Today
I was supposed to attend a memorial service of a great lady today.
I was supposed to sing her favorite hymns, grieve and laugh with joy at her spirit and all she taught us.
I am home instead, in the quiet and the snow, wearing slippers with eyes too tired to cry, in recovery.
On Thursday morning, the black and white monitor that was supposed to show the flickering heartbeat of our two month along growing child, stood still.
I would have to tell my daughter that she was no longer going to be a big sister.
I would have to watch my husband grieve another death, another dream.
I would have to hold on when my fingers were already bloody with strain from holding on before.
I'm not sure if it makes it easier or harder to already know the pits and valleys of this road. This is the third baby of mine that has met Jesus before me.
I have lost them quietly, unknowingly in the night. I have lost them laboring at home, griping the sides of the bathtub. I have lost them in the white and blue of the operating room, falling asleep carrying a child, waking with an empty womb.
Not one of them is easier. Not one of them changes the fact that I have delivered 4 children, and only one of them is alive. These last few days have been a blur of heartache so deep I have lost all train of thought. All reason. My body betrays the most divine thing it was built to do. I have gone against everything I know is true, back bucking, clawing at the words which we were supposed to give me hope. Ask and it shall be given. I will never leave you. If a child asks his father for fish, would he give him a stone? Over and over the reel. I asked. You gave the fish to hold and snapped it away. I am wearing the stone, weighted around my neck, too heavy to hold.
I regretted my penchant for memorizing scripture. That was difficult to write, but true nonetheless.
And in my grief, the village crept in. Driving from hours away to care lovingly for our daughter while we were unable to move. To hold our hands and our bleeding hearts. To hold our heads up while they spooned carefully prepared broth and tea into our mouths. To whisper prayers of peace which we did not want to but so desperately needed to hear. They were waiting in line, in the driveway. They wailed as though it was their own child. It was. In this village, they are all our children. The village walked with us to the operating room at 6:30 am on Saturday morning, the village was my surgeon, and was there when I awoke, holding my hand I couldn't yet feel, praying prayers I was unable yet to pray.
You are the light of world. The village. Because we could not have done this on our own. Remembered that it was the world that was broken and not our God. Remembered that He has overcome it. Remembered that He was good. We could not believe it again until His love poured out of your faces and hands, in our kitchens, cleaning our blood and our tears. Never underestimate the power of Christ in which you are given- He dwells in you to save others.
Through Him, you have surely saved us.
"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the field and no cattle in the stalls, yet I WILL rejoice in the Lord, I WILL be joyful in my Savior."- Hab. 3:17-18