I Zipped Your Mouth

Alaska, I am so sorry.  Today I zipped your mouth.  And by that I mean I was zipping you into your nice warm coat for a hike up some logging trails and it slipped and totally caught your lip.  It bled.  A little.  You cried.  A lot.  My heart hurt for you.  I know what that feels like, the surprise of the pinch and the sting that comes afterwards and the way that it just won't go away.  No band-aids, kisses or pressure can make that go away.

I pulled you into my lap and tucked your head up on my shoulder, your piercing screams next to my ear, and the sting of it all was inside my heart.  Tears came to my eyes as I rubbed your back.  I wanted to scoop the pain away.  As if your heart were a bucket of ocean-wet sand and I could take my plastic shovel and neatly scrape out just the part that hurt.

You are my precious daughter and I felt so sorry that you hurt.  That I had been the one to inflict that pain.  Accident or no accident, it still hurts the same.  My tears brimmed over onto my cheeks, bent over your little head, and I cried.

While I let you tell the world about your hurt, I thought quietly, trying not to focus too much on the noise you were making right in my ear.  Sometimes a good cry is the only way to release the pain and that is something that I can let you do while holding you close.  I thought about all the more times I will hold you while you cry.  All the more times there will be a pain that I will wish to take upon myself so that you won't have to.  All the more times when your little heart will hurt and all I can do is hold you tight.

And then I thought about Heavenly Father.  How He must hurt when we do.  How He prepared a way for that.  For one other person in the whole world to be able to feel the exact way that we do.  How He sent His son, Jesus Christ, to take the hurt from the world.  Not just the hurts from mistakes made, but the hurts that come from feelings being bruised and things not going as we have planned.  The atonement covers so much more than just forgiveness of sins.  It is God's healing gift to the world.  A gift that He could only give through Jesus Christ.

As we face the temptations of time, the confusion of choice, the embarrassment of error, the pursuit of perfection, our Heavenly Father is there to listen, to love, to inspire. Our Father, to whom we earnestly pray, is not an ethereal substance or a mysterious and incomprehensible being. Rather, He has eyes with which to view our actions, lips with which to speak to us, ears to hear our pleas, and a heart to understand our love.  
                                                                                                                     President Thomas S. Monson.

Alaska, any hurt can be resolved through prayer and scripture study.  I will be there to hold you.  Every time.  But I cannot take my sand shovel and scoop the pain out of your heart.  There is only one person who can do that.  And I hope every night when we say prayers as a family and we call it 'good enough' if you are quiet that you are learning the manner of prayer.  Of communication with the person who loves you the most.  When your heart hurts and you are done crying I hope that you find yourself on your knees.  That you can pour out your heart to someone who knows.  Knows every hurt and ache, and not just as in, "I've been there, too" but as in, "Your hurt is my hurt, let me take it away."

And, Alaska, you let Him.

You are not the only person in the whole world who is feeling exactly the way that you are feeling.  Jesus Christ has felt that exact same hurt.  The marvelous thing is, He can take it away.  He can take his sand-shovel and scoop out just what hurts, leaving the rest untouched.  His sand-shovel is so precise that it can even grab the small grains of sand that have been touched by pain but are mixed with joy.  The love that you had for that boy that broke your heart.  Christ can take the pain and leave the good.  The best-friend that you've had forever that told those lies about you.  Christ can take the pain and leave the good.  The scary parts of leaving home for college that are mixed with excitement.  Christ can take the pain and leave the good.  Yes, his shovel can be precise.

Already, I know that you are brave.  You are going to make brave decisions and do brave things.  And brave people often get hurt.  It's part of taking a chance.  I love you fiercely.  I will always be there to hold you when the tears have no where to run but down your cheeks.  But it doesn't matter how fierce I love, I cannot take the hurt away.  You know who can.