Letting Go

Probably the most difficult part of my whole day is at 8:15 am. That’s the time, when I kiss Rachel and Aria good-bye to go into my office. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my job. I get to sit around with 4 other intelligent brothers in Christ and think about how to share the glory of God to thousands of people through online counseling, streaming video testimonies, chat rooms, forums, and all kinds of sweet techy stuff. But, none the less, it’s especially hard to go. Why?
Well, Aria has lately decided that it’s much better to have her father around. But, what makes it really difficult for me is that she thinks that if she can get a hold of me, bury her head in my chest and cling hard enough, then I can’t go. Man… I think that it would be easy to pry a professional wrestler off of me, than to wrestle with the feelings of handing off my cute, crying, little girl when she just wants to be with me. Now, of course, after I get out the door, I’m all smiles, and my heart is well warmed by the love of a ten-month old, and of course, I know I’ll be back at 5:30, so it’s not like it’s that big a deal.
You know, it has helped me see just how much I love my daughter. I love her, and want to protect her. But when it really comes down to it, I can’t even keep a hair from falling off her head. And, so I must continually “give her” to her heavenly Father, who is able to protect her from all. Of course, I also pray for wisdom and ability to do all I can for her. However, I can only do so much, the rest is in God’s hands and if I don’t realize that, I will not be able to live with the peace of God in my life.
Wouldn’t you know it though, just around the time, I am commiting myself to trust God with the one’s I love most, Aria gets a high fever. Don’t worry, she’s fine now. We took her to the doctor, who said, it was a bacterial infection in the stomach (quite common here) and he gave her anti-biotics. But, it came as a test to me. In the face of Aria’s illness, can I still maintain the peace of God by trusting Him to be Aria’s healer? Yes, I still did the things that were in my power to do that could help her. But, the test came in whether or not, I maintained an attitude of faith in my heart.
But the really cool thing about all of this was the way that God met me in this test. His Spirit within me testified throughout the fever of this: God is perfectly, flawlessly, and thouroughly good! There is no shadow within Him. All His ways are perfect and loving, and His thoughts and plans towards me (and my family) are good! This perfection and goodness is the very glory of God. And, to the degree my heart sees this glory, I can trust in Him with my all.
The glory of his goodness is so exhaustive that, I can know even if God were to decide to take my daughter to be with Himself, even then, I can know that His ways are perfect, and can rest in that fact.
Now, if you read that and think, “how could anyone say that they could rest if their child was taken from them?” you have missed the point. The point is: God is perfect, and loving, and we can trust Him… no matter what! He has all of eternity in His view and He knows what the end shall be. Redemption is His. Justice is His. Ressurrection is His. And, at the right time, He will make all things new! Glory to His name!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 23rd, 2006 at 11:49 pm and is filed under John's Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.