To My Angel

The following was written by Laura. Today is the day Nadia Joy was due. Sadly, she died before she could see her mommy and daddy. But we all love her dearly just the same and look forward to seeing her one day in heaven, completely whole and untarnished by this world.


To my angel.....

My sweet girl,

You were due today. It seems strange to even think about that, since it's so far from when you were born. Maybe all mothers remember the due dates too... You'd be 16 weeks old now, if you'd have stayed. Smiling, cooing, those wonderful milestones. I'd best not linger on the things I miss, lest I forget what I've gained. I miss you terribly! It's like waves at the beach. I won't even know where it came from, but I miss you again so fiercely...

I've changed so much these 16 weeks. It amazes me still that you've done more in such a short time than I'm likely to accomplish in my whole life. You've taught some that there's more to life than their world. For others, you've softened their hearts. You've taught some how to grieve, and how to be vulnerable. That it's okay to cry, and to feel. You have deepened relationships, and secured friendships in ways you'll never know. Most of all, you have brought people to the Father. For some it's a new relationship, for others, it's a deeper one. I know that you yourself are not capable of these things, and that it is indeed the Father himself who has used you for His glory.

I miss you so. But you have brought me closer to my Father, and I know him better. I have found new Joy nestled in His arms, a security I never could fathom. And He is still my hope. I still wish I could hold you, hear your voice, see your smile. I wonder what kind of woman you'd have grown into. I love you. I love you more than I can express. I will always love you.

Though the sorrow may last for the night, His joy comes in the morning.

It's been many nights, and many more will come. But He is still holding me up. I was thinking the other day about God holding me, and comforting me. He understands my pain. I realized that He really does! He lost a Son! He knows what it's like to lose a child! I started thinking more about His understanding, and I realized that he doesn't ask us to do what he hasn't. He understands loss. He can grieve with us. He lost a child, and at some point Joseph died, so he lost a parent. He knows what it's like to be tempted, and what it's like to be misunderstood. He's had neighbors and siblings. We constantly shun Him, tell Him he's not good enough. When he asks us to give up ourselves, he's done that too!

What an awesome God we have! He has indeed brought good from the pain, and I know he's not done. He's given me a new insight and a deeper understanding of who He is. I can say with certainty, "God is good!"

"To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified. " Isaiah 61:3

My prayer now is one of thanksgiving. That though I miss you, and will miss seeing you grow, I have gained a treasure more precious than silver. I will never stop missing you, and I look to the day when I will see you again, ever praising the One who created us.

Mom

He was my Sunday school teacher.

The men in my family are pretty closed about their emotions and pain. K boy, when he is hurt, usually crawls off into a corner and suffers quietly. It's when the house is quiet that I know to be concerned. And when he took a wrong turn over a waterfall recently and landed on rock in an inch of water after a five-foot drop, he merely said, "I'm okay, I"m okay." And when I insisted he MUST hurt, he said, "It's only pain."

So when one of his Sunday school teachers (his friends in the know say his favorite Sunday school teacher) died unexpectedly and suddenly last week, I was not surprised that he took it on the chin without wincing. This is his style. I have looked for subtle things over the past days to see if there was any indication of "hurt", but he remained stoic.

The memorial service for his teacher, Don, was today, originally scheduled at the same time as K's swim meet. So I left the choice up to K as to which one to go to. He thought all afternoon yesterday about it and decided he wanted to go to the swim meet. But God knows what K needs and arranges things. The swim meet went really quickly and was over by 2:30. The memorial, about five minutes away, got pushed back to 2:00; so I made the command decision that we would go. All K would say was, "I don't want to." I asked him why and he only repeated, "I just don't want to." Nevertheless, something inside me said we should go. So we went, and being late, stood out in the foyer listening and watching on the monitor to Brian's beautiful tribute to Don, and I picked up a "program" with Don's picture on the front. A card fell out, and as I didn't know Don well, I tucked it back into the stack of programs. But K said, "What was that, Mom?" So I told him it was a card to write a memory on. When I turned back to look through the window, K pulled the card out of the stack, took it to a table where there pens and started writing. When I glanced his way, he said, "Don't look. I don't want you to read this." But later, as I was helping him find the basket to put it in, I read it over his shoulder. It was unsigned and simply said, "He was my Sunday school teacher."

So, Cindy, when you find a card, written in an 8-year-old's cursive, in big letters because he did not have his glasses with him--please know that it came from the depths of the heart of a boy who did not know how to express the hurt in any other way.

Picking Blueberries

My friend and I went walking through town early the other morning and we went a block or so out of our way to pass by some blueberry bushes that the city planted by the old train engine. As we were picking the ripe berries off the bushes, leaving the green ones (there are several different varieties planted), an older man got out of his car and said, "Are they ripe yet?" We answered, mouths full of juicy, sweet berries, "Oh, yes." But as we wandered away to finish our walk, he looked at the remaining berries on only one bush and said, rather annoyed, "They are NOT ripe yet!"

The fact is, apparently we are not the only ones who have come to appreciate the berries. Many people now, as they walk by, selectively pick only the perfectly ripe berries, and leave the rest to ripen for another day.

Years ago, a friend of mine bought the rights to a blueberry patch, and recruited quite a few of us to help pick for her. Picking blueberries for the harvest is quite a different experience than picking them in the park one at a time. When you pick them for harvest, you wrap both hands around each clump, and strip the berries off, ripe and unripe together, and then later sort through them, discarding the overripe and the unripe berries, as well as any leaves and twigs.

It occurred to me, as I sat in church listening to Gordon talk about Don Gibson, who recently--unexpectedly and suddenly--went to be with the Lord, that perhaps now God wanders through the believers, picking only the ripest, sweetest ones. But the day is coming when He will harvest ripe and unripe together, and sort us all out later.

Lost Marble

In 1989, we bought a little over an acre of land that had been horse pasture for as long as I had lived in the area. At the back were three fruit trees, the remnants of an orchard (ancient fruit trees, even then). Using my imagination, I could look back in time and see little pioneer children playing, and after that, children of the depression, and so on. The house two lots to the west of us was probably built around the turn of the century. The houses flanking us were probably built in the 1930s and 1940s. The acreage we bought belonged to the people who formerly owned the house to the east, and several properties to the east and north of that.

So, often, when digging, I would find treasures. On the eastern fence line, not too far from the neighbor's house, I found the remnants of an old burn pile--melted metal and melted ancient hand cream jars, lids, and so forth. When digging out on the western fence line, to the north, in what has always been pasture, as far as I can tell, I found an old, pre-matchbox era, toy fire engine. This spring, in our south pasture, to the west, where a little lean-to has stood for maybe a decade (Jake's house), a sparkle in the dirt at just the right time of day caught my attention. When I dug it up, I had a light blue and green marble. To me it looks old, especially given the imperfection at the top. I assume this is a hand-blown marble, and I don't think it was my daughter's. So I assume that it was lost by some child in a very long-ago time.

This marble seems to delight in being lost. When I found it, I stuck in my pocket and brought it in to wash it off. But when I set it down, it rolled to the floor and disappeared. A day or two later it reappeared right in the middle of the floor. So I picked it up, and not wanting it to be lost again, and wanting to show it to my daughter, to see if she recognized it, I set it in a flower pot that had been given to us, which had some living plants in it and little polished rocks like a little stream.

A few days later, I walked by the plant and remembered the marble and remembered that I wanted to show it to my daughter, but later that evening, when my daughter and son-in-law came by, the marble was nowhere to be found. I took all the rocks out and dug around in the soil, but the marble was lost. This became rather a joke to my family--me losing my marble and all. But it bugged me.

The plants died in the pot, so today, when I took it outside to clean it out, I sifted carefully through the dirt and found that marble. I don't intend to lose it again, but it seems to have a mind of its own. Nevertheless, at least I have a picture of it now, so people will know what to look for if they intend to help me find my marble.

Tolerance

I think God uses special people to help our areas of weakness. I know by the son that He has given me that I needed to grow in the areas of patience and tolerance.

Patience is a long lesson, built like a strong wall, brick upon brick upon brick. I get it. I get opportunities to learn patience almost daily. Brick upon patient brick.

I did not know I was not tolerant. I guess the opposite of tolerant would be critical, condescending, judgmental. I suppose I am and/or have been all of those things to some degree, because God is sure using my son to teach me about tolerance--from the other side, from the side of being criticized and judged, on account of my son.

He's such a special kid. He is exuberant and enthusiastic, full of life and energy, intellegent. But he has a blindspot for social things. He has never had a sense of personal space, first of all. I don't know if this is because of his vision or because something in his brain is wired differently. (I hesitate to say "wrong", because I believe that God knew what He was doing when He made K the way he is.) And so I find myself constantly reminding him that people like to have an armslength between them, when talking and such.

Another social area that we work on continually is reading body language and facial expressions and listening to words other people are saying. It's so hard when he sees other kids wrestling and such and he wants to get in on it, but he doesn't understand how to be gentle at the same time, and he doesn't realize how much bigger he is than other kids. When does "no" really mean "no"? He doesn't pick up on the subtle clues that differentiate "no" from "no". Are they smiling when they say it, or are they turning away and frowning? The subtle nuances that you and I take for granted, he does not see.

Last year, a parent called him a "bully" because of this. I suspect, now that the parent has known him for a year and through other sports and such, that he would not call K a bully now. But that was, nevertheless, his first impression. I can feel parents this year criticizing me because of my son's lack of social "comprehension", because they don't know him, and they don't know me, and they don't know us.

And it hurts. And there is nowhere to go with it. When I was raising my "other" child, I was the condescending, critical one--if not overtly, at least on the inside. So I guess, in my old age, and because I am on the other side of the coin now, I will think before I have a critical, condescending, judgmental heart. We are not all wired the same (thankfully!). It isn't necessarily lack of good parenting that makes a child blurt out what comes to his mind or play too rough or too long. It isn't a matter of 'us' and 'them', but it is 'we'. How can we help each other and encougage each other, rather than criticzing and judging each other?

Growing into the people God wants us to be sure is painful sometimes....

Weeds, Rain, and Getting God's Heart

We almost always have a relatively nice spell in February when I can get out and weed the flower beds. And they look nice for a while, but then in April when I get to them again, they are overgrown with grass and weeds and clover and bedstraw. It would be nice if I could just weed them once in a while and be done; but that isn't how life goes.

Similarly, in my own heart, I might think I have weeded out a bad thought pattern or some bitterness or have forgiven a hurt; but then something will happen to make me look closely, and there are those rotten, ugly weeds again.

I have marveled at my son's high tolerance for pain. But with my recent broken leg, I think I understand how he comes by it. When we were putting our garden in, in the first weeks of my injury, digging about two holes per day for my tomatoes was about all I could handle if the ground was hard. But I would not notice that I was in pain, only that I was getting short-tempered and cranky with my son. It seems I have a similar way with my feelings. When I am hurting, I might not recognize it; but I will start criticizing others or speaking harsh words.

Sometimes, the weeds that reach the furthest are the easiest to pull. Bedstraw and clover will cover a large amount of ground, but when you trace the vines back to their origin, with one pull a whole lot of weed comes up; and the ground cleans up easily. This is how it has been lately with my closest friend of decades. My whole life will be overcome with a hurt or a misunderstanding or something stupid I have said or done; but one heart-to-heart with her and forgiveness, and loving words of reassurance, and all that weed is gone... I just have to find the stem.

My garden was tilled in horse pasture this year, where hay and grass seed had fallen. I put soaker hoses on the garden, to only water the plants I wanted to grow, and the weeds were easy to control. But then God sent a great downpour and now my whole garden is growing in a carpet of grass. I know we need the rain, but I do find myself a little irritated at how much weeding I have to do now because of it!! The Bible says that God sends rain on the just and the unjust, meaning that God blesses everyone, not just those that follow Him. He wants us to follow him for reasons other than His provision. But I have to say, that sometimes I find myself a little jealous--like Cain, I suppose--that other people get blessed when I feel like I'm working so hard, and they are not. Personally, I think it is easier to care for animals than to work the ground, plant, weed and harvest. I think Cain probably felt the same way. But I have to keep reminding myself of C S Lewis' words, via Aslan, "I tell no one any story but his own." I can't compare MY story with anyone else's, because I am unique and God, to be just, must treat me uniquely. I almost think, when it comes to dealing with God, that I need to wear "blinders" so that I am not tempted to compare my story to someone else's.

On the other hand, we are called to be a part of the body of Christ. We cannot live as an island and also function as part of the body. A friend prayed this morning in church, "Lord, teach us to be a part of the body, because we don't know how to do it." And Gordon read out of the New Living Translation this morning (which is slightly different than my beloved NIV), Ephesians 4:2 "Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. "

"Making allowance for each other's faults". It's so easy to get frustrated and irritated with each other when we don't see eye to eye and we cannot bring the other person around to our (correct, of course) way of thinking. But we are called to "make allowances" for our differences...for their faults, and them for ours. It's hard to make allowance for someone else's faults, especially if that isn't a particular fault of our own. But when we are made aware of our own faults, our "weeds", it is freeing beyond words to have others make allowances for us. It is humbling and it is comforting. In the way that we know that God will never forsake us, it is comforting to know that there are people who will also never forsake us. And we need to be the kind of people who won't forsake others.

In the same way that "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus", he will also carry on that good work in the people we walk with--the other members of the body. Last week, Mark McCoy talked about 1 Corinthians 13, and how God was making us all to look like that. He talked about watching Bob Ross paint and how Mr. Ross would get a painting started and Mark would think, "Wow, that looks pretty good. He could stop there." But then Mr. Ross would paint a river through the middle of it, and when he was done, the painting would so much more awesome than Mark had imagined it could. That is what God is doing with us. He is making a masterpiece. We think we look pretty good, but then God paints a river through us and we think, "Don't!! You're ruining it!" But in the end, God had something even better in mind. And the fact is, He is doing that with all of us. So, if our blinders happen to be down and we happen to see God start to "ruin" what we think someone else is supposed to look like, it's okay, God has something better in mind.

So, if you hear me being negative or critical:

1) tell me to recognize if I am hurting,

2) tell me to go do some weeding,

3) remind me to put blinders on ("I tell no one any story but his own."), and

4) remind me that He who began a good work in me (and every other part of the body) will carry it on to completion.

I'm reminded of a little song that we used to sing in college..."I am a promise. I am a possibility. I am a promise, with a capital P. I am a great big bundle of potentiality. And I am learning to hear God's voice, and I am trying to make the right choice. I am a promise to be anything God wants me to be." Funny, it means so much more NOW than it did two and a half decades ago.

How deep is the night...

Here is another post from our daughter Laura, who lost her first child, Nadia, six weeks ago at 24 weeks' gestation. We continue to mourn, but we are not without Hope.


Often, the vast darkness and emptiness of pain and grief feels blinding. It's cold, and lonely, and seems ready to devour me whole. I can't see past it, or through it. How I need a light! How thankful I am that I have a light. I have the ultimate light source in my Father. He is my hope and my strength, my light in the utmost darkness.

I've often wondered, along with my friends and family, how anyone can go through this kind of pain and grief without God. I don't know how it's possible. The pain has been so great, yet I know I'm held tight, and I have hope. What darkness it must truly be without any hope or security!

I was thinking about this darkness on our recent vacation. Justin and I visited the Lava River Cave near Bend, OR. It's about a mile long, and you walk in until you can't, or don't want to, go any further. Then you walk the mile back out. It was sunny and pushing 80 degrees outside the cave, yet there was ice 50 feet in. About 100 feet in, still bathed in the dim glow of the entrance, the darkness ahead was so great that our flashlight wasn't enough for us to see. While Justin went back to get a lantern, I waited in the cave. I was standing in the light still, but I couldn't see what was around me. Waiting in the cold, in the dark, I marveled at how the light disappeared into the walls of the cave. The emptiness and darkness seemed to be waiting to swallow up all that ventured in. Only when we had the strong light from the lantern could we see the path ahead, and see the scarred but beautiful walls from the lava long ago. Such beauty from fire!

About a week before we lost Nadia, I was listening to my audio book version of "The Last Battle" by C.S. Lewis. Near the end of the book, after the battle, the main characters find themselves in a bright meadow, not the dark stable they were expecting. There they meet Aslan and are reunited with him. As they wander about, they see the dwarves huddled together, stepping on each other, and acting as though they were blind. When Lucy and the others talk to them, they find that the dwarves can't see the meadow or the light. All they see is the very dark interior of a stable that doesn't exist. They are in complete darkness, yet surrounded by light. Aslan talks to them, but they refuse to believe him. They refuse to believe that he is there or that he is real, and in that choose to remain in the darkness while the others continue "Further up, and further in!".

I'm always struck by that picture. Alone in the darkness, void of all hope. Complete darkness, like in the lava cave. How lonley and cold it is when we separate ourselves from God. A word of belief and the dwarves would have seen. A willing heart and we shall have our light that never fades or fails. God will never leave us in the valley of the night. He will not allow the darkness to swallow us. He is there with us, letting us see what gems He has hidden in the darkness, if we will only allow Him to.

"If I say, 'Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,' even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like day, for darkness is as light to you." Psalm 139:11-12

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust." Psalm 91:1-2

"You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday." Psalm 91:5-6

I find myself thinking about Psalm 23. " The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." He's here. He's my light in the darkness, for to Him, there is no night. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, He can see. When I'm blinded by my grief, and when the pain surges anew, I need only remember that He can see clearly. He will lead me gently, and I need only to trust and follow.

It's still night. Not as dark as it has been, but night nevertheless. I will not fear the night, but look for the beauty and treasures hidden in it, for my light is everlasting. I am safe, I am warm. The storm rages around me, within me; the thunder cracks, the lighning flashes. But I am safe in my Father's arms. What a hope I have! What a hope those who know Him have. I have a place to rest. Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.