Please read this before clicking on the link.
JUST as I finished this vlog, my 5-year-old, who has ALWAYS slept through the night since we started together in mid-February of this year, comes down the stairs, her shiny dark hair flopping as if her head just tossed and turned from her pillow (which had likely just happened).
It’s somewhere around 1:30 AM. In the moment, as our eyes meet and she walks toward the fireplace, I see this familar truth arrive yet again: she is one of the most beautiful souls I have ever seen.
Of the five, this middle child is most like me. Too much like me. And the reason I want you to read this before you watch this is that you see yourself most clearly in someone who is so much like you. Too much like you. See, this darling and I delight in making the broken pieces around us better. It is what we do. It is who we are. I see who I am when I watch what she does.
Instinctively, I knew a dream woke her. Like me, she wants the bad in our world to be better. I heard too much about her harrowing world at the last court hearing to only imagine how deep her hurt is and how far her healing will take her, me, and her siblings into the world she steadfastly stands up to and regularly fights with to be more loving, more just, and more kind.
I come off soft sometimes, but I am not. She is even tougher than me, more tenacious. Some day she will know this, and I hope on that day I will be with her to watch what I am trying to do in this video, which is open for you that even in our hardest hell-like moments we have joy.
Joy? What? When life hurts too much?
Yes. When life hurts too much. When hell is too close, and hard seems unavoidable. Joy.
This joy isn’t happiness; this joy is having a God who not only hears us, but also holds us. Yes, light joy within because our God is not far. The care, the light, and the hope that is inside us is not ours. It is God’s, and God came to us meek and humble, low and gentle.
This is what we celebrate. This is what we light.
My daughter’s dream was an inner vision, a demon, a darkness. I will tell you what I told her. Keep coming to the Father. His embrace awaits, His love lifts, and His protection endures.
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I amend this post at 8 AM, Wednesday, 12/10. Governor Wolf, according to the Erie News Now, issues the statement that no shutdowns are eminent.