Mercies

I watched two couples dedicate their baby boys to the Lord during a baptism yesterday morning at my church.  And as the pastor prayed over each of them, and consecrated their lives to God, tears slid down my face.  I remembered a similar service last spring as Bray and I presented our three for baptism and the pastor prayed for their lives to be holy and pleasing to the Lord.  It seems like we stood on that stage mere moments ago.  But just as keenly I remembered sitting in the very same pew a few years earlier and feeling hot tears sting my cheeks as I watched with great pain this beautiful dedication.  My whole body ached for a child of my own, and after years of struggling to have a baby to no avail I couldn't bear to watch more beaming parents hold their gurgling cherubic infants before the congregation.

If you, dear one, are struggling to have a child, I am so sorry.  I have not forgotten how bitter the pain or how keenly you can feel the absence when you least expect it.  But know you are not alone.  And know that He, your good and faithful Saviour, sees your heart and knows your hurt.  He alone can comfort you in the deepest place that you are harboring sorrow.  He will bring you to the other side.  He will dry your tears.

I leave you with this passage from Lamentations - the author begins writing about how incredibly desolate and abandoned he feels only to remember, in the end, God's faithfulness.  Please, no matter how isolated you feel today, remember His mercies are abundant and will provide for you, even in this dark time:

Lamentations 3 - He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light. Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day....He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old. He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy. Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer. He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD....
This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.