All parents, if they look closely at their children, see pieces of themselves. Their eyes, their smile, the shape of their nose. As a child grows older, parents see personality quirks, traces of the same humor, even evidence of similar decision making.
But you, Grace, are my clone. Not just seasoned with my personality traits or even saddled with my nose —you are as if God reached out of heaven and made a copy of myself to put in my arms.
Because of this, I know you probably better than my other children. I understand your fierce loyalty to your family, your so-called “simple” desire to settle in our small town, be a wife, a mother, a homemaker. You were the child who made a party out of everything —from the cookouts you would have with your Barbies and Kens, to our Sunday afternoon football parties, to serving us cookies and hot cocoa in cold arenas as we watched your brothers play hockey. For you, every moment is cause for celebration of the ones you love.
But often I see you eating alone in the kitchen after you have served the event. As if afraid to step into the party.
Afraid to reach for all life has for you.
It is not that you are not courageous. Rather, it is the fear of reaching out to the unknown, unsure if, in doing so, you will fail. You are paralyzed by the knowledge that your regrets would overwhelm you. This, too, I understand, because it also comes from me. I dreamed of a life in Deep Haven, and I feared letting go of it, believing that if I didn’t hold tight, I would never have what I’d longed for. But God knows our hearts better than this. He knows our longings, as they are from Him, and He desires to satisfy us with more than we can ask for or imagine.
Oh, Grace, there is so much more waiting for you. Yes, it may be in Deep Haven, but you will never find it by holding on. The amazing, whole, overwhelming, abundant life is found, oddly, by letting go. By living a dangerous faith —the kind of faith that believes in a God who knows our hearts and loves us enough to take our breath away.
The urge, Daughter, to hold on to what you have, to allow fears to hold you captive and keep you from reaching for something else, is not easily overcome. In fact, the nudge to let go may feel like a rending, a tearing from yourself. But it must be done if you are to fall into the arms of your heavenly Father. And this is my prayer for you —that you will leap and fall in this safe place. That you will discover how much more awaits you, just beyond the boundaries of your life.
Reach out, Grace, and discover what you’ve been longing for.
Lovingly,
Your mother