I’m sitting on the bathroom floor. My boy is sitting in front of me. His brown eyes are like saucers with the fear, all round and huge.He whimpers some, cries a little, coughs a lot. Nobody told either one of us that six-year olds should still be getting croup-like-illnesses and yet he does. Coughs that just won’t end. So we sit and even though I am a nurse, I don’t know much else to do but breath deep of the steam, sip on cough syrup and warm apple juice. I hold him some, rock a little, fight with his now long legs that don’t fit where my baby should. I whisper “I love yous” and brush my lips on his sweaty brow.

 

Mostly I just sit near him.

 

 

 

And it reminds me of the Broken Hallelujah. How, I cry it out all the time. My dependence, my desire for Him to draw near, to join me on the bathroom floor, the sick-bed, the broken heart. And I could tell you of my broken all night long. How I’ve battled fear, waged war with food and my body, how I’m all messed up by duty and expectation and the pursuit of that which I most clearly am not. Yes. If  you’ve ever read here you know all about my broken…I don’t have much time for the perfect.

 

 

 

And I don’t have answers for you either. How the God who sits down on the floor with us can leave us there, wounded, weeping in pain. There are some hurting ones in my life right now for whom I am on the hunt for magic bullets, miracle waters, potions of all kinds. I don’t like the broken parts of life. I don’t know why a good God lets us suffer like we sometimes do. I really don’t get it.

 

But then.

 

 

 

I feel it when my son curls into and around me. How he calls for me the moment I leave the room. How he is searching only for the WITH him. This time of year, when the scandal in the stable strikes me each year harder. The BIG whys. The GOD WITH US. The one who broke down walls of time and space and heaven and earth for us to be able to say “HALLELUJAH, GOD IS WITH US”. In us. With us.

WITH US.

 

 

 

Hallelujah.

 

 

I know you are broken-hearted too. And the secret is kind of out….we all are. None of us escapes this place with the beating heart all in one piece. I hate to be the one to tell you, but this world, this side of glory, will tear you in half completely, maybe more than once.

 

Will you join us on the bathroom floor, gazing into eyes of love, pulling our limbs in tight, quieting our fear in His promises? I don’t think the story is quite done.

 

Linking with Prodigal Magazine & She Loves Magazine; synchroblogs on what it means to be broken and redeemed.