“Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all Your waves and breakers have swept over me.” Psalm 42:7

How Deep Are Your Depths?

I woke up with tears on my face and realized I had been crying in my sleep. Upon awaking, I cried some more, realizing that I felt such a deep grief, as if my very soul had been pierced, and oh how I cried out to God.

Deep cries out to deep.

For a long time, I wondered at this Scripture, not understanding what it meant. But motherhood changed that. It’s just the very depths of myself calling out for the very depths of God. How could I have understood this before the very depths of myself had been scooped out of me? I will tell you how that happened. It happened when my first child was born. Immediately upon her birth, I was aware that I had been transported through an archway that I could never back out of for the rest of my life. It was like that archway was a rainbow, and now my world contained colors, and I had no idea until that instant that I had been living a black and white existence. The love I felt for this child was overwhelming. I knew that if anything were to happen to her from that point on, it would affect the deepest depths of me.

That child is now just about grown, and the years have only deepened those depths. When your children are little, you think it will only get easier, and in many ways, it does. But in other ways, it gets harder. My baby is now old enough to make grown up decisions, and those decisions have lasting consequences. I recently learned about some of her choices and they ripped at my very soul.

Deep cries out to Deep.

Nothing has brought me more understanding of God’s love for me than motherhood. The lessons get deeper. My child has made some choices that she thought would alienate me from her. But surprisingly, what I actually feel is a strong desire to be closer to this child than ever before. I want her to learn from it, and I also want to help clean out the wound caused by this decision, and I want her to know that my love for her was real all along. That it wasn’t a conditional love. That the consequences she now faces are there to teach her, and that I do not see her as shameful. 

The depths of the tears that I cry over this situation are partly because I feel her pain. I hurt that my baby is hurt. Yes, she brought the hurt on herself, but I hurt that she hurts. I am not angry.  

Deep cries out to Deep.

“Dear heavenly Father, may we continually learn Your unfathomable love for us. Keep drawing us back, even when we blow it, and restore us. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”