The sweetness of pain

In case you didn't know, The Band is a pastor. That's right: I'm a pastor's wife.

Tonight he preached about His life and about how God has always been there. In the good times, the bad times and in all the mundane times inbetween when we are most likely to forget Him.

He spoke about the two times he's cried. The first was when he prayed for salvation. The palpable Presence of God touched him, melted him and he found himself with tears pouring down his cheeks.

The second time was when Sophia was born and he held his little girl for the first and last time.

Something about this moment, sharing that pain, that beauty with a room full of people has brought it sharply to the surface for me. I've felt pain more rawly than I have in many many many months.

And it's a precious thing and a sore, raw thing. and in the same instant I want to beg God to take this very brutal and fresh pain from me, I want to cling to it as tightly as I can because it is real and it is what I have of my little girl.