Her cries pierce through the layers of cotton and down I’ve buried myself beneath. Like a hook that has caught my consciousness, it sinks in deep before pulling me up, up, up, and out of my slumbering seas. Eyes now uneclipsed, my awakened mind opens wide to inhale the reason I’ve been stirred.
I hear her cry again.
The sleepless years spent studiously memorizing the intonations of her sounds may not have garnered letters after my name for which I will be paid. Nonetheless, in this, I’ve earned my master’s. A knowledge now exercised to identify what’s provoked her.
Not wishing to exit the comfort of my warm cocoon, I humbly solicit holy strength to initiate my metamorphosis. With divine assistance, I emerge—transformed. Although I’ve worn these wings for almost 7 years, I still marvel at the vocation God has gifted me.
Flicking on the light, I descend slowly down the stairs wondering if the hot pack is where I left it. Our old wooden stairs creak with every step as if calling attention to a mother’s late-night labours. Rounding the corner, I catch of glimpse of the familiar flannel pattern and breathe out a sigh laden with thankfulness.
I pop the pack into the microwave and push the well-worn buttons with well-established automaticity.
At last I’m back to her room carrying the relief she’s pleading for in hand. Smoothing the wild blonde hairs away from her tear-streaked face, my own eyes lock with hers. Without saying a word her pupils, dilated with concern, communicate the question still cloaked in childhood bewilderment, “why must it hurt to grow?”
The news headlines proclaim the world’s most recent pandemic and we feel it too—the pain of growth. However, years of reaching for the anesthetic of autonomy have lessened our awareness to it.
When we marinate in our own fears, or seek self-preservation over caring for others, in essence, we are childishly crying out in pain, without understanding its aim. Perhaps we have forgotten that tribulation, however troublesome, may be necessary to grow our faith. A faith designed to grow and stretch, like limbs, multiplying and accommodating what God is burgeoning in us.
A faith that does not make us immune to illness, but rather, immune to despair. Because this faith is firmly planted in an ever-present hope.
For the God who allows illness to proliferate today is the only God to ever sacrifice His son to stave away death’s sting forever.
It hurts to grow.
But if you can endure the growing pains, you just might find your legs are tall enough to do something—believe something—you never have before.
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