A woman was going to come for a sewing lesson this week, but she let me know that her kids were sick. 

"I'm sorry to hear that. Take care."

While I did not go so far as to put their family on my prayer list, I did wish them well. In a theoretical way. Probably not more than a few blips of my energy went in their direction. 

A long time friend is sitting by her son's hospital bed. He has endured a number of surgeries, and is facing a few more. My heart is holding both of them as I go about my day, like a round stone in my pocket that I rub when I remember him, and her. Which makes the rock smoother still. 

I want to believe that my empathy is the real deal, and yet having never actually wept over a child intubated in the ICU there is a gap that is filled in with imagination. I have weathered other travesties, ones that brought me to my knees. And that is like a bridge I can stumble across toward them. 

One of the most grueling times in my life was in Albuquerque. A number of factors converged to the point when I wondered if our family could endure. One of the ways that pain leaked out was by composing a song. 

"Can a woman forget her nursing child? And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, but I won't forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands."

The chorus is taken from the book of Isaiah, and expressed for me the pinnacle of God's love. On a personal scale, my devotion to our children was the ten. The top. The highest possible point. Yet this passage suggests to me that His love for us surpasses even that, leaving us mothers in the pile of forgetfulness. Which if I am brutally honest, I am guilty of. Forgotten how much I adore these children. 

The second verse goes on to articulate what keeps me from floating out to sea. 

"He was despised, rejected of men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Surely He has borne our grief, and carried our sorrows. For our sins He was wounded, by His stripes we are healed." 

This is the part where God's presence with me stops being theoretical.