My husband, Daniel, and I worried about bringing another baby home when Shep came along. Our middle child, Poppy, was not even 2 yet and she was still very much a baby herself in many ways. She was emotionally needy and required so much attention. We fully expected her to NOT transition well to having another baby around.
To say Poppy proved us wrong would be an understatement. This video was taken when Shep was just weeks old—in the very short season of his life that we were blissfully unaware of how disability was about to rock our world. From day one, Poppy has nurtured and cared for Shep without any prompting. She has never been deterred by his crying or fussiness, but rather, pushes in to try to soothe him. She gets a different look on her face when she’s with Shep—one of pure, unconditional love and adoration. I can see it in this video and I still see it today.
Poppy’s affection for Shep did not stop when he started missing milestones. Or when we put him in clunky and foreign pieces of adaptive equipment for the first time. It didn’t stop as she sat through countless hours of therapy with him. Or when she began explaining to people, “he has a disability and he can’t talk so he won’t answer you back” without skipping a beat. It didn’t stop when we received his diagnosis and realized he’d never be the little brother we thought she’d have.
Poppy still smothers Shep with hugs and kisses. She snuggles him, combs his hair, and writes him little love notes just because. Poppy reads books to Shep and sings “Jesus Loves YOU” when he’s sad. She plays games with Shep and responds to him as if he had said something aloud to her. She protects him, helps him, and includes him. She “gets him” better than anyone else. I believe God hand-crafted Poppy for Shep. She is well aware of his disability, but isn’t phased by it in the slightest. To her, he’s just Shep. He’s not a problem to be solved, a broken person to fix, or a case for pity. He’s simply loved. Poppy is the puzzle piece that makes Shep fit in with a world unfit for him.
In a way, it feels like Poppy has always known (better than we have) who Shep is and who he would be and she loves him all the same. Isn’t this the way God loves us?
Psalm 139 is an ode to this very idea. The psalmist, David, begins with, “O Lord, You have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether” (verses 1-4). He continues to describe how, from the womb, God intimately knew and intricately designed every part of us (verses 15-17). In short, God knows us better than we even know ourselves. He knows all our hopes, dreams, talents AND our flaws, failures, heartless deeds, and impure thoughts. Yet, He loves us all the same. Through a series of rhetorical questions, in verses 7 through 11, David drives home the point that there is nowhere we could go or nothing we could do that would ever separate us from God’s presence and His love. In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul echoes this point when he says, “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love” (Romans 8:35a, NLT).
Is this not the deepest desire of every human heart—to be fully known AND fully loved? The beautiful display of love I see between my daughter and my youngest son merely scratches the surface of the depths of God’s love for me and for you. I am fully known—in all my brokenness and imperfection—and fully, deeply loved. And so are you, my friend. There is no greater love than this.
Good Shepherd 