three years missing him

I have been walking the edge of darkness, staring into the abyss

doubt grows heavy and I am afraid

Afraid there might be nothing

at every turn seeing only cruelty in the story and staring into the void, faith slipping through my fingers.

When my breasts burst with milk and no child to give it to, I was wrapped in His comfort, hoping for redemption. A year later the dark birthday’s balloon slipped away from us and I held close new life. Content. Thankful. Two years, two more balloons floated away and all I saw was beauty. Three years and we march to the sand, a date with remembrance. I am numb. And I am angry. Hope waning fast. Hating myself for this ugliness, sinking past confusion to quiet. Quiet aposty crying out to Him to again prove Himself. Prove that when the years wear long, newness fading into a twisted present, that He is still good.

All the talk of story and love, goodness and gratitude fail before the memory of his body lifeless. Meaning falters before news of bombs ripping families to shreds, it collapses before cancer stealing life away and all the little heartbreaks and minor absurdities our race is drowning in. The sun grows dim before darkness all around, fathers absent and mothers confused, all the noise and pain threatening to blot out the light.

So I did not cry out. An ache down deep fading into something so much worse – numbness. Afraid that maybe there isn’t anything, my arms fall to my side – nothing real to grasp

because if there is Goodness more real than the air we breath, than the colors we see . . . then why would it write us into a story of pain and loss, futility?

I didn’t want one more go round of the Sunday school answers “because we sinned, because He gave us free choice, because He wants there to be true love and it’s not bred by compulsion.” I was not born at the dawn of time, I didn’t write the first chapter of rebellion. I was born into this dysfunctional family that is the human race and Why couldn’t He have made us the way we ought to be? Kept us safe. Why couldn’t He? I stared into the dark, trembling. All that happens on this twirling globe doesn’t seem the sort of story a holy author should write. Yes the mountains are majestic and the seas are beautiful, but that all fades fast when you hold your child still in your arms, his breath fled away.

I didn’t know what to do or think. My husband knows that when my pain is deepest my busy lips fall silent. So as I did when I was a girl, pigtails and sundresses unsure of life, I fled into crisp pages turning.  I devoured like medicine the words of others who have thought enough to search. I delve into their minds and leave my realm. In every story the battle rages. The one I am wed to is afraid to say too much, he knows the weight this questioning holds. But he says what normally he would not because this time I will not dismiss it as heresy. I am desperate and aching for wonder. “Maybe” he says, “we can not know more than the tiniest fragment. Maybe it doesn’t all play out the way we think. Maybe it’s not pat and tidied up nice like the woman in the pink sweater on stage, reminding us we pray to a Big God, a very Big God indeed. Maybe the angels and demons whirl all around us and battle for our very souls. Maybe even though He stands above all and made everything, maybe He really had to break and bleed, weep and die just to gain the upper hand. Maybe it’s not a story written to humble us or hold us down, one where the author recklessly left us to our own devices

Maybe it is the most epic struggle that has ever existed and there is no knowing or taming it. There is only the fight.

and the Promise. that we will survive. because Good wins.

He says all of this in a few words and a look and my heart stops it’s downward spiral of despair because this rings true. We are not suffering and thwarted because no one cares, or the ruler is Evil. It is because the war is more real than we can know. And we are asked only to be humble. and to be brave.

I am a wimp but this I can take. A fearful battle is much less terrifying than oblivion.

I read stories of ranches and glitzy mansions, rugged settlers, mystics and lovers and then I turn to the science of the universe. It feels like a warm blanket to be reminded that math is mystical and the far reaches of space are rational. And then I read it and faith is cemented deep into my soul again. I read that it is proven beyond doubt, by the best minds and countless resources in labs and universities searching to understand – that we only see a tiny fraction of what is real. There are not only real forces but actual matter that we can not see or reach with our record making machines. Our universe would rip to shreds or fall in upon itself unless this matter, these forces were holding it all in it’s proper place. And even these proper places we can not understand. We bring things down to our level and speak of orbits and gravity while the stars and planets dance across the sky with the freedom of a girl thinking of her lover. They obey an unseen voice while tiptoeing aside with such complex personalities that we can only wonder at their story. And all the time beyond green fields stretching out and stars streaking the night sky, close in our midst and beyond the the edges of infinity we have found that we see only a fraction, a speck of what is real. The unseen and unknowable has been proven and it is as real and present as you or me, the houses we live in or the earth we walk. We are not staring into a void, we are looking directly at Him with eyes that can not see.

 

“I will fall at your feet, and I will worship you here”

these images and video are from our little ritual of remembrance, letting balloons go at the beach in memory of our Joshua’s third birthday

10-30-12