A Spring of Joy

“Moooommmmyyyy!” she cries, untwisting herself from her spot on the floor and running to curl next to me on the couch. “I don’t like this pawt,” she whispers as she pulls the blanket to cover us both, “Hold me?”

I put down my coffee cup and look down to see big brown eyes pooling with tears. I wrap my arm around her and then pull her even tighter. I pick her up and cuddle her into my lap, all the while whispering, “It’s going to be okay. You’ve seen this before, remember?”

She nods, not tearing her eyes from the movie scene and whispers back, “I know she’ll be okay. I KNOW it. I just need you to hold me fow the scawy paht.”

Soon the scene passes, the intense music fades and my little Bella returns to her contortions on the floor. She is happy and calm.

She just needed to be held through the “scawy paht”.

I sigh, picking up my coffee mug again, falling into silent reverie.

She is me.

Only I’m not crying over a cat falling into a river.

I’m crying over life. Panic attacks at night plague me. I look at my March calendar and sigh: 10 appointments, few of them pleasant; 3 days of being sequestered from my children; this crazy diet to prepare me for my thyroid scan; fear that the test results won’t be what we want. Will I have to face more cancer? More treatments? Just when I’m finding strength again?

It can all feel so overwhelming.

To top it all off, today makes day number 9 of sickness attacking our home. Stomach bug and now head/fever/cough/sore throat flu.

It can all feel so overwhelming.

Like my Bella, some days I just need to be held.

And I find there are a lot of “scawy pahts”. Each second is unknown. I’ve felt what it’s like to have the world drop out from underneath me, and I know how tenuous all this is.

It’s easy to work myself into a frenzy of fear. Easy if my hope is here… easy if my world is here… easy if my eyes are here.

But they’re not.

Like my Bella, the calm I can find is that I KNOW.

I know how it ends.

God wins.

All of this mess that life can be… it won’t follow… it CAN’T follow me into eternity.

But still in the mess, there are days when I just need to be held.

And the beauty of His promise is that He is holding me all the time not just for the “scawy pahts”, because, frankly, I’ve learned that without Him, life is ALL “scawy pahts”.

I’m held, no, I’m engraved on the palm of His hand. I can’t fall out. And His hand will carry me into eternity whenever that is.

And all of this? This fear? This pain? The “scawy pahts”?

None of that is engraved with me. Just me. Me and Jesus.

And I’m held.