Vacations and holidays always rub a hole in my broken heart. When the family is all together it is impossible to do all the stuff without being nagged by the thought that one of my children is missing.
I am at the beach this week. I have stood at the shore and looked at sky and felt like my other son is out there somewhere. Somewhere where I am not.
Then Facebook popped up this “Three Years Ago” picture.
Three years ago this lovely couple got married. Three years ago I joked and said I’m the one that looks like a big watermelon. Three years ago my son was alive.
He was safe inside of me. I protected him. My body nourished him. And I loved him wildly.
I can’t look at this picture without crying. The emotions are just there. The joy is there. The hurt is there. The grief is there. And the truth is, I want it that way. I don’t really want it to stop hurting. I don’t want to stop crying when I think of him. I don’t really want the grief to stop.
Because I don’t want to stop thinking of him.
Sometimes I feel like that blip in my life may not have really happened. A flash of a thought says what if it never happened? What if he never happened?
That thought is pure darkness. That thought hurts deeper than any day of grief. That thought turns my gut. He did happen. He did. I needed him to happen then and I still do.
Because I don’t want to stop loving him.
I love him. I loved him as he grew inside of me. I loved him as an infant. I love him for whatever glorious being God has transformed him into. I love him. And like any mother who can’t have her child, it hurts.
Here’s the thing, if the pain goes so does the love. I don’t want that love to ever leave.
Because he matters.
Have you ever seen an obituary that says the person had no family? Or have you been to a funeral that seemed to lack real sorrow?
Those things overwhelm me with sadness because they are indicative of a life that had no impact. My son had impact. He impacted me. His life blessed me. His death transformed me. I don’t want to ever lose that.
But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. 1 Cor 15:51-53
