Patterns and Pictures

I sat in a hot bath last night, coughing and hacking, trying to warm up and melt away the long week. I've been fighting a vicious upper-respiratory something since Wednesday (probably the delayed remains of the toddler crud of last weekend). All in all, I was just aching. You know the feeling I am sure- We've all been there. My favorite drug of choice is always a hot bath. I go for that first before I do anything else. And a bubble bath? All the better. Make it lavender and I am just this side of heaven.

Odd as this sounds, these quiet moments I get in the bath at the end of a long day are usually the only quiet time I get all day, so I often spend a lot of that time praying. And I had a lot to talk about with my Abba Daddy tonight. Crazy tangles of a heavy and distressing week knotted themselves up in my mind, a vicious sense of unease at the cracks and crevices exploding in my otherwise somewhat stable world. A whisper of a word "Cancer" for my beloved, and my world crashes down in so many shards. These next few weeks will be full of tests, more tests, more sure tests. We thought he had escaped that dreaded word, that it was nothing, an oddity for my 26 year old husband. He is fit and healthy (if you excuse the newborn sleep-deprivation). This just doesn't happen, I keep telling myself over and over again. The first round of appointments seemed to point to an infection, easily cured with antibiotics. But now they aren't so sure. So they will look harder- a CAT scan, exploratory surgery. And all the while I whisper: "His ways are not our ways- He is in control…" over and over again.  It is so very hard to let go of my dear Beloved and give him to the safe-keeping of the Great Physician- but let go I must. And the Prince of Peace is with me, His hand resting on me.

I open my eyes, and glance down and the bubbles slowly dissolving in the bath, leaving nothing but filmy traces of crooked, jagged lines and spots of white, a filigree of lace on the surface of the deep water. It dawns upon me suddenly that this pattern of transient, engaging lines is my life. Up close, it seems but random and upsetting, no form, lines disappearing and appearing like earth quake fault lines. From up above, though, I see it in its wholeness, beautiful. A full picture.  I understand my Father's plan for my life, and the vicious tendrils of fear retreat. I am His. He is watching. Over me. Over my beloved. He will make my path straight, He will comfort me in my distress.

This is what I know to be true.