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Email a FriendBeautiful! I hate that feeling when you go from thinking they must be right here to panicking when you can’t find them. This has happened to me with my two oldest and time stops still until you throw your arms around them. With my son, he was actually hiding inside the church so I thought about Mary looking for Jesus in the temple too. My husband and I like to say, searching for the infinite in the finite when needing a quick reminder to refocus.
Whom Do We Seek?
Nothing else satisfies
by Rachel Balducci in Faith on Sunday, December 18, 2011 4:52 PM
I lost Henry the other day.
We were on our way home from grocery shopping and I remembered that I needed to pick up something at a clothing shop for my son’s birthday. We popped in, I didn’t even load the baby in a stroller, so we could grab the item and get.
About five minutes into our trip a friend walked by, and in the thirty seconds it took me to say hello and hope to see you soon, Henry disappeared. I looked away from my friend’s face and he was nowhere to be found.
Of course during those nanoseconds of friendly banter, I was aware of where he was. I knew he had gone in this direction, just by the men’s shirts. I didn’t see him, but I had a sense he was there.
But he wasn’t. I looked and he wasn’t there.
I didn’t fret immediately, but by the second time I walked up and down the aisles and he was nowhere, I felt sick. The store wasn’t crowded, which actually made things worse. Sometimes you can tell that there are enough people around that your child is probably right there, hidden from view.
And usually, you are correct.
This time, I called and he didn’t come. I asked other shoppers and employees and tried to fight the wave of despair and fear welling up in me. I put Isabel in a cart and I asked a clerk to watch the front door, to be sure a little boy didn’t go out while I checked the back. And then I returned to the front, walked out to the sidewalk and looked up and down. I surveyed the parking lot and I panicked.
The world is so big. My boy is so small.
Finally a woman told me she had seen a small boy hiding by the men’s shirts and I followed her as she pointed. There he was, my sweet little boy, hiding behind a mannequin. He was exactly where I thought he was in the first place, ten minutes ago. A lifetime ago.
I thanked the lady and rushed toward Henry. Isabel stared at us as I squeezed him and cried and told him I loved him and he must never ever ever do that again, don’t ever hide from mama again.
What bliss to find him. What agony to search.
I was reminded a few days later of Mary’s search for Jesus those three days in the temple. When I put myself in that position, in the midst of my stilll-raw emotions of searching for Henry, I am overwhelmed. Three days? How do you search so long without giving up hope. How can you wander and seek and look and not find?
How amazing to think that many of us will seek as Mary did — and we will spend a lifetime doing so.
We are all in search of Jesus. We run after him and look for him and call his name. We are desperate to find him — we just don’t always know it.
Because in our own fallen nature, we seek him where he is not.
Our souls feel his absence, but we fill the void with lesser things. The gnawing in our heart is a longing for God, and we mistake our thirst. We misread the signs and try to satisfy our hunger with the things of this world, all the while missing the only thing that can truly heal us and quench our deepest thirst.
“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness,” says John Paul the Great, “He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you.”
Our souls were created to love God. In this journey of life, we are desperate to find our way back to him.
We fill the void with other things, but all we really want is Jesus.
— Faith & Family Live blogger Rachel Balducci also blogs at Testosterhome. This column originally appeared in the Southern Cross.
Comments
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Posted by Gwen on Monday, Dec 19, 2011 11:41 PM (EDT):
Every time a kid has wandered off (in a nanosecond) I start praying to their guardian angel. I’ve always found them of course but I stay calmer and more at peace by asking the angels to help me.
You might want to get something like this for Henry. I love it for toddlers!
http://www.amazon.com/Guardian-Angel-Universal-Frequency-Children-Valuables/dp/tech-data/B006L86A0Y
Posted by Elizabeth on Tuesday, Dec 20, 2011 1:33 PM (EDT):
Amen! That was beautiful. I have had that experience when my first was a toddler, but moreso I was so moved by this because I thought of a dear friend who always seems to be searching…is never satisfied, always filling her life with “stuff”. I should share this with her and see if it gives her an a-ha moment. Thank you!
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