January 31, 2018
My dearest Liam,
Tonight I experienced one of the most precious, tender
moments of my life with you. Tonight you
are 5 years old and 5 months. As we were
preparing for bed, you were crying…simply because you didn’t want to clean up
the toys in our living room—and mostly because you were tired. You came up to me and cried, “My eyes are
dropping tears all the way to the ground, Mommy.” And I could see it was true.
So I turned on the CD player, which had newly been restocked
with the Hidden in My Heart album by
Scripture Lullabies. It had been given
to us by my dear friend Juliana Tomlinson on the occasion of your birth. Throughout your entire infancy and babyhood,
I listened to that CD with you every time I held you and rocked you in the
rocking chair. In your first 2 years of life, I think I held and nursed you
constantly! So indeed this music is the
soundtrack to your babyhood and the soundtrack of my motherhood!
The first track began to play, and I know you recognized it
as much as I did. It was called “Be
Still and Know,” and—as it played—I sat down on the rocker and invited you to
come sit on my lap. You looked relieved
to have such an invitation, and you curled up into my lap like you always
did. As you laid your head on my
shoulder, I began to sing to you and rub your face.
At first, you didn’t really look at me. You somewhat closed your eyes or looked
slightly away from me as I sang to you and gently played with your eyebrows. But I knew you were the baby boy who used to
stare lovingly back into my eyes from the first day he was born. And, within a
few minutes, we suddenly got very REAL. I started to weep tears of joy,
realizing again how MUCH I love to hold you like this and how MUCH I miss it.
You opened your eyes fully and began to behold me with your eyes as you’ve
always done, and I could see the love in them!
As I cried, completely and beautifully affected by the joy
of holding you, the beauty of the music, and the vivid memories of your
babyhood, I started to tell you how much I missed holding you like this and
that maybe we ought to do it more often!
You nodded. And then I reminded
you of what I’ve always said to you: that I LOVE holding you like this and will
ALWAYS enjoy holding you this, even when you’re a big, strong man! We both laughed a little.
“The Peace of God” played next. As I continued singing and holding you, my
tears suddenly started to flow even more, and I knew exactly why. I told you how amazed I was that you were
going to kindergarten next year and how these first 5 years have flown by. I told you how much fun I knew you’d have in
school but that I’d miss you every minute that you were gone…and that I’d be
watching the clock for that first moment when I’d get to see you again. “And you must tell me EVERYTHING about your
day,” I said between sobs.
You were looking at my face with wonder, and your eyes were now
crying, too. I told you how God blessed
you with such a good brain and such a good heart. “You got both!” I exclaimed amid my tears,
and you smiled.
I told you how much I love seeing you get excited about
things that you enjoy (which right now happens to be model trains and full-size
steam locomotives, and interest I think you’ll have for LIFE!) and told you
that in kindergarten you’d discover even MORE things that you’ll love. I told you that God has a wonderful
kindergarten teacher prepared for you, and it will be exciting to see who He
reveals that to be. But I still cried hard about missing you, and I told you
that the house wouldn’t the same without you walking around within it during
the day. You kept giving me tight hugs. “Do you understand what I am saying?” I
asked. And you nodded that you did.
As “Seek Ye First” began to play, I told you how grateful I
was to be your Mommy and how blessed we were to have Daddy provide for us in a
way that allowed me to be home with you all the days of your life before
school. “We did it,” I told you, amazed and relieved.
Then “Precious Life” started to play. My tears continued to
flow, and then I started to tell you how much I loved you and how grateful I
was that God gave you to me as a child. I told you how unique you are, how
there has never been someone exactly like you and how there never will be
again. And then my sobbing continued as I shared with you how much I prayed for
you over the course of my life. I knew that, as you listened, you FELT SO
DEEPLY what I was saying, for you have been blessed with a very empathetic
heart. I told you again how I used to pray and beg God to please give me a
husband and children. And then I told you how much my life was changed when I
met Daddy, when you were born, and when Vera was born!
You asked little questions, but mostly you just wanted to
listen. Mostly, you just wanted to be held. And you wanted to be there for
me. And when I asked you two separate
times what you enjoyed doing with me best, you said, “Just being with you.” That made me heart swell!
Eventually, our conversation ceased. But the music kept playing. And we kept rocking. And my tears continued to flow, sometimes in
little waves and, at other times, in big waves.
I noticed and appreciated that you weren’t at all interested in going
anywhere else. You just wanted to stay
in my arms a little bit longer. You knew
what we had was a tender, magical moment.
And we were going to make it last as long as we could.
When you finally did get up off my lap (for, at this point,
your long body was just uncomfortable!), I saw that we had listened to 9 of the
12 tracks on the CD. Later I totaled these
to discover that we spent 38 precious minutes together like that!! I held and rocked you and told you how much I
loved you for 38 lovely, wonderful, forever-in-my-heart minutes! My heart feels so FULL tonight. And I thank you for that. I thank you for being the most wonderful son
my heart could have ever hoped for, and I thank you for loving me back with
what appears to be the same intensity I have for you!!
With all my love forever,
Mommy
Mommy
And yet, it wasn't so long ago that we looked like this!
