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To Love and Be Loved

The sound of pajama feet on the stairs.... pad pad padding into my room.... "Mama?"  What a sweet word.  He lays his little head on my shoulder and sighs, I know that he is comforted in my arms.  Months felt like forever waiting for him to find comfort with us, to not be so terrified he could let his guard down, to sleep deeper than just a troubled tossing and turning, to see his smile regularly instead of just occasionally.  Six months with Owen in our family.  He has gained strength and grown so much and so have each of the rest of us.  We pray and pray and the theme is that he would learn to love and be loved.... and that the rest of us would grow in loving and allowing ourselves to be loved too.  Control and fear are huge barriers to love.  Fear builds up walls but constant, gentle love tears them down.  When I'm afraid, I try to control everything and there is no room for relationship.  Cycles of rejection instead of mercy and forgiveness keep us in a holding pattern.  We are learning.  We are growing.  And we are celebrating...  celebrating the passing of time, celebrating that Owen is finding his place in our family, celebrating healing- healing of palates and cuts and bruises from good hard play, celebrating the slow disassembling of walls and the healing of hearts.  We are learning that bonding is not just a forward progression or at least it doesn't feel like that to us.  It feels like a cycle, there are good day and bad days, victories and set-backs, and slow growth through 2 steps forward, 1 step back.  It is very clear that letting yourself be loved seems to be a precursor to loving.  Isn't that true for all of us?  When I cannot allow myself to be loved by God or anyone else, I have nothing to love others with.  And then there's grief.... always there.... will it be bottled up in anger and used against love or will it soften us and wash over rough places and make room for more love to come in?  Some days the former, some days the latter.  To love and be loved.  May we all know the love of Emmanuel, the God who came to be with us, to know our grief and to make a way for us to love and be loved.

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