God fascinates me by Madeline Robison

It seems that He reveals something new about Himself almost daily. And although I should have been sensitive to that all my life as a professing Christian from early childhood on, I simply wasn’t. It took a curly-haired, bespectacled little angel born six days before Christmas to open my eyes and heart to see God in a new and deeper way. Her mighty mind and spirit eclipsed her broken body, and her smile and laugh could melt ice. God gave her the fight that sustained her nearly four times longer than she should have survived, proving that He gifts His children with what they need, pointing to His remarkable, detailed nature. And then one April day, God called her Home. She was four-and-a-half. Her name was Amelia. She is my daughter.

Amelia came to earth chock-full of personality. Only five pounds, one ounce at birth, she had lungs that sounded like cannons. And although she never spoke more than four words in her life, she could certainly make her wishes known. I’d be pushing her in the swing, and I’d stop singing to her long enough to talk to someone nearby; and Amelia, also affectionately known as Pooter Bear, would let me know that that was not a popular idea and that I was to continue singing that instant, thank you very much. So I would break into another Sam Cooke tune or a VBS song, and she would pat herself on her chest and make her characteristic ‘aack-aack’ noise to let me know I was back in her good graces. She went wild over Dr. Seuss books and would pat the book to let us know when to turn the page. And since feedings were not pleasant for her through her stomach tube, we let her watch TV during them, which is when we learned that she loved NASCAR and the Dallas Cowboys.

In the twenty-six months since she died, I have realized some of God’s attributes that I fear I never soaked into my soul and spirit. In the earliest months of our grief, my husband, Brian, and I experienced the wonderful “trench” quality of God, by which I mean that we worship a God who, in the person of Jesus Christ, gets in the trenches with you and NEVER LEAVES YOUR SIDE … except maybe to take a step or two in front of you, offer His hand, and say, “It’s time now, child. Come with Me and I will help you move forward in this grief.” In those early months, I could almost feel Jesus stroking my hair, sitting next to me, reminding me that He would never leave.

As time progressed, God allowed me to reflect on Amelia’s dying process through a lens of profound gratitude. She had lived longer than we could reasonably hope would be the case, especially knowing what we know now: what claimed her life was a metabolic disorder of which she is the only known victim in the world. Literally. The fight that God put in that precious little body was the reason; it was also the reason why she lived ten days from the day we knew she was dying to the day she died. And I cannot but be deeply grateful for that time; each of those final days was a gift.

In more recent months, I look and see that God has been weaving an inexpressibly beautiful tapestry since long before Amelia’s birth. During the last week of her life, I heard very clearly a whisper in my ear that after she died, I was supposed to record a CD of hymns in her memory. Having basked in the powerful beauty of the traditional hymns all my life, it seemed a fitting way to honor Amelia and the One who created her. But it was almost immediately a moot point because my grief housed itself in my throat and robbed me of my singing voice for almost twenty months. That was a devastating loss, a dimension of the grief I had not foreseen. It had been hard enough to lose her, but then to lose one of the most profound gifts we shared – the love of music and my virtually constant singing to her – accentuated my grief almost daily. I would go to sing to our other children, Amelia’s younger siblings who were suffering greatly over the death of their big sister, and nothing would come out. I could speak, but the singing voice I had effortlessly had since I was two years old was gone.

But God showed me a way out of that, all for His glory. He had given me my singing voice at my creation, He had given the love of music to Amelia and me that we might share that all her life long, through very thick and very thin, and He had plans for me that I could never have fathomed. In May of this year, Amelia’s Gift was released. It is a CD compilation of twelve traditional hymns set to updated, engaging arrangements. The proceeds will go to charity to save the lives of children worldwide. (To learn more, visit my website, www.madelinehymns.org.) What a legacy … and one that only God could orchestrate.
And so God has revealed, among all the other attributes He has shown me to this point, that He is a textile artist, weaving tapestries out of the scraps of fabric of our lives, providing warmth and beauty that we could never have dreamed up on our own.

I wonder what I will learn next about our phenomenal Master. He fascinates me, absolutely fascinates me, and I will be ever grateful to Amelia for widening the lens through which to see Him. Well done, Pooter Bear, well done.


Madeline Robison is a singer, writer, and public speaker. She is the founder and owner of Madeline Hymns Music, a 501(c)(3) whose mission is to use the power of hymns to minister to believers and to fund charitable, life-saving projects world-wide through established, respected Christian humanitarian organizations. She is also a wife and a stay-at-home mother of four who is actively involved in her church and community.For more about Madeline, please visit her website: http://www.madelinehymns.org

posted by Margaret McSweeney @ 7:16 AM