goes a long way toward dealing with it. If this post helps just one introverted mom blow out a breath of relief, then it was worth writing.

What we really need is an Introverted Moms support group, but who am I kidding?

No one would attend the meetings.

Why I Am Not a Food Blogger

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Ever since Tarica came home from the hospital on February 10, Jenica has been talking about her birthday. She managed to work it into most conversations, on topic or not, and all our family plans were divided into Before, On, and After.

Whenever I was tempted to roll my eyes, I reminded myself that her anticipation was likely an epilepsy side effect. Tarica’s seizures had made her the Center of Attention for the last year, and Jenica had complained about this much less than she could have. That tempered my exasperation, although I feared she was anticipating a much bigger birthday than we could afford to create.

Last year, before Tarica started seizing, I had promised Jenica I would take a birthday lunch to school for her class. Although I managed to keep that promise in the aftermath of Tarica’s diagnosis, I felt as if I were doing it on auto-pilot. My heart wasn’t celebrating even as we sang “Happy Birthday” at a family birthday party and presented presents and a cake (beautifully decorated by someone else).

This year, I had decided, would be different. I would be present in heart as well as body. I nixed the school lunch early on, in hopes of being realistic. However, I still wanted to do something special for a school birthday treat. Perhaps Jenica and I could make something together.

“Marshmallow peeps,” she said. “Let’s make something with marshmallow peeps.”

Gag, I thought. “Sure,” I said.

I consulted the world’s biggest cookbook, AKA the world wide web. It didn’t take me long to find something that looked cute but easy.

Since I was doing this anyway and since I was taking pictures anyway and since bloggers posted recipes and pictures all the time, I figured I might as well turn this into a post. Why not?

We planned to assemble the treat on Thursday evening so Jenica could take it to school on Friday. I then hit the first bump. My parents were butchering their last steer on Thursday evening, and one quarter of the beast was ours. I had to go over and package our meat for the freezer.

Well, we’d just have to make the treat after Jenica came home from school and then head over to the butchering. A little tight, but we’d manage.

Thursday morning, I bought fast-to-fix ingredients—and here I hit the second bump. In a culture that had begun to count carbs and promote protein, I was committing what amounted to a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Here are the ingredients:

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I could have made my own cake mix. I could have made my own pudding. I could have whipped heavy cream into topping. I could have made my own frosting. I could have bought my own cow so I had fresh milk instead of pasteurized junk stored in white plastic. Instead I bought shortcuts full of sugar and preservatives and unpronounceable names.

Because I didn’t have all evening.

It wasn’t hard to imagine the blogosphere horror.

Did I have enough nerve to do this?

Jenica bounced beside me. “What can I do what can I do?”

I squared my shoulders and put down the camera.

“You can crush the graham crackers,” I said.

 

 

After she was done, she asked, “Now what?”

“Dump the pudding mix into the milk. I’ll measure a cup of cake mix. You can whisk the pudding and cake mix and milk together. When you’re done, I’ll fold in the Cool Whip.”

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The recipe I was following declared that with the addition of the cake mix, the pudding tasted like cake batter, minus the evil eggs. This had sold Jenica on it instantly.

Pudding finished, I said, “Dump two spoonfuls of graham cracker crumbs into each cup. I’ll spoon pudding on top, and then you can put more graham crackers on top of that.”

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And here we ran into what I call the chip-and-dip conundrum. I’m sure you’ve done it, too. You help yourself to chips and dip, but you don’t have quite enough chips, so you take a few more, and then you don’t have enough dip, so you have yourself some more dip. But then you need more chips. It’s a delightful and self-sustained cycle.

Except when the chip-and-dip conundrum pops up in other areas.

We ran out of graham crackers. Jenica crushed more.

We ran out of pudding. I whisked together another batch.

And then we had too much pudding.

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I broke the cycle by dumping the rest of the pudding into an empty Cool Whip and stuffing it into the fridge before anyone got any ideas about how many more pudding cups we could make. We would eat cake-batter pudding by itself tomorrow, or—gag—not.

And then I opened the store-bought frosting, warmed it in the microwave, and poured a little on top of each cup.

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We then ran into our next problem. The pudding cups, or rather, the warmed frosting needed to cool before we dabbed Cool Whip on top. But it was time to leave.

Unfinished food projects make me jumpy. Particularly ones that have to be finished in the morning before school.

We boxed up the cups, put them into the fridge, and left to wrap meat.

The next morning, in between breakfast and hair-combing, I plopped Cool Whip on top of the cups, and Jenica nested blue Peeps on each one.

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Done.

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What a relief.

You want the recipe?

I very much doubt you do, but if you Google “eclair pudding marshmallow peeps,” you’ll find an example of how a food blogger does it.

Do it her way, not mine.

* * *

P.S. I did one more experiment over the weekend, and that one turned out—surprisingly—better than I expected.

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But if you want the recipe, Google “kit kat birthday cake” and let the experts tell you how to do it.

 

What It Means to Choose Heaven

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In my last post, I wrote “I choose heaven over healing.”

Later, I thought maybe that statement could be misunderstand. I want to be sure I am clear.

In the phone call, the doctor didn’t give me any new information. She spoke frankly of the risks and likely odds we are facing and gave her opinion on a few things. She took the facts we know now and explained what it means from her perspective. It opened my eyes to reality.

But we have not yet made the decision on brain surgery. That will most likely happen sometime in May, after we receive more specific details on the testing.

It won’t be an easy choice to make, and my last post was an outpouring of my floundering heart. All this time, I’ve been convinced that surely God will heal Tarica. He still might. We may go ahead with surgery, and she may become seizure-free.

But we might feel God’s leading to decline surgery, or surgery may not heal her—and I finally realized this. Yes, it will hurt deeply (hence the shattered-heart line—forgive my drama), but it’s not as tragic as I think it is. God can redeem our pain and turn it into good.

Ultimately, heaven is more important than a seizure-free life. Eternity is more important than time. Our destiny is more important than our children having perfect lives.

This is an unavoidable truth, but it hurts me, because I want the best for my children.

But so does God.

And heaven is the ultimate best.

Heaven is guaranteed healing, but healing doesn’t guarantee heaven.

I’m still praying for healing, but I’m also praying that if healing is not for Tarica, God will help us accept it and even grow from it. I’m praying that no matter the medical outcome, all of our family would find and follow God, although it may mean facing pain now to gain bliss later.

That’s why I choose heaven over healing.

P.S. But if God does heal her, you will have to search the world over to find a more thankful family.

In Search of the Happiest Ending

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I was writing a post titled “Why I Am Not a Food Blogger” when the phone rang.

It was Tarica’s doctor, and we talked about brain surgery.

I hung up, all my laughter gone.

Call me blind, call me naive, call me a towering monument of faith, but for the first time, I realized that our epilepsy story might not have a happy ending.

I’ve shared maybes and what ifs and questions and fears, but always, rock-solid in the back of my mind, I believed everything would come out right in the end. I’ve prayed “Thy will be done,” convinced that His will meant a seizure-free daughter.

But what if she will always have seizures?

I’m sure you thought of this possibility, from a detached distance, with the advantage of having the facts without the emotions. I’ve even said it is a possibility, said she might not ever be seizure-free, but I didn’t feel it as I did this morning, as a blow to my mother-heart.

She may never be healed this side of Glory.

I do not know if I can bear the thought.

* * *

I heard a story recently of a boy whose parents asked God to take their son Home while he was young if he would grow up to defy God when he was older. The boy died in a freak accident sometime after that. All his peers grew up and rejected God. The father professed that he never regretted his prayer.

That story hit me hard. We have three children in heaven by miscarriage, and it’s my greatest prayer that the rest of our family would someday join them. I have prayed, in a more innocent past, wincing slightly, “whatever it takes, God.”

What if it takes seizures?

What if seizures will make the difference between heaven and hell for our daughter? For our other children? For…for me?

After hearing the story of that boy, I had begun to pray, “God, if seizures help my daughter get to heaven, then help us to accept them with grace.”

But I was still convinced that God would heal her. And not just no-seizures-while-on-medication healed. I meant healed healed, as in no more seizures ever and no more medication. Ever. I hate what drugs do to her.

This is not too much to expect from a God who can do anything.

But what if He doesn’t do this?

* * *

Again and again, God has worked good in my life through hardship. Without pain, I am crusty and independent and proud. Pain turns me to God, and God turns pain to good.

What if living with this particular pain will keep us soft toward God and compassionate toward others?

It could. It might. It has.

To those of you who yearn every day for the child(ren) beyond your reach, this might sound unthinkable, but it was easier for me to grieve a miscarriage that it is to imagine my daughter living with epilepsy till death do them part. Miscarriage was only my pain, softened by the knowledge that my child is safe in Jesus’ arms. It hurts more to watch my children suffer than it does to miss them because they are with Jesus.

(And if my words hurt you, I am sorry. I’m not belittling your pain. If you’ve read the book I wrote on miscarriage, you know I know how great and terrible that grief is. Those of you who have emailed me to share your stories are daily in my prayers. I wish I could take away your pain, but I trust that God can also turn it into good.)

I hate the thought that my children need to suffer, but what’s been good for me will surely be good for them. God can do this for my children—turn their pain into good. I know this, but it feels a little like those times when the children pile into the wagon and fly down the lane.

I don’t want to watch. I don’t want to see them get hurt.

What if God knows we will be better off with seizures than without them?

Achieving seizure freedom has always been the happy ending I envisioned for us. But if that freedom would come at the expense of the happiest ending ever, then no, I do not want it.

I choose heaven over healing.

And it shatters my mother-heart.

How To Be Not Bitter

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“How do you keep from being bitter?” she asked, leaning on my kitchen counter.

This was no idle question. The woman standing in my kitchen was living a life far different from her girlish dreams. This I know, even though she has not told me. Who dreams of being a mother to a little girl with seizures? Neither of us had. Both of us were.

She and I could count our time together in mere hours, but it felt as if we had known each other for years. Our lives ran on parallel tracks in areas far deeper than the breezy connections of new friendships. On the surface, we had little in common—she is vivacious and impulsive; I am reserved and deliberate. But underneath the inconsequentials, we share two passions: the jagged-edged love for a daughter with seizures and a consoling love for our art. She writes stories in watercolor, and I paint canvases with words.

No, this was not an idle question.

When I stared down into the kettle and said nothing, she started backpedaling. “Maybe that’s too personal—”

I broke in. “No, no, it’s not. I like asking personal questions, so why would I mind answering them? It’s just that I’ve been thinking about this very thing lately.” I put down the spoon and leaned against the counter, unconsciously mimicking her pose. “Last summer, after the seizures returned, I struggled with some anger and resentfulness toward God. I don’t know if I was bitter exactly, but I was headed there.”

I stopped, aware that I was rambling, but she didn’t seem to mind, so I went on. “There have been other times in my life when I felt bitterness. The miscarriages. There was a huge property ordeal involving a right-of-way that dragged on for over two years after we moved here. And other things, like misunderstandings and injustice and good people who mean well but blindly hurt others.”

She nodded. Yes. She knew. We all have these stories.

“The turning point for me,” I said, “has always been when I started asking myself ‘What can I learn from this?’ When I began to see a situation as something that could make me a better person, it somehow took the bitterness out of it.”

* * *

I’ve come to recognize it by now, after several years of feeling the shift happen inside me each time I move from anger/pain/frustration to teachableness. I stop asking God “Why?” and start asking “What?”

What lesson do You have for me in this?

What am I forgetting that You want me to remember?

What can I learn?

What should I do with this lesson?

When pain becomes something that helps me grow, the bitterness in it fades. And eventually, the pain even becomes—dare I say it?—sweet.

Not at first. It takes time. It takes trust. It takes surrender. Over and over again.

* * *

“You know what I find the hardest to accept?” I asked my new friend. “It’s the things done by other people. With miscarriage and epilepsy, I could more easily trust that God could make good come from it, including in me. But when people hurt me or those I love, it’s hard to accept that God allows such bad things to happen. There is no redemption in the evil we do to each other. Only God can redeem that kind of pain.”

But when He redeems, the waters of Mara turn sweet.

* * *

Not long ago, my friend emailed me a copy of a painting she had just finished, a piece of representational art she titled “You Will Never Walk Alone.”

What I say in words, she says in watercolor, only better. Isn’t a picture worth a thousand words? With her permission, I share it with you.

You Will Never Walk Alone

She knows about bitter and sweet.

She knows about redemption.

She knows.

And we all tell our stories in our own ways.

* * *

P.S. It’s been a little heavy and deep around here. Look for lighter fare next time, when I introduce you to the new member of our household, The Box.

Inadvertent Lessons in Prayer

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On Tuesday, Micah got sick.

On Thursday, I got sick.

So when Jenica started yelling at 2:30 on Saturday morning, I had a pretty good idea what awaited me in the girls’ bedroom.

Jenica, who has been startled awake far too many times to major and minor medical events, has developed a hair-curling method of getting help. It consists of bellowing many words, sounding something like what I was hearing right then: “MOM! MOM! Tarica’s THROWING UP! MOOOOMMMM! TARICA needs YOU! MOM! COME QUICK! TARICA’S throwing UUUPPP! MOOOMMM!”

When Tarica wants help at night, she appears like a shadow beside my bed, barely visible, barely audible in the dark. Not Jenica. She stays on the scene and shrieks.

I leaped out of bed and raced for the girls’ room.

But I shall mercifully spare you the description of what I found. If you are a mother, you need no help picturing the scene. If you are not a mother, you don’t need any reason to dread becoming one.

I’ll stick with this simple summary: What little was spared in the first round of vomiting was nailed in the second, and it took me two buckets, two sets of pajamas, a set of clean sheets, and an hour to clean up her and the room.

Finally back in bed, I didn’t fall asleep until well after 4:00, and at 4:28, Jenica started hollering again.

This time, Tarica used the bucket I had belatedly provided.

At 6:30, Tarica shuffled to my bedside and whispered for help to go to the bathroom.

At 8:00—we were unashamedly sleeping in after such a night—Jenica yelled for help again.

After a shaky Tarica was tucked back in, I returned to my bed and collapsed, but not to sleep. I was too worried to relax. Would this be a repeat of that scare in January?

I thumbed out a text and sent it to family and a few friends: Please pray. Tarica just threw up 4 the 4th time since 2:30. In an hour, I should b giving her her meds & it will take a miracle 4 her 2 keep them down. If she cant keep the meds down, we’ll have 2 take her 2 the hospital 2 get the meds thru IV.

You know those red banners that run along the bottom of a TV screen when a news channel is on? It’s a running list of updates and breaking news and…whatever. I think of those banners when a particular need weighs on me.

I got up, got dressed, got breakfast on, and despite these ordinary events, a scarlet thread of prayer ran through my mind, an unending cry for help. When the replies to my text started coming in, I steadied, felt the prayers holding us up. It happens every time, and every time, it’s as amazing as the first time.

When 9:00 came, I decided to push off the medication just a little, to give time for her stomach to settle. But at 10:00, I knew I had to do it.

I took her morning dose up to her room and climbed on the bed beside her. “Tarica, I need to give you your medicine so you don’t have seizures. But since your tummy is all mixed up, I think we should ask God to help you to not throw it up. Do you want to pray?”

“You pray,” she said and closed her eyes, and so I did.

I felt a little silly praying. Although I had big worries about the hours ahead, it was such a small thing to say aloud, hands clasped beside my daughter.

She took the medication, and my ticker tape of prayer kicked up a notch as the minutes passed. If she could just keep it down for about half an hour, we wouldn’t need to redose. If she did throw it up after that, we ran the risk of seizures. Even with the medication, she still was more likely to seize than usual, since illness can trigger seizures.

She kept the drugs down. Thirty minutes turned into an hour. I moved her to the living room sofa. When the rest of the family sat down for lunch, I gave her some ginger ale to sip.

Over lunch, out of Tarica’s hearing, Jenica said quietly to me, “God answered our prayers, didn’t He? Tarica didn’t throw up again.”

But that afternoon, Tarica ran a fever, and I ran a few worrisome scenarios through my mind. We weren’t out of the woods yet.

And then Tarica said to me, her cheeks flushed and eyes heavy, “God answered our prayers, didn’t He? I didn’t throw up again.”

It was then, finally, that I realized I was looking at this all wrong. I was like the Israelites at the Red Sea, screaming at Moses for taking them into the wilderness to die, when before them lay a not-to-be-missed opportunity for God to reveal His power.

This is what faith means: Instead of an illness, a Red Sea, I should see an opportunity. This was a chance for God to show His care for us.

This was also an opportunity for our children to see God’s power at work in ways they understood and appreciated. Sure, God rescued the children of Israel at the Red Sea, but when God answers the prayer of a twenty-first century child, that makes God more real than a dozen Sunday school lessons ever can.

And not only could God become more real to our children, but they were also learning from our response. God wasn’t the only one with opportunities in this. Every time we faced a problem out of our control, we had the chance to teach our children by our example. Did they see us respond in faith or in fear? Those simple prayers I prayed with them might be the most important prayers in their young lives.

If this illness was actually all these opportunities rolled into one event, then I should be thanking God for it.

Put this way, in black letters on a white page, it sounds a bit too much like an insipid Sunday school lesson, where everything is always tidy and spiritualized. And they prayed to God and He answered and everything was all better and they knew they would trust God the next time.

Life isn’t tidy. Life is messy and hard and full of mistakes. In my life, the main character usually forgets to trust God the next time. Forgive me if I appear to be suggesting otherwise.

But the moment of realizing that God can make good out of the bad situation I’m in right now—that moment is startling and bright, standing crystal clear in contrast to my mistake-laden life. Our epilepsy story has been crammed full of moments like these. You’d think I wouldn’t forget them, but I do.

God can be found in everything that happens to me, good or bad. God is the scarlet thread woven into my life, the blood of redemption that washes the bitterness out of the bad.

As for Tarica, she is fine. Her fever disappeared on its own. She didn’t throw up again and she didn’t seize.

God answered our prayers, didn’t He?

When Love Is Not Enough

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A year ago today, we sat by Tarica’s bed at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, waiting for the MRI results. We did not know what was wrong with her, and we prayed for strength to face the verdict.

Today, another set of parents sit by the bedside of another little girl in another hospital. Shianna had a severe seizure last night and was airlifted because she was unresponsive. I don’t want to think about the terror her parents felt. And her story strikes closely home: She is my cousin’s daughter.

After I heard the news, I put my head down on the table and cried one big gulping sob. But no more. Tears would not help. I sat up, wiped my eyes, and reached for the words.

This one is for Shianna, for all the little ones who fight battles bigger than they are, battles that break our hearts.

* * *

When they were small and sad, I held them until they smiled. When they fell in those first toddling steps, I scooped them up and kissed away the hurt.

Our world was little and safe and predictable. I doctored scrapes and colds, and I made oatmeal and promises, and we all lived as happily as if Ever After was now. I loved my children so strong it felt as if nothing could touch us.

But reality pricked holes into my cocoon of safety. There was the burn on Jenica’s face, scars she still wears. There was Tarica’s colic, and there was Micah’s repeated bronchiolitus/asthma attacks during his first year. There was the challenge of helping our daughters negotiate broadening social worlds and the difficulties found outside our sheltering walls.

My children faced problems I could not fix. I was helpless to counteract their pain, and it hurt. I wanted nothing more than to preserve our safe little world.

And then came—not a pinprick, but a slash, a tear, a gash through my world. Epilepsy took away my safety net, and I fell and fell and fell.

I could not love her enough to protect her, to heal her, to make promises, and it was a slash, a tear, a gash through my heart.

I think all mothers face this sooner or later. Some lose that safe cocoon on the day they find the unmistakable stamp of Down’s syndrome on their precious newborn’s face. Some lose their safety net in weeks spent in the NICU or in the wreckage of an accident or in the irrevocable words of a medical diagnosis. Social rejection. Academic failure. Marital conflict. Brutal words.

My love is not enough to keep my children safe.

What does a mother do when love is not enough?

She cries. She worries. She fears. She hugs them until they squirm in protest.

She alone is the mother of these children. No one else has loved them as she has, and who else feels this pain so deeply?

But if she is to be comforted, she also prays, because who else but God can comfort?

Lord, be for my children what I cannot.

And love—His love—is enough to bring us safely home.

* * *

P.S. I talked with Shianna’s aunt this morning, and it sounds like she is doing better. They suspect it was a febrile seizure.

No matter the diagnosis, it will be a long time before her parents forget the terror. I pray they will know God’s peace and comfort in the coming days.