It took six years…and although I still wake up knowing that it’s the anniversary and my eyes flood with tears, that screaming pain isn’t there this year. When I think back to six years ago, for the first time, I am not tortured by it.
Each anniversary of my daughter’s heart crash, mentally without intention it takes me back. I think about the brutal treatments her little body went through, some of the scares, and times when what we thought was an end was actually a breakthrough.
Over the past six years, as I have worked through what happened, God has led, healed, and refined specific places in my heart. Even this year I see areas of mistruth, and in the reflection, God is writing a new story. In those dark days of apparent defeat, God was changing me too.
Although I revisit the scenes of Samantha’s crash, if I stay there, then I insert myself. I think about my pain, and what I may have done to put us there, in front of what God did.
When I view the crucifix, it can lead me to a similar place, to a feeling of, “This is what You had to do for me.” I can’t stay in that place though, because if I do, I place the focus on myself and what I did, and I miss the victory. I believe God wants us to live in the freedom of the picture of the empty cross. God, completing His ultimate plan of winning back what was always His…us. Can we recognize that, let the crucifix change us, and claim the empty cross as a symbol of His victory? Jesus, You won. Death was defeated…for us.
I see in the victory that God was kinder then we deserved, giving us abundantly more than we could ever ask or imagine. I see the rules for how the world works…”But God.” I see that He who controls the wind and the waves fought and won for us.
Over these past six years I have seen my God heal and restore my daughter’s body, her heart physically and my heart spiritually, and this year the freedom I see is even more than I could ask or imagine. I see Him free my mind from the torture that has plagued these three days every birthday season that has come and gone each September for the past six years.
What I see there is victory. God being kinder than He would need to be, revealing another aspect of His character and the depth of His grace.
When we view the cross, may we see victory…God being kinder then He would need to be…may we start to unwrap the gift of His grace.
This is the free life, and all the time in new ways, this is the life I never knew I always wanted.
