Nearly four years ago she bounced into my life in a dress
with a bright red sash. She tentatively called me Mommy after having not known
one for nearly her entire five years of life and all signs of trauma were
quickly masked with little girls songs and dances and giggles as she adjusted to life in a family.
Years later I watched her feet run in bright red sneakers
toward the towering swing set where she would pretend to fly. We had struggled
for joy and were finding it; she had thrashed against love and by God’s grace I
was learning to hold on tight.
She kicked and screamed and did the unspeakable and when
logic said that I should be angry or might love her less, I couldn’t and my
desire for her was only stronger. And as I saw the extent of her brokenness and
mine, I loved her even more.
Red beads clicked around her face as she skipped into the
kitchen to find her head a resting place now nearly at my shoulder, and she
whispered of the wounds once covered but never healed and an unfamiliar panic
crawled up in the back of my throat and settled in as it hit me, the full
weight of how much we had yet to overcome.
I took her face in my hands and through blurred eyes assured
her, assured myself, that Jesus thought of her and her red beads and her red
sash as His red blood spilled out, and because I knew that, I knew this – He
would not leave us here.
He didn’t and I saw progress, but the fears stayed. Nights
of standing by her bed, days of checking and double checking and checking
again. Blame and accusations from the enemy that I could have done something
differently, done something better. Anger and hatred toward the sin that could
allow someone to do such horrible things to an innocent, helpless child. I knew
Beauty. I fought to see Him here.
Months later on a Tuesday in the still-dark house, I drank
too-strong coffee and I drank of His grace. I prayed over my daughter, a splash
of red in the tapestry of our family – feisty, powerful and full of care and
compassion. I wrestled with the questions of “what if” and “if only” and I told
them of His sovereignty, again.
And right there on the worn pages I read Zechariah call
God’s people prisoners of hope.
And I knew that I hadn’t been. Once more I had become more
of a prisoner of overwhelming concern about the trauma of my children’s pasts
and shifted my gaze away from what, Who I was really captive to.
“but in Him, it has always been ‘Yes!’ For no matter how
many promises God has made, they are all ‘Yes’ in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1: 19-20)
My flesh wants to shake the head no but I am a prisoner to
God who says “Yes!” All of His promises – peace, joy, love, forgiveness,
salvation! – they are Yes to me and Yes to her in Christ! Eternity is Yes in
Christ. And because of His Yes I can say Yes to all that He gives. Even all that He allows.
Hope is my captor – Hope for her healing here which has
already begun and hope for our life eternal with Him. Hope that He who began a
good work in us is not finished yet and will carry it to completion until the day
that He comes and hope that He is coming.
The sun peaks over the horizon and dances patterns across
the couch. I see with new eyes, a captive of the hope set fully on the grace
given me through Christ. I must live my days as this kind of prisoner, because
true freedom is only found in being completely captivated by a coming King.
She who is always the first one awake pulls a book off the
shelf and snuggles up next to me in silence, her nine-year-old lankiness
curling up like an infant inside waiting arms. I see hope in her – and I see myself. I kick and I scream and
I thrash hard against the Father’s love. I shift my focus and become a prisoner
to the panic instead of the promise, and still He says, “mine.” He looks at me, broken, and calls me daughter and ever so lovingly pulls me right back in.
I study her face and can’t imagine that I know only a
fraction of His love for her as I whisper the prayers of every morning over her
heart, “Jesus you bind up the broken-hearted…set the captives free…comfort
those who mourn…bestow beauty instead of ashes… They will be called oaks of
righteousness, a display of the Lord’s splendor.” I trace the curve of her face
with my fingers and praise Him for such resilience and transformation as I have
seen in this child. I praise Him for her salvation and the way she is hungrily
learning more about Him each day.
And then I write it small, on her hand and mine, “prisoner
of hope.”
I want to live as a prisoner to the “Yes.” Remembering all
we have seen, we set our hope fully on what we have not yet seen. We place all
of our hope and all of our trust and all of our focus on the grace given us
through Christ, and we beg to live captured by His promises.