Just Like Her

Cora Eve - Two Weeks

Photography by Amber Parker Photography

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I see myself in her.

Not just in the curve of her lip or the shape of her pinkie toe, but in her flailing arms and kicking legs.  In the way she fights sleep and tries to comfort herself with her balled up fists.

She's helpless, but if she were cognitively able to understand her circumstances, something tells me she'd fight against that helplessness.  She'd flail and kick and try to make her own way.

Just as I do.

We leave in 15 short days.  Most of our friends leave at the end of this week, returning to faraway hometowns to see their families for the Chinese New Year holiday.  It is a lot of goodbyes.

I am trying to comfort myself… maybe not with balled up fists, but with avoidance and tears and pretending it isn't happening.

We're packing up our belongings, and I'm all flailing arms and kicking legs.  Refusing to get started because to start means to admit this chapter of life is ending.  Such finality.  Kicking and flailing against change…

What if there's no job? Where will Cora sleep? We need to order a car seat! How will I get her schedule changed? Will LeLe be OK on a 20 hour trip in a small pet carrier? If I leave all my spices here, that just means I have to buy more in America! We don't have a couch anymore… or a washer and dryer.  Moving home is going to be so expensive!  How is it all going to work?

I fight sleep… worries clouding my mind as I seek to grasp for control of these out of control circumstances.

She's just like me.  I'm just like her.

She's sleeping right now in my arms.  If I put her on my chest, I can feel her body relax and she almost always falls asleep within minutes.  I laid on my couch for an hour today… Cora curled up in a ball on my chest, sandwiched between my heartbeat and a fuzzy blanket.  She rested and relaxed.  She trusted me.  I drank in the scent of her head and wondered at this little creature who is so entirely other yet so entirely dependent on me.

I am not so different.

Entirely other yet entirely dependent on Him.

My heart yearns to know this deeper way of Trust.  To curl up in a ball on His chest and fall asleep.  I need my Savior to be gentle and kind right now… patient and loving.  Not asking me to be brave or strong, but to calm myself to the cadence of His heartbeat.

A dear friend sent this quote to us today… she didn't say where it came from, but I feel its message reverberating in my spirit.

I said to the man that stood at the Gate of the Year; Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied; Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.  That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.

"...for I know Whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day."  2 Tim 1:12