Heartstrings by Lindsay Hausch

We watch our little ones grow from small to big.

It takes time and patience, compassion and gentle prodding.

They search with their rooting mouth to latch. Removing the crust from their eyes, they take in light for the first time. As they cry hungrily through the night, they slowly learn to be unattached from us. They fuss and kick furiously. Their little bodies turn sweaty and restless as they learn to find rest without the comfortable hug of a womb. And as they find peace to be alone, they start to move further from us.

They learn to roll, and sit, to scoot, drag, crawl and toddle.

They learn to walk, and skip; to jump, and leap, and run until their lungs burn.

They start to think their own thoughts, forming sounds, and incoherent jabber, names, words and phrases. They string together sentences, and whole thoughts of their own. With their own minds they learn to question and create, and challenge; they learn to compose ideas that can change the way others think.

While they learn to find themselves, apart from us, we search for the comfortable rhythm of holding them close, and letting them go.

It may be a dance we do until we are holding them close to say a final goodbye.

But then, as they learn to live in a world without us, they also begin to understand that they’re never really all alone, after all.

Yes, God Himself came small. With time and patience he searched and learned and grew big. But even as a man, Jesus was God sized in a small and frail human package.

He separated himself from the love of his Father, so He could save us.

And as Jesus spread his arms in a world sized hug, he drew us all together in love.

So as we move and bump in life’s rhythm of love and heartache, gaining and losing as we grab on and let go, we grow from small, to big, to small again. We draw near, and pull apart, and eventually fade away. But God takes a string, and ties our hearts together. So that being alone just means we’re suspended. And with just a tug, we go back to the beginning, and find love.