Words of encouragement

I am coming out of my low days.  Thankfully, going into them I had some encouragement stocked up.  My love language is words and more words.  Probably because my inner critic is pretty fierce and it helps me drown it out.


At the end of a play date at a friend's house, my friend looked me in the eye and said, "You're a good mom."  Then she followed it up with a text saying how she really meant it, that she was watching how I responded to Cricket, and that I was doing a great job with her.  As usual, I wanted to explain how I'm much more polite in public, how I don't have it all together, but instead I told her I had the urge to argue but instead I would just thank her.


I was also talking with Cricket's in-home therapist, and she talked about getting Gina on board with a lot of the things I've been doing with Cricket because they're very good for her.  You know, a lot of what I do is just based on what I've read on attachment and trauma, so I know I'm no genius, but I think part of me wondered if none of it was really making a difference.  That I was doing all sorts of things by the books but they weren't really meeting her needs because she still hurts so much.  The therapist's words helped me snap out of that, knowing that her hurt is much deeper than I can fully reach, but that doesn't mean that what I'm doing isn't important.


And finally, later this week I participated in listening prayer with a group from church.  I shared my worries about being too overwhelmed and emotionally shutting down again like earlier this week, not being able to be enough for Cricket.  I'm especially worried as she has a minor surgery coming up, nothing very serious, but it's our first overnight hospital stay with a child, and surgery recovery with a child.  One woman in the group said this scripture came to mind:


2 Corinthians 1:3-4
³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.


It really left me speechless.  Who am I to comfort a hurting child with hurt deeper than I feel I can reach?  I have the God of all comfort with me, who will comfort me comforting her, and comfort her more than I possibly can on my own.  So that, that's how I'll keep on keeping on.