Grandparenting with Grace:despairing

 I have been in despair for the past 2 1/2 years. Sometimes the crippling lying in the fetal position-if only in my mind- kind. I was entering the empty nest period of life, my youngest going off to college when my oldest gave my husband and me the privilege of raising our precious grandchild-then not yet 2 years old. We had been pretty involved up to this point, but now it was all us, still is. I won’t go into details, just that the love is strong. The desire is there. But the fear, the feeling of unfairness that I should have to once again be there all this way through for another-in this world that can so easily crush a child, when I have no control-can only trust and it’s so hard to trust at times. I cannot make the way clear for this child. So I pray and try to trust. But more often than not I fail and find myself deep in despair knowing what could happen when she’s not in my care but in the care of the one who should love so intensely she would die to protect. Instead, I would die protecting her if I could, if need be-yet I cannot protect. I can only love, and that so intensely I ache. Despair comes, moving over me. I fight to rip it off and spend my day loving, teaching, holding, and praying-praying even when the words won’t come. I know He lives, I know He hears. I know I am where He wants me to be even when it isn’t where I wanted to be. I am working on accepting it all and making it beautiful. I also know that it is okay to hurt, to struggle and find one’s way through to the other side in my own time. It’s okay to question to want it different- for even Jesus asked God if it had to be. He felt anxiety and sweat blood all for me. His body hung broken for all to see so I could fall at the foot of the cross. He lives and I can ask for the eternity I was created for. How can I not do a fraction of that for one little life?