Sometimes the hustle and bustle of life allows for absolutely no silence whatsoever. I believe the Lord speaks the loudest when things around us are the most silent. We humans kick at silence, kind of like kicking against the goads in the Bible. We tend to run from silence, we turn on some music, turn on the T.V., dial a friend up on the phone, whatever we can to avoid facing what the silence may bring…usually our thoughts, our worries, our pains, and our inadequacies.
…Which leads me to the other day. Stuck in a hustle and bustle rut, I have been pigeon-holed into tending to my daughter in less than adequate ways. “Here, watch this.” “No, stop that.” “I’m sorry, but I just can’t right now.” “Mommy is busy.” I am tired of typing it, for her it must have been tiring listening to it. Because I have been so stressed, I’m not only feeling bad about not being able to tend to her properly, I’m feeling bad about the kind of mother I am, about my unbelievable failures of being a wife, a Christian, a …….. the list goes on.
On one of these days, I heard Emma quietly playing in her room with a “Precious Moments” figurine that I had been given years ago. The title of this piece is “You Have Touched Many Hearts.” It had been given to me long ago when I used to not feel so good about myself. Since then, I do feel the Lord has healed many pains and brought to the surface many hidden areas of my heart that needed an adjustment. But there are those days, those thoughts, those brief encounters with my weaknesses of my past that creep in to haunt me. This day as I describe it was one of those days.
Anyway, I knew she was playing with it, I put it there in her room. I guess I wanted to pass it on so that one day she would look at it and know, “Emma, You Have Touched Many Hearts.”Although Emma is only three, she has a keen sense of awareness about her. She can pick up on my hectic mind, she calls out to me, softly in the background, kind of like the Lord. Sometimes I listen, sometimes I pay attention and give her notice, really bend an ear to hear what she has to say. But other times, I “uuhumm” her and “yes honey” her to death, hoping that will really convince her I am listening, as not to hurt her feelings if she found out I wasn’t listening at all.
This day, I wasn’t listening. I was frantically going this way and that. In one of her visits into my bedroom, she gently left the “Precious Moments” figure on my unmade bed, walked out, and carried on with her play. She probably didn’t really know how much she was being used by the Lord to do such a thing.
Moving about my day, I walked by numerous occasions without even a thought or a glimpse toward my bed…but as I bent down to pick something up, it caught my attention, and all of the sudden my hectic, frantic day, slowed to almost a complete stop. I looked at the trail of Emma’s presence, the little figurine she had left for me, and I just started to cry. I cried for two reasons. One, I cried because this “Precious Moments” is the most meaningful to me because it has always encouraged me in the past. When I saw it, in my mind, I played the title, “You Have Touched Many Hearts.” I was reminded of how the Lord feels about me, that He doesn’t consider me a failure, that He sees all the good things that I have done, that He was reminding me that I am focusing too much on the lacks and not enough on the victories. I also cried because my loving Lord used my sweet, three-year old to speak His quiet whisper into my life. I took a deep breath in and realized, maybe I am going a little too fast. It was time to slow down to breath, to meditate, and to thank God for His unfailing love, tender mercies, and limitless gifts of His grace in my life. It was in fact, a truly precious moment.
