Presence....

My littlest one, Corinne, has this saying that has become such a regular part of her vocabulary. Often she will come to me, dance around and inform me that she needs to go "potty". I tell her, "Go, honey..." then she will say it... "I want you to come...." So I run down to the kids' bathroom with her, she sits down and says, "Sit here, mommy". (She is referring to the edge of the bathtub, just for clarification!) Sometimes I stay. Sometimes I tell her I'll be in the kitchen, or folding laundry or doing something, oh so important. But she always asks. Always tells me, "I want you to come." Corinne doesn't need me to help her. She is fully capable of going potty on her own. But she wants me to be there. My presence. To be with her.

Corinne has a tough time when she goes to a class by herself, to church school by herself, when I have to leave to work or shop or whatever and she will be home with Nana or Grandma. She won't go into dance class and I had to sit with her in her preschool class for the first 3 weeks. We eventually dropped both of those! She doesn't like it when I am not there. If I were truly honest, which I will be here, I wish it wasn't always so tough to leave her. To leave her when Matt and I go out for a date night, or to small group, or I am teaching. I wish we could avoid the tears and the difficult prying of fingers off of me. I wish I could drop her off at Sunday school without the emotion and just be able to sit through the service wondering if the beeper will go off because she was crying. Oh, she's fine 2 minutes after I leave her. I'm hardly off the driveway and my mom tells me she's playing and laughing and being her silly self. Her teachers at church tell me the same thing. I know it's good for her to spend time with her grandparents and be a part of different things, but we still go through this everytime!

"I want you to come..."

Presence. I was thinking today, 2 days before we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the promised Savior, that presence may actually be the greatest gift to give. Jesus was foretold that His name would be Emmanuel. God with us. That our Heavenly Father knew our greatest need would be met through God coming near. That just His very presence, in the form of that little vulnerable baby would bring us hope and peace and comfort.

Isn't it true that when life is hard and cloudy and strangely unfamiliar, like finding yourself on a road you've never been before, that just the very presence of another who loves you is comforting? That when pain hits, just having someone there makes all the difference? I found that out again these past several weeks that even though no one could change my situation or make the fear go, just their presence gave me rungs on my ladder of hope and kept me climbing. And when life is full of celebration, we long for the presence of close ones to multiply the joy. Presence.

So in this season with so much talk of presents, maybe the focus should be on presence. Our greatest need being met through one another and through the ultimate gift of a Loving Father. Jesus. Emmanuel. God with us. Presence.