empty

What do you do when you’re empty?

When words hurl reckless and painful, when all you have is not enough and peace dangles ridiculously out of reach,

wait.

How do you fill up the tank when everything is post modern fragmented, empty calories and processed truths?

Do you turn to a drug, a story, a fantasy, a game, an empty promise, a faulty scheme, a tasty morsel, a hopeless lie, or do you

wait?

When we all push away the unpleasantness and end up wallowing in it, when amnesia is a way of life and all is smoke and mirrors,

the only hope for filling is to wait on Him, the saving truth can only be heard by being still.

Wait . . .

 

We walked the sand, looking forward to bringing our baby into this world. We agreed to interrupt the walking only to pick up the most beautiful, perfect stones. After he arrived, quiet and still through screams of pain I counted them, thought they must be significant. Placed them in a box brought back from a memorial trip to Vietnam, brothers searching for a grandfather long gone.

Two months later and I learned I wasn’t empty anymore, filled with a new life, shaky hope and a relentless fear. Two hours after a test and tears of joy and anxiety, I drove through endless pine trees to hold my dyeing friend’s hand while her girls played quiet. Leaving her home, I walked out to my car confused and senseless and found the note, inkjet printed, angel sent and bedazzled. Namelessly, randomly tucked under my windshield wiper it whispered His promises too a heart to terrified, too beaten down to even hope.

Later I sat at her service, greedily eyeing another friend’s baby boy, wanting to run out because I couldn’t stand one more reminder of death’s cold power. Surprisingly then, the riddle was explained. I sat in shock, the chaplain reading how God had told Joshua to have the 12 leaders take 12 stones from the Jordan and make a monument to always remember what God had done for them, to tell their children. I went home aching for her family, just wanting to hold my baby and fingered my 12 stones, 11 beautiful white ones, only one dark one. And I noticed the dark one was fading, growing lighter, and I wondered what He would do, what victories would I be able to tell my children of, and would I remember?

 

So much to remember now, to build a monument to – A baby born, boys growing strong and loving true, a husband never leaving, a pastor stitching marriage vows together again, beauty and nature, prayers answered and rest given, moments too numerous to count, events too magical to describe. Staying home, schooling my boys, holding them tight, trying to pick up the beautiful stones and let the sand slip through our fingers, forgiving and even forgetting a little…

The first Easter after our Joshua journeyed to heaven we sang and read and walked on that beach. My sons brought me a shell tumbled and water worn to look just like a bit of bone, and we all remembered – remembered letting him go here, waiting to meet him there…

but do I stack these stones high and move on into the land He has given? or do I stay in that room full of death and pain, do I let fingers of blame drag me back there again and tie me conquered to a world of sin and mistakes?

Even though I build my monuments shakily I WILL stack and re stack as many times as it takes to lead my little men to the side of a Father who loves them Fiercely. He is Not tame but He IS good. In a world gone haywire I will wait for him to fill when I am hopelessly empty, I am always leaking and spilling and breaking again…

yet He always fills,

oh how He fills