My Birthday and A Parent's Love

It’s my birthday and my parents call first thing. Just like every year. Mom sings. And something about it makes me cry.

“It was one of the happiest days of our lives,” she says. “The day we welcomed you.”

She tells about the day I was born and somewhere in the story, her chest must feel tight, too. “Talk to Daddy,” she says. And the phone is shuffled around.

A moment later, Dad is on the line. “Hello Darlin," he says. "Happy Birthday.”

“Thanks, Dad," I say. I know what’s coming next.

“American astronauts were heading for the moon. They stepped out of that spaceship on the day we brought you home.” I smile. “We didn’t see it until days later, though.” He paused. “We were busy. Watching you.”

This gentleness is wrecking me today. Maybe I’m extra sentimental. But today emotion comes fast.

We chat for a few minutes. Then we get off the phone. But the conversation stays with me. There’s just something about a parent’s love.

I understand this, now that I’m a many-years parent, too. There’s nothing like that bond. That crazy sort of love that pours from our hearts into someone else’s. Sometimes it’s a gentle flow. Sometimes it’s torrential. But there’s a passion. A loving someone more than you love yourself. There’s that part of you that knows you would give anything you have, anything you are, for the one you hold dear.

And I begin to understand, just the very tiny tip, of how God loves me that way, too. He loves me with that passionate- parent sort of love.

He was there, in the beginning. Knitting. Molding. Making. He’s here today, too. In the shaping. Refining. Teaching.

And He loved me enough to give the best that He had.

It’s a song of grace. It’s a story of love. It’s the generous, I-can’t-understand-it truth that the Father gave His Son so that I could be a daughter, too.

And this moves me.

 He knew the helpless-newborn need of this forty-something heart.

So today I’m rocked in the comfort of a parent’s love.The parents He gave me (the ones who celebrated me enough to miss the man on the moon). And my Father in heaven, too (the one who made the moon but celebrates me still).

This love is a strong comfort, even when years surround us.

There’s just something about it.

There’something about a parent’s love.