Can a mother forget

Over Thanksgiving Break, to celebrate Ryan's mom's 60th birthday, we rented a little house outside Kings Canyon and spent three days hiking around the most beautiful redwood forests and snow-lined hills. One of those hikes was the Little Baldy trail, a moderate trail with stunning vistas of misty mountains and fun twists into fir forests (lots of baby Christmas trees!).

We worked our way up to a plateau of solid rock, and there was a family resting there. Since the view there was breathtaking, we thought we had reached the summit already, but the mom told us that the real summit was a little way further. A hiker we had passed by earlier had told us that there was a bit of icy snow near the peak, and so we decided it might be safer if Mom stayed on the plateau with Zeke while Ryan and I continued on.

The view on the actual summit, as you can see from the top picture, was phenomenal, and even more beautiful than on the plateau - a panoramic view of snow-lined ridges and jagged mountain faces. (I didn't know what the names of any of the features were, but according to expert mountaineers, Little Baldy offers "a stunning, straight view of the 6000' drop of the Marble Fork of the Kaweah into the main canyon of the Kaweah River, unblocked vistas of rugged, blood-red Mount Silliman and much of the southern Great Western Divide." The quote's from here.)

We had fun taking lots of pictures, including panoramic pictures on Ryan's iPhone, and then started heading down. About 2 minutes into our way back down, we heard a distinctive cry. Ryan and I picked up our pace. We yelled down the mountain, "Zeke, we're coming!" My gut reaction was to race down the slopes as fast as possible, even though I knew he wasn't in distress and simply missing us.

We would stop hearing his cry at times when we turned round a bend, but then whenever his whimpering became audible again, I wanted to just run down the trails. Ryan told me to be careful and that it was more important not to get injured, but I could hardly contain myself.

When we got to Mom and Zeke, his snotty, tear-stained face broke into a big smile and he held out his little arms to me, and I just hugged him close. Everything was right again.

Today's verse from Spurgeon's devotional Morning and Evening is Jeremiah 2:2 "I will remember you." Spurgeon writes, "As the bird returneth often to its nest, and as the wayfarer hastens to his home, so doth the mind continually pursue the object of its choice. We cannot look too often upon that face which we love; we desire always to have our precious things in our sight. It is even so with our Lord Jesus."

I know very well intellectually that God does not forget me, that He sees me. But perhaps because I haven't had this persevering and all-consuming love for others, I often forget in my heart that that's how God loves.

So I'm thankful for motherhood - for now I know how I cannot look too often upon the face I love, and how that's a mere sliver of the passion and zeal the Lord has for us. Zeke's cry made me rush down the mountain. How much more the Lord longs for us! How His heart lurches when we cry!