I have updated it to reflect this 10 year anniversary, which has felt strangely significant. I don't know why a number should matter so much but it seems to. So, thank you to the friends and strangers reading this who will allow me this 10 year mark to be a bit sentimental. I'll try to tone it down for the 11th.
And just in case this story makes you concerned that I am spending my day tucked in bed with the covers over my head, I'd refer you to my post of the other day. I am completely okay. I'm just using this mile marker as an opportunity to share some things I haven't before. Sort of a release before I move on to the next phase of the journey.
So, I'm okay, friends. But I'm not ruling out a nap.
No Two Are Alike
It was
January and it was snowing. Great big fat flakes were floating down and, even
more exciting, they were sticking to the ground. It was enough to make two
young boys nearly hysterical.
I helped
them piece together whatever suitable outdoor clothing we could find and sent
them out the door in ill-fitting snow boots from last year and adult sized
stocking caps that kept falling down over their eyes. They whooped and hollered
and started scraping together snowballs from the wafer-thin blanket of snow
that had accumulated on the grass.
I
retreated upstairs to my bedroom, my sanctuary, and leaned on the windowsill
watching them from above. It had been less than three months since I had
birthed, held, loved and said good-bye to my other two - the two that now
existed only in my dreams. Silent tears slipped down my cheeks as I struggled
yet again with my inability to find joy in a scene that was nothing less than
joy-filled. Two glorious, living, breathing, sturdy boys. Mine. But my thoughts
were consumed by the two that were missing.
During
those long three days in the hospital prior to Joseph and Molly’s birth, and
then death, I felt held. I prayed only for God’s presence and He was there.
He was
there in the nurses who ministered to us with such tenderness and mercy. He was
there in the family members who waited with us in silent support even when we
refused to see anyone. He was there in our friend, an ordained minister, who
abandoned all of the duties of her own life to come to us in our time of need.
He was there in the remarkable peace that surrounded us during the hours we
held our babies, loving them, memorizing them, struggling to figure out how to
let them go. I felt sustained by the prayers and rituals of our faith that were
offered up on our behalf. Tears were everywhere, but so was grace.
I thought
that presence that had been so easy to recognize in the hospital would follow
me home. It didn’t.
I thought
the peace I had felt when my babies were here would continue in their absence.
Again, no. Life moved on so quickly, it had to. Boys at the ages of five and eight don’t understand periods
of mourning, or a mother who can’t find the energy to help them with their
homework or to volunteer in their classroom. Guilt heaped on top of grief and I
found myself drowning.
Through
it all I tried to pray. I tried to cling to all that I had always known to be
true in the hopes that it would bring some kind of comfort. I tried. But most
of the time my prayers didn’t get any further than, God, please help me...
Help me
what? Help me heal? Help me still be a mother to the children who are here with
me? Help me stop torturing myself with all of the things I believe I should
have done differently? Help me stop doubting my babies’ value, and my right to
grieve their absence? Yes, all of that. That, and so much more.
I gave
into many demons during those days. I agonized myself with all that I had done
wrong, and shut myself off from everyone who cared. But the one voice I never
gave credence to was the one that tried to claim this was God’s will. The devil
didn’t win that one. I had reconciled long before this tragedy that I was a
part of a larger story; a story of a broken world and a broken relationship
with God. Accidents, illness, disease, all evidence of a creation gone wrong. As a Christian, I believe the Incarnation and the
Resurrection restored our relationship to God, but Creation is still in need of
repair. The Kingdom has not yet come. The world is still broken and we see that
brokenness in a thousand different ways every day.
Leaning
on my windowsill that snowy afternoon, I felt myself slipping into doubt, into
despair. Over and over I thought of the cry of that anguished father in the Gospel
of Mark: Lord, I believe; please help my
unbelief. And in that moment I felt something. It wasn’t peace. It didn’t
erase the sorrow in my heart. It was more like awareness, a window opening to a
place that I hadn’t seen before.
In that
space, for just a moment, I heard His voice.
I’m here. They mattered. They matter to me. They
were my beloved. You are my beloved. They are with me and they are perfect. You
will be okay, I promise. I am here... I am always here.
In the
quiet of that blessed assurance I looked out the window and saw my boys working
together to try and gather every ounce of snow they could find to build a
miniature snowman. From the depths of my soul, I smiled.
It’s been ten years now and I still hold onto that moment of clarity.
It is the
voice that tells me it is okay that I am still here, still writing about them,
still remembering them, and still missing them. It is also the voice that tells
me it is okay that I am happy again, that joy returned. It is the voice of love
in all its forms. The love that weeps over those we miss, and the love that
rejoices in the blessings of today.
I believe
in love. I believe that God is the
source of that love. I believe we are called to love and that in doing so we
assist God in repairing the world. And I believe that my babies, my son and
daughter, are wrapped forever in eternal love - both mine and God’s.
I believe.
Love.
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