bradhensley.com

Father, Just Hold Me

Maybe it was being raised in a broken family, or the decisions I made within my family custody battles. Maybe it was the friendships that I never maintained throughout early school childhood or maybe it was just how I always viewed myself. Whatever the reason, I never truly understood the meaning of love. I am learning now that this single misunderstanding would effect the way that I view God throughout my entire life. I understand that God is soverign. I understand, kinda, that God is all knowing. But I never understood the meaning of love so could I ever really understand a minor glimpse of God in all His glory?

Crissy and I tried for almost a year to get pregnant with our first born son, Keagan Eyre Hensley. At the beginning, we knew it would be only a matter of weeks before we were pregnant. It was easy, right? Our parents taught us right so we knew what not to do to get pregnant. Reverse that and we would have a baby. Simple. Not exactly… After several painstaking failed pregnancy tests, we began to pray. We picked out our sons name and prayed for him every night before we even conceived. We prayed that God would bless our house with Keagan Eyre Hensley. We didn’t pray for a child or a baby or God to do something in our lives. We prayed for Keagan Eyre Hensley. Shorten the story, several more months went by and we found out we were pregnant. Sixteen short weeks later, it was confirmed that we were having a boy. God granted our steadfast, specific prayer for Keagan. It wasn’t until a few months after his birth that the true meaning of love began to sink in. Today, when I look down at him as he is sitting on the kitchen floor and I stretch out my gigantic-to-him hands towards him, all he does he raise his arms to be held. I scoop him up and whirl him around, while I make a funny noises. All in hopes to create the slightest chuckle from him. All in hopes that he will just simply smile. I think I have began to understand what love’s true meaning is all about. I absolutely, unconditionally love him with my everything.

As I began to learn one of the most valuable lessons throughout my life thus far, I can’t help but think that this love that I have for Keagan isn’t even a fraction of the love that God has for us. Like I said, I never really understood this side of God. I didn’t really understand how he could love me. His word tells us in Jeremiah 1:5, that he knew us before he formed us in the womb. Before we were born, he set us apart. Crissy and I had already picked out Keagan’s full name. We had already discussed what we wanted to teach him growing up such as Sign Language and Spanish. We had even went as far as planning for his education discussing preschool vs. kindergarden and what schools he would attend. If you ask us today, we can tell you our full 18 year plan for Keagan’s life and how we want to equip him with everything so that he can be ready for his calling(s). Just as we had everything mapped out, everything planned before he was even formed in Crissy’s womb, God has done that with each one of us. It absolutely blows my mind. Being born to a 19 year old mother who had already had a four year old, and a 20 year old father, I never thought that I was “planned”. I understand now how God had prepared things for me back in 1982. How amazing is that? It has to bring him such joy when he sees us rejoicing with each other and celebrating Him. God has to be excited when us, His children, begin to lift our arms up during our favorite praise and worship song to say, “Father, just hold me.”

As I close this blog post, I want to leave you with something that will most likely become a fixture in my blog. If you have stumbled across this blog via Facebook, Twitter, or just keep up with it and you are don’t currently have a church you call “home”. I want to extend an invitation to you to go with me to OneLife Church. It is on Sunday morning at Powell High School at 11am. You can email me brad@carsetc.com or check out their website. Crissy and I are very excited about the direction that our lives have taken since being at OneLife and I will be that guy that is always inviting you to church because of how much I love it. One last thing, if you haven’t already check out my blog post, Unexpected Encounter, you will understand a lot more about my excitement at OneLife.