the library

Grace is doing well today. She's enthroned on a pile of pillows in the corner of D Ward, watched over by her mama and the nurses, and she's starting to tolerate more formula through her feeding tube. It's obvious that we made the right choice when we admitted her.

I was praying about her, about the whole situation and a few others going on right now down in the wards, and I felt like God was just reminding me all over again how He's the One in control. I know that everyone hears God's voice in a different way, and in my life I've heard him in a number of different ways.

This time, it was a picture.

A vast library, dark wood shelves stretching from floor to ceiling, books tucked tightly against each other. Not one out of place, not one place empty. As far as I could see, there were books. Some were slim volumes, some massive tomes, and each spine was marked with a name.

This is my library, He told me. These are the books of your lives. Of Grace's life, of each patient's life that comes up the gangway, each one who stands in line on screening day, each one of you who cares for them. Each one.

Every page, each day of every story was carefully written before one of them was ever lived. Millions and billions of stories. And on a shelf somewhere are all ours, all of the ones He's penned together for this time in this place. For just a few days or weeks or months, He's written us each into one another's books. Each patient and nurse and surgeon shares a part of our stories, and He is the Author who has lovingly planned and recorded each one.

He is the Author and He is the Librarian, carefully arranging our books in the proper place at the proper time, setting Grace's in the middle of a shelf full of pediatric nurses who in turn are nestled among hundreds more stories of people from around the world, living out their calling on a ship off the coast of West Africa. Writing our days to weave together in His perfect plan of love and healing.

As I turned to go I saw Him smile, take down a book, move it to the next shelf over.

I left the library in His care.