Full Hands

It seems I don't often make it through an outing in public without someone pointing out to me that, with four girls close together, I have my hands full.
God bless you!, well-meaning onlookers say. Heaven help you!, they offer. 

Like many of you, I've maneuvered through the market, hands full of the handles of obnoxiously large car-carts, or through the park, with bags and water bottles and snacks and picnic blankets. My hands are full of markers, full of toys I'm carrying out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the play room, full of hand-made cards and all the scraps left over, full of menus and grocery lists and budget books, full of the rocks I found in Jane's pocket, full of tissues to wipe runny noses. My hands are full of back yard flowers picked by chubby-knuckled fingers, and full of little hands who still want to hold mine everywhere we go. Full hands are happy hands, though sometimes I've felt like I couldn't hold anything else for a minute. 

Then a year ago my hands started to feel like they could hold more and it felt like the right time to fill them up with a new little soft bundle. In early July we found out we were expecting. At the end of September we lost the pregnancy.
For the last 7 months there has been a fair bit of waiting to do. 

Waiting can be hard.

But waiting put a little ache in my heart that made me suddenly aware of people around me who are yearning to have their hands full of this or that, most of whom have been waiting much longer than I. Waiting makes me acutely conscious and quite deeply appreciative of what I've already been given. Waiting is humbling, and grounding, and makes me feel small, which turns my focus upward to rely on a loving Father in Heaven for guidance and strength.
These are good things.

And while I wait, I can see that my hands are so joyfully full they're almost running over...

Almost, but not quite.