He was there . . .

I know I talk about him a lot. I guess that happens when someone enters your world you weren't expecting and changes you.

My heart gasps at the journey that has been and calms by the miracle that is.

I need to see it. I need to feel it. I missed it once - but not anymore.

All the little moments that lead up to the one that would literally take my breath away were miraculous too. It took a while to see them, but now I live in them and now I know them.

That one moment is frozen in my memory. Something wasn't right, and I knew it.

I sat.

I held.

I prayed.

When I looked down, he was gray. I never liked the color pink before, but in that moment it was the color of life and I wanted it. Desperately. I didn't want gray.

After that, all the little moments become a blur. There were people and machines. Tubes and needles. Doctors and ambulances. There was help.

And, thankfully, there was life.

It all happened a year ago, the day he stopped breathing, but I live in it like it was yesterday.

I left part of my heart in the hospital. I want to go find it.

As I walked the halls of that hospital to get to my sick child, I passed children so ill they had come to call a hospital "home." I had high hopes that I would take my baby home soon and find "normal." Our stay was temporary. It all caused a conflict in my heart, the world I was witnessing colliding with the world it would become. As scared as I was of this new world, I knew it could be so much worse.

Some people have to live their stories out loud. The reality of life can rip people apart and scream pain in plain view of a stunned audience. Other people live their stories out in the privacy of their own imaginations, or hidden behind classic charades of happiness, while the pain slowly eats away at their hearts.

Either way, their stories cause suffering and suffering is hard.

And that's when I had to learn that suffering isn’t a competition.

While my heart hurt as I lived out my story, it was very obvious to me that there were stories that were far worse than mine with many people who were enduring a much deeper pain. In some ways, that was a comfort to me because I could see one side of God’s mercy in my life. On the flip side, it made me minimize the story God was attempting to write. I chose not to listen. I covered my ears and screamed inwardly, “But he didn't die.” I didn’t see these moments for what God designed them to be. He wanted to meet me. There. In the middle of their messes. In spite of my own.
 

Let me tell it to you. Please, don't say your journey doesn't matter. Don't believe that your story doesn't get to change you because someone else's story hurt more. That is their journey. Embrace your own.

And we can't do it to others.

We can't qualify pain. It hurts. Period.

Let's love each other in this mess we call life. Let it hurt. Let it be hard. That's how we know we need a Savior. That's how we find Jesus.

Find Him in every day. Find Him in every moment. You are exactly where you are meant to be. Let Him meet you. Here. In the middle of the mess. In spite of your own.

Let Jesus enter your world .  . . it can be unexpected . . . it can change you.