Persistent Love

I’m not much of a garage sale nut, but I know a lot of people who are, and sometimes one will find a unique item not to be found just anywhere, including elephants!  I have my “garage-sale addict” friends to thank for many of the elephants in my collection. Not quite 20 years ago, a teacher colleague of mine, who knew I collected elephants, bought this mother/baby pair at a garage sale.  There’s nothing really remarkable or valuable about them; they’re made of plastic and the baby elephant has a broken ear and trunk.  My friend purchased them anyway, confident that I would like them and include them in my collection, and she was right.

It’s particularly fitting that, at the time, we both were teachers at an early childhood center that integrated children with and without disabilities. In the eyes of the world, some of the children who came to us were surely “broken”, physically, mentally or emotionally.  A few of the children were difficult to love; some were difficult to look at.  But they all had one thing in common: a mother who loved them anyway, often intensely. 

Children with disabilities bring forth a myriad of emotions in their parents: guilt, frustration, anger, depression, anxiety to name just a few.  I know this only from observing and experiencing vicariously.  Graciously, God did not choose me to be a parent of one of these children. While it was not always apparent, I like to think that He had better people in mind for such children. And most of these parents were remarkable people.  Soft-spoken women became fierce advocates for their children.  On their good days, optimism was never stronger; on the bad days their anger might take a jab at those around them—including us, the teachers of their children.  Watching these extraordinary parents and teaching their challenged sons and daughters was an ongoing object lesson to me of God’s persistent love.  Perhaps more so now, as I can look back without the baggage of thoroughly present emotions.  And the lesson is this:

Aren’t we all broken in some way?  But God loves us intensely and persistently. And it’s the persistent part that amazes me! Even more than those mothers who persistently believed the very best in their children, God loves us in all our brokenness and never gives up on us.  He loves us forever!  Jesus promises such in the very last verse of the gospel of Matthew: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  Matt. 28: 20.  He loves those children, their parents, me, you, all of us persistently until the end of time when all of us will be together, whole and holy!

I wrote the poem below about such a “broken” child when I saw her later as a young adult.  She had a very rare and often regressive syndrome which only affects girls. The poem is like most of my poems -- I'm not truly satisfied, or feel I'm finished.  But I felt compelled to post it today for this child's  mother was probably one of the most beautiful, Christian people I ever knew and she exemplified persistent love beautifully.  

Angel

She’s twenty-something but her face is of a child

angel; unseen wings lift her up beyond

the rest of us. Her speech—the grunts

and groans—is only known

by the One Who Knows All Things,

as why He touched her in such a way at birth.

I like to think the persistent dribble on her perfect chin

is God’s weeping tear—grieving that He chose

to let this angel live among us earthly souls. 

But her mother knows 

He holds those troubled hands—so scarred

from years of gnawing. 

I’ve never been where this angel's been

but at rare times, I read the story in her eyes.  

Privileged to be witness to such holy verse.