Pages

09 April 2018

Amazing Grace.

Every night after stories, Matt and/or I sing hymns and worship songs to the girls and pray for America and Haiti and friends and family and burdens and blessings, and ever since David went missing back in August, he and his family have been a frequent part of that prayer time.

"Amazing Grace," we would sing to our God and his parents far away, at least once or twice a week, "I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see."  We prayed so many times to the one who knew exactly where David was, and how.

As I strummed I would always picture Julie, his mom, praying that her lost son would be found, would always picture all the searchers, now blind, but praying that they would soon see him.

It was hikers, instead, who found him six months later, and as we prayed again that night for his family, David's song of course came to me, and with tears we released him now found, prayed for his parents, now seeing too.  Praying Amazing Grace, still.

Tonight I was singing it with the girls in the dark, alone this time, but bawling again.  Because today Nora was very lost, and very well could still be, and I am sitting in His amazing, sweet grace and nothing else.

We met friends at the pool this afternoon to break up the weekend without Matt and to play with good buddies, and as time passed, we three watched our seven kiddos swim and play as the pools, parking lot, restaurants and countless hotel rooms were filling up.  Before long the pool was packed, the music was incredibly loud, we were shouting over it to each other, keeping a close eye on the three who can't swim yet, and I noticed that, as usual, the girls were getting a lot of attention.

There's not a lot of blonde, creole-speaking girlies around here, as you can imagine, and pretty much wherever we go, it's expected that people are going to stop to talk with them, frequently ask to have pictures taken with them, or at least sit close by and stare.  The girls hardly notice, and honestly, we hardly do either...it's just part of being very foreign in a very curious and communal culture.

But today itt was so crowded and loud and there were so many people talking and staring, however, that when our friend suggested getting out of the pool and playing at the playground next to the pool, it seemed like a good idea.  We all played for a while, but soon the big kids wanted back in the pool, so snuggling their sweet baby boy in the row of bushes separating the playground from the pool, I chatted with our friends, watched Nora going down the slide over and over, and watched Lily and Sofie bobbing around for dive sticks.

The party still picking up, we started to get ready to go, and as I watched and packed up and chatted and bounced I looked for Nora to come running around the bottom of the slide.

And instead she was gone.

You've been there.  Your heart stops, you race around for a few second and there they are, followed a butterfly or a chicken or a whim for a moment and back in your view.  But as I walked the baby around the whole playground area, I interrupted my conversation with our friends and said, "Nora's gone, help me."  They immediately started looking, I started looking, the kids started looking.

She was gone.  Gone gone.

I searched every inch of the pool, every inch of the playground, all around the lower restaurant, the bathrooms, all through the construction projects all around, the holes, the pits, the closests, clinging to the baby and hearing Matt tell me, like he's told me before, "Stacey, it's fine.  It's fine.  Don't overreact."

By now, a long time had passed, I could see our friends and the kids still running everywhere, also frantic.  I knew the front gate man wouldn't let her wander out to the street, but she was nowhere.

On the huge property, there are other pools.  A large parking lot in the middle, a hundred rooms, more restaurants, a hundred places to disappear.  Cars coming and going as we searched.

I couldn't breathe.  We kept looking further and further from where her short little legs surely could have carried her, and there were so many people there, and her hot pink shirt and blue eyes and blond sprout...how could no one know where she was?

HOW COULD I not know where she was?

Awful fears start flooding in.  Pools.  Parking lots.  Hotel rooms.  Foreign toddler sticking out to great interest.  Construction pits, stairs, cars.

I made the DJ turn off the music, I ran to the poolside and started to insist that every person stop EVERYTHING and find my baby that I horrifically lost, and saw as I opened my mouth my friend across the pool, trying to get one of the kiddos missing flip-flops out from under a chair.

I knew if she was looking for flip-flops, that something must be ok.  When the music shut off, she looked across at me immediately about to make my passionate plea and said, "Stace, he got her! I thought you knew! Up at the top restaurant, by the kitchen!"

The top restaurant is as far as it could possibly be from the lower pool...a long path, a huge parking lot, another pool, a work out area, long rows of rooms, a gift shop, a fish pond, a bridge, and a restaurant far.

I started running up and met our friend running down with a hysterical Nora, just sick and struggling and fighting to trust and fighting all my fears and praying and praying and praying.

Lily and Sofie came running too, all crying and we held her and thanked the Lord for returning her to us.

So much time had passed that anyone easily could have taken her.  She easily could have drowned.  She easily could have been hit by a car.  She easily could have fallen.

Because her mama was NOT watching her those horrible moments.  Because her mama was NOT holding her hand.

We wiped our eyes and packed our bags and said goodbyes and many thanks to our friends and got the air conditioning going in the truck and buckled three girls in and sat for a few minutes.  Once she calmed down, I started asking her.

"Nora, honey, why did you go on that big walk?  Were you looking for mommy? Could you not find mommy?"

And what she said then and has said many times since and all she'll say is "No. I wasn't looking for mommy.  I was getting the pink man.  I was getting the pink man."

Maybe it's from a show she saw once or a game or a story she heard or a 2 year olds imagination, I don't know. Maybe she was taken, maybe she was lured. Maybe she saw a man in a pink shirt and followed him? Maybe a man in a pink shirt took her?  How did she get so far away? Why would she have gone so far? Why didn't anyone stop her? Why didn't anyone scoop her up and bring her to her mama?  Why didn't I SEE it?

This mama, yes, with baby four on the way soon, has NO idea what happened to Nora today, or why, or how, or what.  And while I keep checking on her sleeping form, snuggling her penguin tonight, while she is truly fine and safe and here and unscathed and jumping on the trampoline happily all evening, I have NO idea how close we came today to losing Nora forever.

And I will never know.  

Nothing feels lower as a mom than to think through all that could have happened to my precious girl today and to realize that I was NOT there to have stopped ANY of it, and I don't even KNOW what happened and I never will.

And nothing feels more certain tonight as I pray for Doug and Julie and Matt with them, and as I sing my children to sleep, that it is absolutely amazing grace, and NOTHING ELSE, for I was utterly worthless and nonexistent in the entire miracle that has Nora sleeping peacefully in her crib 10 feet from my bed tonight.

Sometimes I need that humbling reminder.

There was a hand that protected every step today, that protected a two-year old by swimming pools, that protected a toddler in a parking lot, and it was not mine.

There was an eye that never wavered, that knows exactly why and where and how Nora was today, that watched every moment, and it was not mine.

There was preventer from evil, from kidnapping, from loss, from danger, from drowning, from cars, that hemmed in my Nora today, perhaps even somehow stopping an evil situation, who was not me.

Because I was running around the playground and construction and pool doing ALL that I possibly could to fix it, which was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Story. Of. My. Life.

I can't do one darn thing to encourage my children's next breath.  I go to sleep at night and watch over them not! I head to work during the day and look away for a moment.  I can't bring one life to salvation, can't do one thing on my own strength to change one person's life, can't fix one person's heartbreak or transform a country or a culture or a people or a friend, can't do one thing to save myself or make it right or change the world, can't make a person who doesn't want Him hungry, can't make a hungry person choose Him.

There was was nothing but amazing, unmerited and huge, practical, powerful grace for me today that is just as real every single day, and that which was lost was found, me who was blind can't stop staring at my girl.

I'm never unaware of His great grace.  But there are days when I am totally aware of my utter incapable, unpowerful, short, small, human existence, TOTALLY incapable of anything good or kind or loving or beautiful outside of Christ, and His grace is so rich and overwhelmingly gracious--Great God of the Universe and holding the hand of my 2 year old--that I am sitting in pools of it, utterly nothing but some word so much stronger-than-thankful.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, still daily saving a wretch like me, holding His children and pursuing us every instant with His grace...the lost, the found, the blind and those seeing. How dependent we are, and how incapable of earning it, how faithful He is, in the the nightmares and the dream-come-trues.

Keep praying, never stop praying, for those lost. His grace softens the hearts we are praying for, His grace finds those who are missing as we bring them to Him again and again.
Amazing grace.
  

2 comments:

  1. Praising God all is well, and Nora is safe....Amazing Grace!

    ReplyDelete