Lydia J Will

I'm sitting in my chair by the lamp, casting on a little "Milo" for Peter.  Upstairs I can hear the kids doing their nighttime shuffle.  The girls slide out from under covers I just tucked under their chins moments before and tiptoe across the hall, snuggle deep into bed with their big brother.  I've got a Pandora hymn station playing, soft chords joining with the soft click of my knitting needles, the only sound.

Peter's fallen asleep on the couch, wrapped in a quilt.  I watch the rise and fall of his little chest under that little bit of patchwork, the one with a name embroidered on it, a person he'll never know.  Someone who picked out Noah's Ark fabric and sewed it up with old, shaking hands,  packed it securely in a box.  Someone who wrote a card and sent it to a house in the North to be opened by a girl she'd never seen before.  Someone who scratched out in elegant handwriting - "I love you all.  I pray for you all, every day."

And "In Christ Alone" comes on the station, and it sounds just like it did when we sang it at my wedding, just shy of a year after I stood in a hospital room and watched my Grandpa slip away.  A man my husband never knew and never will.  And I'm thinking of how lives lived out can leave a mark even on those that they never touched in this world.  My Grandma Ruth died when my Mama was 8 years old, yet I've thought of her near daily my entire life.  Stella signed her name with thread on the quilt that is keeping my baby warm on this cold February night.

Peter frees his hand in his sleep and I lean over and tuck him back in, return to my knitting.  I wonder if I'll someday make something, a token for great great grandbabies who live a world away.  I wonder if I'll keep a list of their names, written down, a scrap of paper stuck right there in the center of my bible.  I wonder if I'll whisper them at night and tell them right there in black ink "I love you all."

I hope I do.

Because that's truly how you make your mark during these fleeting moments of here - pointing to Him.  A life truly lived is a life truly lost, given away, poured out.  Its in the love, spreading like wildfire, setting the world ablaze.


If that's all I am, all I do - its enough.  More than that, its everything.  Its the upside down, nonsensical way of God - going lower, He elevates.  Giving all, gain all.  Dying to self, alive in Him.

"No guilt in life, no fear in death,
This is the power of Christ in me;
From life's first cry to final breath.
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand."

~In Christ Alone