Pondering

Today we had the opportunity to visit Clayton, probably for the last time here on earth. As we drove to Grand Rapids, I thought about how quickly life goes by. Each day is truly a gift.

Seeing Clayton in the condition he is in made me wonder. The facility that he is in has to be one of the most depressing places I have been to. So many people with physical struggles. So many. The doctors are pressuring Marlene to take Clayton off his ventilator. That sounds like a plan except he is still aware of what is happening. His brain is still active. It is a scary thought. How do you determine that your spouse will be taken off the machine that gives him breath? No, he has no quality of life. No, he will not recover. No. No. No.

God knew about Clayton's first heartbeat 70 years ago. Shouldn't He determine when the last one will be? I am really struggling with this.

Pondering these things.....

My favorite part of the Christmas story is Mary, pondering these things in her heart. Mary was young when she gave birth to Jesus. To have the maturity at that age to 'ponder' is rather remarkable. Most young women that age are very reactionary.
She had much to ponder. She had never been intimate - maybe didn't know much at all about intimacy, yet she gave birth to a child. She was away from home. In a stable. The Bible didn't say a midwife delivered Jesus, so perhaps Joseph did. The shepherds came, seemingly recognizing this special birth. How tired she must have been. How confused. Uncertain. She had much to ponder.
As I have matured, I too have become a ponderer. Sometimes I pick up a simple passage and think upon it. Wonder about it. I have become less reactionary. I remember the birth of my first child. Wondering what kind of a person he would grow into. Wondering if I could care for him properly. Michael Card has an amazing song, 'Mary's Song'. In it he talks about Jesus as a baby and having a certain cry that was different from that of being hungry. A deep, empty cry. As a baby, could Jesus sense that this was not His home? A cry so deep, so hard to understand.
I do not worship Mary, but she had to be an unusual young woman. A ponderer.