I watch the numbers reporting your oxygen saturations drop steadily as you fall into a deeper sleep. I hold my breath as the numbers stabilize in an acceptable range. My mind and heart turn from the numbers to the boy resting in such great peace. My breath is gone again as I memorize every detail of your sweet face and the sound of your breath. Tonight is really no different than the night before. The diagnosis and prognosis is still the same: your life; every moment and every detail planned long before your birth. Test results, complications, and unknown possibilities can not change the plan your Father had for you long before you were ever known to me.

The gift I have been given to know perhaps a little more than most. A gift of a different perspective. A perspective that looks beyond the daily irritations, the exhaustion of motherhood, the challenge of caregiving, the ordinary of every day into the realization that time is short. Time is short for everyone of us; we just don't always live life as if today could be the last. The blessing of this perspective turns every day into a living miracle. The flip side is the haunting memories of the opportunities lost and the moments where love and grace didn't prevail. Yet, this moment still remains. A chance to capture every second. To fill each day with joy, adventure, life. To love lavishly, to forgive freely, to run with full abandon towards every dream, to trust without reservation and to hold onto hope with every bit of your being.

Sweet boy, how I long for a heart like yours. I sat with you and told you how your heart was broken but that we were not worried because your heart is safe with Jesus and he is going to take care of you. Your only concern was not the problem at hand. You just wanted to know if you were going home. Oh, to trust Jesus the way you do. To put my broken heart in His capable and loving hands and then go back to being who I am. No concern for the how, the what, the risks; just simply knowing that Jesus has got me. I would be able to confidently stay in the role  I was given to play in this grand story God is writing without holding back any part of me as the intensity of the plot unfolds. A peace that passes all understanding would descend upon my heart because I can trust the author of this story. I know He sees the ending of the story that He is writing and His stories always end well.

Your story collides with mine, my sweet boy. In the midst of your story, my heart is pursued by the Lover of My Soul. Again he asks me to give him my heart. Again I come face to face with a choice. A choice to trust. A choice to believe. Again I choose to take this heart that loves so deeply and breaks so easily and place it into His scarred hands. Those hands that remind me His Story makes my story possible. He has gone before. His heart has felt that same pain. His body has felt your pain. He has been there and now he offers to carry my heart and yours through the steepest places on this journey. How can I not trust one who offers such safety and security and love?