Abiding In The Beloved

“Does a baby reach for its mother when it is in her womb?”

While dealing with my mom’s passing, the last week and a half of my life has seemed like a dream. Each day felt like I was just a body going through the motions of living. I’ve gone back and forth between feeling nothing at all, and feeling everything all at once. The wave of grace that has been carrying me along, brought me and my family back home safely yesterday afternoon. The girls went back to school this morning. And I went out to my barn.

As I sat on the fourth step to the hay loft, I said to the Lord, “I know You have been carrying me through all this. I know you are with me and will never leave me. Yet why do I so often feel like I am reaching for you? Why do I feel like I am frantically trying to grasp your hand in the darkness?” And in His infinite mercy He responded, “Does a baby reach for its mother when it is in her womb?” The voice of the Beloved speaks, and we melt. We cry out, and He responds, and we are undone. 

The Lord speaks because He is alive. He ministers to us because His Spirit indeed resides within us. And in that moment, the Lord showed me a baby in its mothers womb. A baby that may desperately reach out to grasp its mother, not realizing that it abides within her. A baby that dwells in darkness, but the darkness is the mother herself, surrounding the baby in her womb. There is nothing that comes between the mother and the baby in her womb. The baby has no need to reach out…

…because the baby is both nourished by the mother and surrounded by her, because the baby abides within her. 

(John 15:4,5) Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch is not able to bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one abiding in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit. For apart from Me you are able to do nothing.

(John 14:16,17) And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world is not able to receive, because it does not see Him nor know Him. But you know Him, for He abides with you and He will be in you.

(1 John 2:27,28) And as for you, the anointing you received from Him abides in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But just as His true and genuine anointing teaches you about all things, so abide in Him as you have been taught. And now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears we might have boldness and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming.