He towers over me, this son of mine, the first one.

Actually all three of them tower over me now.

It’s been a couple of decades since I delivered them, give or take. A couple of decades filled with joy and pain and ease and really, really hard. With discovery and delight and I didn’t know it then, but those three babies I delivered turned right around and delivered me.

Motherhood does that to you.

Life does that to you.

Or maybe motherhood or sisterhood or friendship or really any relationship does that to you.

Delivers you. Right to the very throne of Grace.

But then, maybe that was His plan all along. Maybe it’s really only when we really enter into relationship with another person that we really get delivered.

Of course, you gotta know there’s gonna be pain.

There are always birth pains.

And mess. Of course mess.

Because deliveries can be messy. Well, life can be messy. Actually, it’s kind of amazing that an awful lot of the time it’s right there in the middle of the most messy times that we find ourselves exactly where we need to be.

So…motherhood? And life?

It humbles you and frustrates you and enthralls you and scares you and delights you and shows you just how incredibly inept you are, and how very very much you don’t know.

It can bring you to your knees pretty quick.

But maybe right down there on your knees is exactly the place you need to be. Maybe down on the knees is where deliveries really happen.

When you fail and fail again and just don’t know how to go on. When the truth is that all you can do is fall on your knees and cry and beg and hope that Someone hears because it’s all just too much and why didn’t anyone tell us that life is this hard?

Maybe down there on your knees is the place where wisdom actually starts.

When we finally come to the end of our rope, the end of our wits, the end of our patience, the end of our self, maybe then we’re finally able to hear wisdom speak.

Down on your knees might just be the very best place to hear that still small voice. It might be the only place you can hear it sometimes.

The voice that says you really are doing the best you can. That this too will pass, so hang on my darling.

The voice that says you really are going to make it through this and – did you know? – you really are so incredibly loved, you have no idea.

And maybe wisdom is just knowing the truth down deep in your marrow that there really isn’t any reason to not love lavishly – yourself and others – because there’s really no such thing as a perfect mother or perfect sister or perfect friend or perfect person, but that that’s okay because there is the perfect love of Christ, and He wants to lavish it on you.

Maybe the knowing that you’re loved lavishly is the beginning of wisdom.

And knowing that you need some holy help to wholly help is the wisest knowing.

Actually, maybe wisdom’s just knowing that you’re not God, and then knowing to thank Him that He is.

Yeah, and maybe down there on the knees is actually the very best place to be.

~xo,
LuAnne