Because none of us can buy what we want most of all…

“Throwing a party?” The cashier asked. I blinked hard. “Oh, my daughter’s turning … 16.” My voice cracked on the last word and I looked down into my purse, pretending to look for something.

She filled the bag full, the glittery Happy birthday sign, the balloons and streamers and crepe paper balls, the golden 16 cake-topper. The perfectly-worded birthday card.

But as I’d walked the aisles and filled my arms with celebratory items the aching reality kept running through my mind, “I can’t buy what I want most for her.”

I sat in the car and couldn’t stop crying.

Earlier that week I had asked her who she wanted to have lunch with on her birthday and she said Oma.

My heart busted straight open.

Life has its ups and downs and that week had been a down. I guess disappointment is the word we use to describe when life’s circumstances aren’t what we had hoped they’d be.

Sixteen wasn’t looking the way she thought it would.

And why was this hitting me so particularly hard? Harder than her. Because those of us who’ve lived a few decades more have so many more memories associated with those feelings of disappointment. Though not cynical or jaded, there is still a deep recognition that that pain of disappointment will happen more times than you can possibly know, dear girl. And though I hated to say it, I had texted my friend:

I’m really struggling with feeling like her “welcome to womanhood” is a huge dose of pain and can I just be honest and say that feels sadly symbolic?

She feels a sting, but I feel gutted.

We love and get hurt. We love and they die. We birth humans and our bodies literally give themselves over, up, deplete in ways in order to give life.

We decrease that they may increase.

It’s so good and so gospel but sometimes hurts so much.

And I see this depth in my daughter that is beautiful and captivating and everything I ever hoped she’d be. But with depth comes pain too. Sometimes I feel like she’s had more than her share of sorrow.

And then my mind trails to a dear friend, with a dear daughter, who certainly has had more than her share of sorrow. We had just sat over her dining room table and ached together. I know for a fact there are things she wishes she could buy for her daughter who has physically suffered more than most of us could ever dream of.

We can’t buy new hearts, literally or figuratively.

But I hear His voice, that whisper, and He says, “Behold, I make all things new.”

And with shaking hands, I sit at Starbucks and turn the well-worn pages of my Bible to that chapter. The same one we read at Oma’s burial.

No death, no mourning, no crying, no pain.

I glance up just as a boy walks in, his face badly disfigured. Badly. My breath catches.

I bet sometimes he aches for new things too.

New things you can’t buy.

And I find myself grateful for God’s little gift of perspective. Am I the only one who aches for all things new? I think not. None of us can buy what we want most of all.

Perfect peace. The deepest soul rest that says, God’s got it. Renewed hearts, minds, bodies, souls.

Can I be grateful for the glimpses of grace and glory we get this side of heaven without demanding the fullness before the time?

Will I wait for the truly Happy Ending? With patience. With endurance. With joy.

I’ll try. {Thanks for reading.}