I woke this morning from a dream about my younger daughter. The scene was somewhere a tragedy had taken place. As Laura walked in, she saw another young woman, infant in her arms, collapsed on the ground, sobbing…whose other two small children had been killed. My daughter immediately went to her. She didn’t say a word…she simply gathered this grief stricken mother in her arms and held her.
This is the heart of my middle child…a heart of comfort to the hurting. But most don’t know this about her. That tender part usually stays hidden, safe behind a hard, defensive wall, built from nearly 21 years of not fitting in. Laura doesn’t experience the world like most of us. She’s literally wired differently. It’s subtle, and often rather difficult, and there are few who stick with her long enough to understand.
As I lay in bed thinking about this, I realized that unwittingly I had been handing her bricks for her wall all her life, simply by trying to help her relate to this world. I see now how a pattern of correction has defined our relationship, and who wouldn’t wall herself off from continually being told everything she did was wrong and needed to change?
Recently I’ve watched a new relationship pierce her defenses, unconditional love and acceptance breaking through and revealing the tender and vulnerable pieces of her sheltered within.
I love how gently my Father corrects me. It’s a wonder that I didn’t learn this from Him long ago, but while there is regret for getting it wrong, there is grace…
grace that my mistakes aren’t permanent…
grace that I get to learn from those mistakes and the example of another…
and grace that the next 21 years can be different…for both of us.
“…with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love…”
~ Ephesians 4:2 ~
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