Empty Arms
Psalm 118:8-9 It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in princes.
I am meditating on “Empty Arms”. Tonight I was looking through an old photo album that I brought home from my grandmother’s house that had a lot of my baby pictures in it, and it also had photos from the wedding of my mom and stepfather. I’ve looked at it now about five times, but tonight, something about it took off a scab I thought was healed. I’ve forgiven my stepfather many times over the years, but it is so deeply seated in that primal place of the parent-child relationship that I know it will be with me until I die. He chose to empty his arms of me early on. I have never know what it is like to be held by an earthly father, and I never will. Empty arms.
Today, my son jumped off of his bunk bed with a stringy stuffed animal around his neck. Thankfully, all he got was a flesh wound (a nasty one). But don’t think it escaped me in how many different scenarios
he could have gotten seriously hurt, or worse. I faced the possibility of empty arms, as every mother does at least once in her motherhood. But there is Ben’s cousin, Sarah, sitting in a hospital room with her 7-year old, who is suffering with lymphoma, whose pain meds don’t even take because the chemo sucks them right out of his little body. And he is scared. He looks at his mom with pain and fear in his eyes, and she is powerless to do anything. She faces the very real possibility of empty arms.
Sisters, this world is painful. I know it with you. Whether by choice or not, our arms will ache with emptiness at least once in this world. The only thing we can do it throw them up in the air, with a raw, vulnerable heart open to the only one in whom we can take refuge: Jesus Christ, the one who allowed himself to be pried out of the Father’s arms. Oh, to think–that every mother who has ever had to bury a child, and every child who has never known a parent’s tenderness–has an intercessor who sympathizes. A Father and a Son who emptied their arms of each other in order to fill them with you and I.
And so how can we ever cause each other strife? Oh, sisters, we need to embrace each other, put aside grievances, expectations, slanders, misunderstandings, and simply…ache with each other when it aches, rejoice when it’s really good…but guard ourselves against strife and fill each other’s empty arms with each other and with Christ.