His Great Love

 

A few weeks ago, Mackenna and I were driving home from an ice cream date and she was asking some questions about her great grandparents.  I told her a few things about them and talked about how she’d get to meet all of them in heaven some day.  The conversation continued on something like this…

“So did all of my great grandparents go to church? And make good choices? So I’ll see each of them in heaven?”

“Well, you know that’s not how anyone gets into heaven, right?  It’s not about going to church and making good choices! You can go to church your whole life and not end up in heaven.  Being a Christian means having a relationship with Jesus.  It means you’ve asked Him to be the leader of your life.  You know that you need Him; you talk to Him, learn about Him and desire to obey Him; and you trust Him with your future.  We’ve talked about this before, you know that right?”

“Oh yes, I know that.  I’ve asked Jesus to be in my heart and I KNOW I can trust Him because He has really been with me and walked beside me every step of the way with my diabetes!”

My heart began to swell as she communicated how she’d felt Jesus’s comforting presence in her journey with type 1 diabetes. And I added, “Yes, and because of your diabetes, you’ve gotten a special taste of God’s…” and then I paused as I searched for the word I was looking for.

But she jumped right in with, “great love for me.”

(And then my heart burst wide open with gratitude as I repeated the truth that she just declared.) “Yes, because of your diabetes, you’ve gotten a special taste of God’s great love for you.  That’s absolutely right.”

As of today, Mackenna has lived with type 1 diabetes for six entire years.  On the day of her diagnosis, I had a moment to myself in between the clinic visit and the drive to the hospital and I had one thing I needed to say to God.  I wasn’t mad at Him.  I didn’t ask Him to take it away.  I didn’t even ask Him for a cure.  I bawled my eyes out and I begged Him to not allow this diagnosis to steal her joy.  I cried out, pleading for protection and grace over her sweet, silly, joyful spirit.

I was scared this disease would change her. But I was completely unprepared for how it would change her for the better.  Never in a million years would I have thought my daughter would learn about how much God loves her through an all-consuming, never-ending trial. If that’s what it takes…If she needed to walk this difficult path in order to fully grasp His great love for her, then it is all worth it!  Because there is NO greater joy than His love for us.