Its been some time since I blogged but yesterday words began to pour like the great flood and I have found them healing me as the came. So, I'm gonna write as it comes and I hope that you can find some healing in this too..For whatever ails you in this short life.
Yesterday I wrote some hard honest letters to people that I have lost along this road. My last letter was to the child I miscarried in September 2012. I wrote that child one letter when I first found I was pregnant, and one more when the bleeding started. I begged them to stay within me...But we know that was pointless. The aimless cries of a mother in agony. So I wrote a final letter (because I'm not going to be one of those people who goes kuku by writing letters to deceased people all the time).
I share it with you because we have all lost something and have all grieved deeply for someone or something. As I did in my first post, I recommit to being as real as I can. My love to you all!
Dear Child of Mine,
I’d like to believe you were a boy but odds are you weren’t.
But I’m naming you Zeal (hopefully your dad will agree…He did!). I think it’s a
perfect name either way and hopefully all your heavenly friends will think it’s
pretty sharp. You rocked my world and changed me in weeks the way waters carve
lines in the rocks over hundreds of years. You were radical and I needed (need)
that change. I would never have chosen it but I needed it.
My grief has been like a seed. It falls in the soil of your
heart without your permission. When the bad thing happens a flower in the field
of your heart dies and it drops its seeds. Some blow away with the winds of
time. But some take root. Your silent tears water them and before you know it,
you have an underground system of roots belonging to grief. In most respects I
am very in touch with myself. But no one wants to be angry or sad so I had
rejected them. I had said, “Go away from me!” and dusted them from my shoulders
like an old cobweb. It was silliness and futile but I tried. Did I mention
grief is like a nasty stain??? You can’t merely dust it off. You must wash it
repeatedly and possibly use some oxy-clean. Unfortunately there is no spiritual
oxy-clean so there you have it. Life goes on and with each situation you find
that over time the grief stain lessens. That is if you dealt with it. But
remember I didn’t.
So, here I am with a grief tree growing in my heart. You can
call an apple tree a pear tree or an orange tree. But really, it is still an
apple tree. So it is with a grief tree. You can call it whatever you like or
nothing at all. It doesn’t matter. It’s there.
Sweet child, you were the beginning of my grief tree. And
just because of that I think it’s lovely because it grew from you. Grief is not
a bad thing. Well at least not to me. Depression is the evil twin of grief…but
grief itself is normal and natural. So I tell myself. (I shall call it my Zeal Tree). And the reason
I think grief to be good and not bad for me is that it has drawn me closer to
our Maker. To the one who breathes life into all my leaves and waters me when
I’m thirsty so that I grow and thrive.
And I do grow and thrive even in the midst of this time. His
words say that better is the unborn baby. And in the past months I will say
that you haven’t missed out on too much when it comes to what others undergone.
For that reason only am I thankful you are there and not here.
Now, onto something completely unrelated. The idea that I
would have no Abaleen if you hadn’t gone. I can’t conceive that because she is
all I know in the flesh. I can’t think “I’m glad I have her and not you”. Or “I wish I had you and never her”. That’s
absurdity. So, I cherish every moment with her because that is a moment I have
with her that I never had with you. And I thank God that He gave me her even
though I lost you. I thank him that this life is a breath and even now in His
mind we are all together in an eternity of something I can’t comprehend…But I
know you’ll be there and I’ll be there and our Maker.
One day I’ll “hold” you… and I will be able to love you in
that moment without any grief because thankfully there is an end to this
madness. And passing from life to LIFE uproots all the trees in my heart and
lays down a new forest of only Goodness and Joy and Peace. I don’t know what
your Home is like. Can you see me? Do you watch us? Do you laugh when I’m
silly? Do you watch me worship and know that it’s only the tip of the iceberg?
You know so many mysteries I can’t fathom.
It’s not fair that a mother should nurture a child even for
a day that she would never be able to hold and nuzzle and smell and kiss. It’s
not fair that I didn’t receive your first smile or glean from you your first
giggle. It’s torture that I don’t know if you were my one true son. It’s crazy
that I must wait to know if you were the one who took after your Daddy. (Who,
by the way, is the most amazing man I know).
In my last letter to you I begged you not to go. But in this
letter, I leave you in better spirits Zeal. You are in way better hands than
mine. (After four children I realize children living past age 5 is a sheer miracle in and of itself.) I give myself fully to the shade of this grief tree. In it I find the
comfort of my Maker in ways I would have never known otherwise. Your life was
not a waste. It has been used for my good over and over and over… And therefore
the good my children and my husband and our church and my grandchildren and so
on. Your tiny formless body has had a great impact. The fruit of your life
grows with in mine.
Zeal, you have all my love.
0 comments:
Post a Comment