Sunday, August 14, 2011

A Mother's Sacrificial Love, and Gift

August 14th, 2011
It's cool. Droplets dance through the campus square. The August rains have come. In just a short time, it will be impossible to pass from one hall to another. The heavens will open and the flooding will commence. It doesn't last long, however. An hour or so and the soon to be muddy pathways will again return to dust. I've been in university for nearly three years. It has been three years.

April 21, 2008
My heart barely beats. Outside my room the flowers bloom in red and orange, the grasses dance with breeze, yet inside I am dark. Torn, but hopeful. Mournful. I have come - come to give life to this one, and come to restore my own. Israel is kind. He has taken me in, fed me, clothed me, given me tasks, if only for a short time. My little one is resting quietly now. He has formula in his belly. He has eaten more today than in the past week. In the past month it seems. Thank you God. The women here are gentle and caring. They give me respite. Safety. Finally, safety.

I can't stop the tears that come with evening. As I fall asleep sorrow floods my dreams. Oh what has become of me, still a child myself? Cast out, abandoned. My lover, gone. My roots, severed. Condemnation flows through my veins, I cannot escape it. The night seems endless. Is there hope in the morning....Yes.....I know this to be true. For I have seen Hope, he gazed into my eyes as I awoke. Reveal. There is Hope in the morning, his name is Reveal.

So I walk through the gardens of this compound, one eye sheds pain, one sheds joy. I know my past and it pains me. How quickly my dreams eroded with the winter floods. Alas, as my feet pass through the new growth that only water brings, I know I have a Redeemer. As I call out to His name, He shows Himself to me, His grace washes over me, His mercy covers me. Will He help me bare the pain of my separation? When I leave this compound, and leave my baby, too? Is my God able to carry this burden? I can't. I just can't. Oh, my sweet Revelation. My sweet Reveal.

Back on Campus
Three years. How my heart longs to embrace you. Yet though I long, I have great hope for you. They tell me she is kind, loving, a beautiful woman of God. I don't understand how God works. How God can give a stranger the heart of a mother for a child not born to her. I don't understand, but I believe. I believe, I see it in her eyes. She has eyes for you.

I go home on holidays. I walk the streets of our town and remember the soil of labor across my brow, you clinging to my waste. I remember the day you stopped crying. You had succumbed to hunger. Please forgive me my son. Know in my heart that I desired life for you. Know I loved you dearly. Know I would have wasted away my own life to save yours. Even so, I saw death becoming you. I had but one resolve, to save you.

Three years. Your plane lifted off that evening. From the valley I looked to the sky to see you. Today I recognize your departure was an arrival. Your arrival home. And, though we live worlds apart, my heart carries you with me. Whether we meet when you return, or we reunite in eternity, you are my sweet Reveal - and He, He alone is our great Redeemer.




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