Daily Archives: October 19, 2008
Sick Love
If you want to witness love personified, watch a mother with her sick child.
Often times I doubt my ability to be a good mom. I make mistakes every single day. But then there are days when I watch myself as if through a glass ceiling. Call it an “out of body experience” or whatever, but it’s like I’m seeing myself and wondering how I do it. I know it’s not me; it’s Christ working through me and it’s amazing. Tonight was one of those times.
Ellie’s sick. At first I thought she was faking it just to get out of eating dinner. (It can be worse than pulling teeth to get this girl to eat sometimes.) We let her lay down on the couch while we ate, fully expecting her to ask for ice cream once the plates were cleaned up. But no. She lay whimpering in a ball, running a fever with chills. I felt awful for doubting her. By the end of the night, the couch slipcovers were in the washer and I was plucking pieces of vomit from her hair as she fell back to sleep.
I abhor that smell. I’ve washed my hands a dozen times, and that smell is still clinging to my skin. Under any other circumstances I would be totally disgusted. And yet, through that ceiling, I saw the most patient mom tonight. Where did she come from? She didn’t raise her voice or even sigh at the inconvenience. She didn’t complain about being tired or having no time to herself; she simply hugged her daughter and convinced her everything would be all right. She prayed instead of grumbled and didn’t think twice about the extra load of laundry she had to do.
I wish I saw that mom more often.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” – 1 Corinthians 13
