i carry your heart with me...

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)

I got a new tattoo last month and it's a piece of art that has been brewing my mind's eye for over a year now. The idea actually came to when I was creating my special boy, J's scrapbook in preparation for his adoption at the beginning of 2012. At the end of his book I included one of my favorite poems by e.e. cummings: 

                                                i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

                                                my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

                                                i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

                                                by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                                                                                i fear

                                                no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

                                                no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

                                                and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

                                                and whatever a sun will always sing is you

                                                here is the deepest secret nobody knows

                                                (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

                                                and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

                                                higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

                                                and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

                                                i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I've loved this poem for years but it was when I decided to include it in J's book that I came to realize how much it represents this season of my life. In His unbelievable kindness, God has given me many specific truths that I cling to as I got about His business on this side of the world. One of those truths is expressed so clearly in the simple statement: i carry your heart (i carry it in your heart). I know that these precious babies I love will not remember me specifically but I do know that they will remember the love of Christ that came through me. I believe that a piece of my Christ-imprinted love lives in their hearts and will live there forever. Just waiting for the day when they will encounter His love in a tangible way... be it through their forever family when they are young or a chance encounter with a Christ-follower on a subway when they are grown. But on that day when they hear and understand Christ's love in a tangible way something inside will cry out, "I KNOW this Love! I've felt it before. This Love kissed my cheeks and soothed my cries, held my hand and spoke words of life before I could even speak words myself!" 

My babies carry a piece of me within their hearts and Lord knows they've embedded themselves into mine. Remembered and longed for love comes back to embrace you in odd and sometimes surprising ways. I miss my babies who've left my arms. I miss J's hearty laughs and fierce hugs. I miss my Queen Bee's morning snuggles. I recount with laughter S's battles with using his sippy cup for the first time. I encourage my soul when I remember how God saved K in the NICU and gave me life-saving wisdom for M when she couldn't get warm. I miss all of the precious babies I've loved but I carry their hearts in mine. And more importantly because of our time together I trust that they carry the love of Christ in theirs. 

For each of these precious children I echo Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.