A Decade

I sit here tonight thinking about you, I can scarcely believe it has been a decade since you made your entrance into the world, changing it forever. The details of July 14, 2005 run through my mind like an old slide projector. I wonder what ten year old Isaac would be like. What kind of cake would I be baking at your request? What would be the one coveted item you'd want more than anything as a gift? Which of your siblings would you argue with as they wanted to get their hands on your new possession?

Would you be into sports? Music? Would you be kind and quiet like your dad or would you be a stubborn chatterbox like your mom?

I'll never know the answer to those things. My heart aches to know who you would be, but then I remember who you are. Isaac Matthew, you are a world changer. You have moved mountains I never thought would so much as quiver. You have inspired and led your mama to live enough life for both of us, to create a legacy. Because of you, our hearts were forever changed. Because of you, we love deeper and we live louder, you've taught us the sweetness of a moment and not to let it pass us by, and you've taught us to love with abandon. It hurts like crazy when you lose what you love but that love always makes it worth it.

It is because of YOU that we were brave enough to step into foster care, to welcome sweet children the Lord loves deeply into our home and help them heal some of their hurts, this year we will quite possibly add another member to this family through the foster care system...you made us brave, you showed us that it is ok to put your heart out there and let it be broken, God makes beautiful mosaics with those shattered pieces.

It is because of you that I am awake tonight reading about pregnancy, childbirth and prenatal diagnoses. You taught me to step into other people's grief and to just be with them. God has opened doors for me now to become a bereavement doula. I will humbly get to walk the grief journey with others feeling loss so great they aren't sure they can breathe, and I will tell them about you and your brother and how my heart will never mend, a scar will always remain, but so will you. That it is worth it...it is always worth it...love is always worth the cost.

Happy Birthday Isaac Matthew! I miss you so much that I physically ache sometimes. I wish you were here with us, but I am so grateful that I got to love you at all. I am one blessed momma. I will forever ache and I will forever use that ache to fuel me to make the world better...because YOU lived.

When Grief Strikes

Sometimes, like a comet whizzing through the atmosphere, out of nowhere, and slamming into the earth, grief strikes.  You don't see it coming and it leaves a crater behind.  This week has been a tough week on the grief front.  Yesterday, I was cleaning a closet out, feeling pretty good about the purging I was doing and then I came across this:

To most it just looks like an ordinary report card.  A third grade student advancing to fourth grade.  YAY!  To me, it marks something very different.  I pulled the report card out of its envelope, I chuckled at the grades and comments on the inside, I marveled at the idea that I only missed two days  of school that year, then I turned it over and it hit me, like a comet out of nowhere.  Her signature exactly where it should be for the first two periods of the school year.  Then, she was gone.

It was a breathtaking snapshot of her very real absence and the breath was stolen from my lungs.  I sat down on the kitchen floor and just stared at it.  She was there, and then she wasn't.  In a moment the whole world changed.  That change is vividly marked on the back of my third grade report card.  Tears started to fall as memories flooded back.  Howard noticed that I'd stopped cleaning and he came to look over my shoulder, he was speechless.  He hugged me and said, "that sucks, I'm sorry".  I nodded.

I sat there and thought about that year.  How drastically my life changed that year.  Despite all of that, I missed TWO days of school, and one was the day of my mother's funeral.  I pondered that for a few moments, I mean, surely losing your mother at 9 years old warrants a few days absence, but as I thought, I remembered how much I loved school.  I remembered how when the whole world was spinning out of control, that third grade classroom was my constant, while the whole world around me came crashing in, that was a safe place, I had the most amazing teachers who helped to resume my normal, they loved me and stood in the gap as best they could.  Over two decades later I am still wading through he grief of losing my mom at 9.

As I look back over the hardest times in my life I can see now how the Lord used those around me to carry me when life made it too hard to walk on my own.  As a nine year old I am not sure I was aware of His presence, but He was there, I am so grateful for the amazing people who were His hands and feet to me and still are.  We were never meant to walk this journey alone, sometimes life is hard, sometimes grief strikes out of nowhere, but through it all, He takes that pain and gives it purpose, so while my heart is heavy tonight, I am rejoicing for the beauty from the ashes, for the purpose in the pain and for the people who don't turn away when things get hard, they press in and walk with the grieving.  It is my prayer that I am able to be that for someone else.