There are moments too beautiful for a heart to hold.
So I stand here with my little girl in my arms, this tiny heart soaking into me, and mine pouring out all over the floor. Soaking the carpet. Splattering the dresser (the one given to us by your grandparents). Sloshing up the walls I painted with your Mom. Filling this bedroom with a strange yet sweet fragrance of a father’s love.
That is hopelessly incapacitated.
I gaze into your pretty, little blue eyes as you crane your neck to look up at me. Eyes that seem set out of a poster from the 50s selling wonder to fathers who helplessly, compulsively open their wallets to buy. These eyes bore holes in me. And my heart gushes through.
You soak in. And I pour out over these walls.
How can you be so beautiful? How can those eyes be so penetratingly pure?
I’ve tried to plug the holes.
Remind myself you’ll learn to talk and whine and challenge and ignore. That your stink face, as Mommy calls it when you get frustrated, will someday scrunch up in open defiance.
That these days with you here in my arms craning to look up at me, soaking every inch of my heart, are numbered. That no matter how tightly I wrap my arms around you, someday you’ll slip through. You’ll pour right on out and be gone, like a stream of gold through a miner’s fingers. Through these holes you have bored.
Yet still I’ll soak these walls.
And the watermark around them will be love. Can you see that now? Can you see it flow through me? Is that what your eyes are looking up at me to say, “Daddy, do you love me, do you really?” Or, “Daddy you spilled your heart here on the floor.”
In pools all around you.
And when you’re gone, I will go to these walls, back to this bedroom. I’ll breathe you in again, soaking up what of me spilled here years before. I will look at these arms, these holes in me, and remember it was you who poured through.
It was You who poured through.
And now I know what it is to have love bore holes in You.
When it was I who poured through. Gushed right on through the holes in your arms as your heart poured along with it. Soaking the ground. Splattering the tree your Dad gave us. Sloshing across the skies You painted for us.
And I know this is love. These holes. In me. These holes in You. This reflection of a Father pouring through.
These places, little blue eyes, where you soak in me, and I in you. And we seep through together.
So pour through. Pour through, little blue eyes,
too beautiful to hold. And I, and He, will pour right along with you.
Gosh, this is Beautiful. Only getting to hold my children for just a few years (literally), I treasure the memories I have of them, looking up at me… me holding them. The mmmooommmss and mmooommmyyyys that were cried out when when they needed me for something simple and silly. I WILL NEVER FORGET!! Mothers Day is so very hard for me due to missing them and missing my own mother who passed 10 years ago. I poured myself out to give them up, so they could have a better life. I know it was worth it and I took that pain for them. I will NEVER regret that. Thanks for this post. :) -Becca
I’m sorry this time of year is so rough on you, Becca. And I had no idea about your story, other than what you just told. That must be so incredibly hard, to have to let go of one’s children and to lose one’s Mom. I’m sure you understand this far more than I do now. Thank you for sharing.
May God give us comfort through the rough times when we remember such love that we have here. Thank God it is only the beginning of what we will experience together!