Through the lens of "Knowing You"

Sweet babies-

I'm looking at you right now. And it's not so satisfying as seeing your smiling eyes right in front of me... where I can touch your shoulder, hug your neck, or give you our high 5. You're right here though. And I love you.

Do you believe me? When I'm there for minutes at a time, a few days, and then gone? Back to my home with privacy and bathtubs, clean sinks, and clean clothes? Do you believe that I can not really know you and love you all the same? Because I do. Don't think I've left and haven't thought of you every second since we landed. Everything I look at now goes through the "knowing you" lens.
I think about you as we teach our Cross Training camp this week and I think how much you'd love it.

I think about my American food snack at camp and I imagine your Belizean, sticky/spicy lollipop hands.

Is it break time? Who are you playing with? Red rover today? Soccer, volleyball?

I think about what you offered me and my family. Will the five of us laugh again, together, unburdened by schedules? Will we find happiness today, in our clean palace with refrigeration? Is there anything like a feed sack that will cause us to stumble over ourselves in pure joy?

Oh how I miss your hands in motion, learning scripture-your eyes focused as you recite--and the shy pride you feel when you say, the thing you'll remember from this week is Luke 15:24. You dance it out as you repeat it to me.
Sweet children, the whole bible is yours for the taking.

The Word from our Father is ours! We get to delight that a loving Father can whisper in our ears so that we'd hear a way -the Way- that we'd find freedom to mess up and ask for a second chance. Take it and be assured, loves, we are thinking of you. And oh, how He loves you . . .

I sneaked away today, for a few hours, just so I could do nothing but think of you. And you know what? I looked out of the restaurant window and I saw glass for the first time.

Our windows have glass.
It's like, before the lens of "knowing you," I forgot there were windows without glass.

My heart broke a little and that lump rose to the top of my throat. How I long to tell you that I can see the glass. And I'm thankful for it. But MORE than that,
I long to tell you that I saw your smiles in the windows without glass.

I saw your joy where there were no conveniences to help you through this tough life.
And I saw your hurt too.
Our darkness, here in the palaces, tries to hide in quiet places. The darkness where you are hides less. But we're both in it. I'm praying you run from it. That we run from it. Look, little loves, look out of the windows without glass and see the beautiful things He gives you.

We, in the palaces, are surrounded by the things made by our hands, by the beauty we've "created." But you, with no Target pillows to decorate your dirt floors, you have the world our Creator made. Those hill-mountains, the green, the light coming through the doorway of your dimly-lit school room, the ocean waters so near you.

 These are the reminders that you are not alone. You are not hidden. Your hurts, your joys are known by more than the friends who came to visit. They are known by the One who wants to whisper the Way in your ear.

My heart doesn't break because you don't have a dishwasher (though I desperately wish it were easier for you). My heart breaks because when the sun goes down, the windows without glass offer less protection from the darkness... from the animals both with four legs and the evil animals with two legs who know nothing but their own self-preservation. My heart breaks because I wonder if, when no one is visiting, you feel forgotten. Do you feel alone in the challenges you know?

He sees you. And He's helping me remember you every day. And He's reminding me that He sees me too.
Hang on, loves. You can't see us but we're with you. And you can't see Him but He's there. Listen.

Until we see each other again . . .