Last night, while cleaning up the kitchen and watching Rose run around asking everyone she could find to read her a book, I was reflecting on how much life has changed since she became the newest member of our family almost 18 months ago. It's amazing how quickly you forget what it is like to have a little one around once the youngest child is no longer little. After 7 years, those memories were all but gone, washed away in the rush of places to go and things to do.
I can honestly say that Rose has been the most difficult of our children to raise up to this point. There has been a lot of sacrifice, a lot of suffering... mental even more than physical. For whatever reason, she started life so frail, and had so much to overcome. Between the problems nursing, the problems finding a formula she would drink (one we still make by hand to this day), dealing with serious cholic, struggling to put weight on her little bones, irregular sleep patterns, and digestive problems that lead to a long stretch of months cleaning constant blow-out diapers, she has really put us to the test.
I wish I could say that what didn't kill me made me stronger, but if I am honest with myself, I have to admit that what didn't kill me has only increased my sorrow. Sorrow with my own weakness, my own selfishness, my inability to stay cool when the heat turns up, and mostly the day I literally screamed at God, saying, "You have to fix this because I can't do it anymore!"
As I looked down at her last night, though, looking as normal as we ever could have hoped, I could only smile and thank God that we somehow survived and that we have this precious little girl to remind us of what we have lost sight of in the years since Anthony was this age. Despite the struggles, the exhaustion, the frustration, the tears, the sense of betrayal as people spoke to us as if we didn't know what we were doing in trying to address her health issues, there has been one tiny blessing that has made it all worth it. I say tiny, but really this blessing is tiny in the same sense as the mustard seed in the Gospel parable. For, though, it is tiny, it has flourished into the greatest of blessings, the one that changes everything.
This blessing is one that I really don't think any one of us ever really experiences, much less appreciates, until we become parents. And even then, so many parents are too proud, too busy, or too emotionally wounded to experience it even then. But for those who are willing to be small enough and vulnerable enough, it is the blessing we have always longed for, in the depths of our hearts. That blessing is the joy of being loved unconditionally, without expectation... not for what we have or what we do, but merely for who we are... daddy or mommy.
Rose has been pretty attached to me from the moment she was old enough to know me from anyone else, and, from then on, she has loved me the way only a little child can. I have thought about it a lot in the past few months and reflected on how rare unconditional love is. As we get older, we forget. All of our loves become colored by the things we want from the other as we succumb to the human disease of selfishness. The society we live in breeds it like a cancer until we seem to lose the ability to love unconditionally. If we really look inside, many of us will have to admit that even in our relationships with spouses, parents, friends, and children, there is always some bit of expectation, as if love is a bargain. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. And then, if we reflect even more deeply, we can see that even our professed love of God smacks heavily of a barter system... You bless me, and I will love You.
I have had so many occasions to reflect on this over the past months, especially when Rose runs to me and just wants to be held... not because she wants me to read her a book, or fix her a bottle, but just because she loves me. It's in these moments when I get a glimpse of the joy that comes from the fulfillment of being loved and accepted for who I am. It's in these moments when I see how poorly I show that love to others... even God. It's in these moments when I wonder what a different world it would be if we could all be small enough, and vulnerable enough, to love everyone we meet so freely, so selflessly, without expectation, without judgment, and embrace them for who they are. Dare we even hope for such a wonderful world?
I try, and I fail, but I do try, and pray that I may even succeed in my better moments, to show this kind of love to my children and my wife... to simply love without expectation of anything in return. If I so rarely succeed with them, how much more so with those around me every day? But if only I can try, if we all can try a little harder, perhaps we will find that which will make this world that is falling apart around us worth saving and worth fighting for. May the God Who is Love grant us this grace. What a wonderful world it could be.
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