They (whoever they are) say that you don’t realize how much you could love a child until you have one. I don’t doubt this. I believe this is true but I don’t have the capacity in my mind or heart at this point to understand it fully. Perhaps one of these days if God wills it, I will have a child of my own to love and cherish more than I would have ever expected. Until that day, I do have something that ‘they’ will say doesn’t compare, but I would say to them, it’s all I have. Don’t knock it.
I have Charlie. Charlie is my 6-pound, delightfully rotten, and cute as a button, Maltese puppy. He is not really a puppy, he is almost two, but he is my baby. He is as loving as he is bratty and my heart loves him so much that it is almost sickening. I always tell my mom that even when I do have kids, Charlie WILL NOT take the back burner. I will love him just the same. I know what you are all thinking, “just you wait.” I’ve heard it before. But, hear me now, Charlie will be in every Christmas picture until he dies because he is part of this family. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it and I will strive to never have to eat my words.
His warm little body is cuddled up next to me as I write this. It’s precious times like these that I crave. He doesn’t always show it but I know he loves me. He nips at me and sometimes growls at me when I smother him in kisses but I know he wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m his momma. I’m his biggest advocate. As I look down at his precious, messy face, I can’t help but think that I would in fact jump in front of a car if it were about to hit him. Is that foolish? Maybe it is, after all he doesn’t have a soul, but I care about him so much that it would kill me to watch him suffer.
In the book Crazy Love, the author challenges us to think about how God felt when he gave up His son, to die on the cross. The author challenges us to think about it in terms we could understand. Consider your own children. Think about letting them die in order to save someone else. When you think about it that way, you can truly feel and see the love that God has for us so much so that he let his own son die. I don’t have children. I don’t know what that feels like. The closest thing I could compare is if I were to choose to let my small white dog suffer, to let him die. I would have to love someone a WHOLE lot in order to allow that to happen. I can’t even comprehend it. Think about that. Maybe not with your dog, but with your child. God didn’t just think about it, He did it. Why? Because he loves us. That kind of love is worth recognizing. It’s incomprehensible to humans but offered to us freely. Wow. Just stop, and think about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment