...To Love Their Children

"It hurts so much because we loved you so much." A father who lost his little daughter wrote these words on her tombstone. She was killed when a crazy driver crashed into their van.


Giving her a cuddle after the procedure was done.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a café in the hospital while my baby was having a procedure/surgery done for her heart. A friend texted me asking how I was. I admitted, "I'm afraid to get too close to her because then it hurts more. I know it sounds horrible, but I hope you understand." That friend has a child with health problems and she did understand. But her advice was that I shouldn't try to protect myself like that, even though it seems the easier thing to do. She said it's better to hurt and feel the pain.
I'll add that it had been a stressful morning. Lydia needed to go to another floor on the hospital for the procedure to be done. We walked along as the nurse wheeled her in her cot. Because of a broken lift, we had to go a very long way around. On the way, Lydia's oxygen levels started dropping quite low and she started to turn blue. The nurse got quite stressed. Another nurse passing by stopped to help. When we finally got down to where we would leave her, there was a boy in the bed next to Lydia. He got wheeled through doors that said MRI. The mother followed him through the doors then came back and burst into tears. I got out of there as quickly as I could before my tears started! I thought, "I shouldn't have come. I can't handle it!"
The day before, the doctor and anesthetist had laid out all the possible risks involved until I was starting to wonder if she would even make it out alive!
So maybe you can understand why I didn't want to get too attached to her. But I'm very thankful for the advice that my friend gave me. I decided I would take it.
I also found it hard being separated from my other children for 2 weeks at a time. It was easier for me to just put them out of my mind that it was to Skype with them, because then I missed them more. It might have been the easy way out for me, but what about my children? I realized that it wasn't nice for them for me to disappear completely out of their life.
I read this statement that a mother wrote, after her husband died of leukemia. "Loving someone really well means that you hold on and stay close even when it doesn't feel good---it hurts more than words can say."
Having a baby whose needed so much hospital care has made me afraid to love too much.

But the other night I was thinking about this as I sat up with my baby. She has been having problems with reflux and couldn't go back to sleep until she threw up.
I thought, "It might hurt more to love, but imagine how horrible it would be (if something happened to Lydia) to know that I hadn't loved her like I could have. Surely that would be far worse."
Love is the only thing we can do for our children. We can't stop accidents from happening and we can't keep them alive and healthy, but we can love them!
And that is exactly what God wants us to do.
That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, Titus 2:4