Sacredly Scarred

March 23, 2018

I’ve often told people when they ask how I’m doing that God has been so gentle with me. I don’t typically share how He has shaped that word, “gentle,” for me. I finally understood what it meant 11 months ago, when I held Tyler’s lifeless body.

A living newborn has reflexes, muscles that respond to touch, an innate ability to move when handled…Tyler did not receive these earthly instincts. I had to be gentle with him. I held his arms and feet in line for him, placed his head just so on my chest and my hands were absolutely necessary in keeping him on me. Gentleness in action, providing my touch to keep what was left of him together. It’s exactly what God does for me every day. He uses His character of mercy and grace and patience to keep what is left of me, together.

March 23, 2019

Gentleness does not come by me naturally. I have always been brash and a bit direct when it comes to living. My prayer when I was pregnant with Tyler was the following verse…

“Rather, (your beauty) should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”
‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭3:4‬ ‭

I don’t think I speak out of turn when I make a broad generalization that pregnancy has a tendency to zap our energy and shorten our fuse. With that justification I knew I needed to demonstrate a gentle heart to my children as I grew one within me.

Little did I know that the very prayer I longed to be answered during that time would become so vividly alive through the death of my son. The gentleness I desired to overtake me in the final months of pregnancy became a living demonstration of God’s tender care that I cannot live without. I’ll go as far as saying I had no clue what it meant to be gentle until the hardest day of my life hit.

Tyler did not have the same initial movements my other children experienced. Most of us are familiar with the startling reflexes and sudden jerk of a tiny arm or leg being tossed in the air. It took every intentional movement with a thoughtful plan of the desired position to hold our son. Skin to skin contact is the immediate desire for most mommas these days…it was no different for me despite the coolness of my son’s body.

This is the moment when I learned what it means to be gentle. This is the moment when God opened my eyes to how He would sustain me…it was my answer for one year, “He has been so gentle with my heart.” Each time I said it, I wanted to explode with my memories of what that meant. I wanted to grab the person that asked how I was doing and demonstrate the understanding of resting in the gentleness of God’s grip.

I birthed Tyler naturally, desiring to feel everything I could about this child. As I reached for him, my grip changed. It required a new handling of a body that couldn’t sustain itself with correct posturing. He sunk into my chest but received nothing from my embrace. He was big and beautiful but void of breath and beat. I drew him close to my cheeks and nestled his head in between my neck and bosom. He received nothing from the intentional placement of his body on mine. I placed his big hands around my worn out fingers, begging for a grip to appear on his end. It did not. Each time I moved his body I adapted my method of handling him in order to keep him securely tucked in my grip.

To recount these images is to acknowledge God for the sustaining grip of gentleness He continues to bestow upon me. I’ve felt cold and numb as I walk on earth, yet God has graciously taken my heart and placed it in proper perspective, allowing it’s beat to develop a new rhythm to life. I’ve been embraced but felt no comfort from certain grips, until He adapts His approach and opens my arms placing them directly in line with His. I have found myself in stooped posture more often than not and relied on the gentle grip of God to lift my head and focus my gaze. I’ve experienced the grip of a hand much stronger and more scarred than mine. It has taken my worn out fingers and wrapped them around His scars, leaving me to respond with a grip that I will not loosen.

Gentleness has become a new way of life between a Father and a daughter. It has become the unfading beauty of God’s character that Has intimately refined and pursued me. Gentle became God’s method of handling me when I was coming apart; God’s gentleness was absolutely necessary to keep me on Him. God’s whispers at night became the gentle drawing of a broken heart into His presence. God’s grip has remained gentle as I fight to get another year behind me.

I’ve learned to observe people over the last couple of years. I’ve often thought most I encounter don’t know what it means to be gently gripped. It’s a word we tell our 5 year old when they hold a puppy or baby. It’s value runs deeper than the associated action. We are notorious to shove it aside and tell God we want Him to show up in a bigger and better way. We can grow calloused as the hurts in our lives turn to resentment, bitterness, and anger. We can disregard the gentle grip of God and claim it’s not secure enough. Or we can understand the deeper value as Spurgeon teaches,

“His gentleness shows itself in His being afflicted in our afflictions and entering into our sorrows, and putting Himself side by side with us in the battle of spiritual life.”
-Charles Spurgeon, 1866

Maybe in your afflictions you don’t feel the same way about God that Spurgeon does. It might be that you’ve been wounded so deeply that you can’t even place the word gentle in front of the word God. May I challenge your ears to hear the gentle whispers of God? He is that close, that is all it takes, a gentle whisper from the Almighty who is side by side with you.

“The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.”
‭‭1 Kings‬ ‭19:11-12‬ ‭