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My child

I want to protect you, my child, from falls and scrapes and whispers and stares. I want to erect a barrier between you and anything that might harm your body, your feelings, or your spirit. The list of these evils is unfathomably long and painful to think about.

But I cannot protect you. You see, I am as vulnerable as you are.

Having you is a blessing I cannot begin to explain – you're a piece of me that happens to be outside my body – but it is one with weighty implications. Seeing you in pain is a special kind of torture.

As you leave my sight by morning and evening, that nagging “what if” opens the door to all manner of thoughts so distressing that I would go mad with worry if not for one thing.

You have a Guardian.

I am no guardian, oh, no. My life hangs by a thread. And so it is with us all, though we're either too arrogant or distracted to admit it.

But we're sent reminders at times, small ones and big ones, so we know who's really in charge. So we know we're perpetually on the edge of a precipice; so we know we really have no control.

I have seen too many close calls and near misses to doubt this. “If you had fallen a few inches to the left...” “Thank God it didn't hit your eye; if it was just two centimetres upwards...” And the words trail off, better left unsaid.

What can I do, my child, to guard you against the dangers all around you?

There are words that, by His permission, can keep you safe. There are supplications we have been taught by the one who never spoke a lie.

There are also actions of the heart and the mind. Did He not say, “I am as My servant thinks of Me”? So, my child, I cannot ask for your safety half-heartedly. I must ask with conviction and certainty. I must expect the best, and know that I will find in Him what I expect.

This is what will calm my heart. And what better guardian than the one who made you? Than the one who is more merciful to you than your own mother?

So, when you hop on the bus and disappear from sight, or plant a kiss on my cheek and gallop away, heedless of what is in my heart, I entrust you to your Guardian.

I know you are in good hands.

(March 2018)

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