Of What Was Lost

It was a year ago. A bright, sunny Saturday, just like this one. I was waddling around with a burgeoning, burdensome belly, our house had just sold and my mother was in town awaiting the arrival of our new little one. Life was hectic, but good.

We were enjoying a mother-daughter day - lunch and then antique shopping. Mom ran back into a store to snag a treasured surprise - a beautiful lamp for our new nursery. I checked my phone as it buzzed with a text.

"Dad asked us to pray for Angela. They lost Maverick today."

I had just seen my cousin-in-law, the one whose name I inherited as a wedding gift, post on Facebook the day before - that adorable baby boy, only three months old, wearing the tiara his sister had placed on his head. There was no indication anything was wrong - no sickness, no birth defects, nothing that had ever raised a red flag or indicated this beautiful boy would leave this world early.

Lost him?

Like how? Like they went to the mall and mis-placed him? Because, really, they couldn't mean the other kind of lose. The kind of lose that refers to someone fighting a long battle or a foreseen ending.

My mother emerged from the store, prize in hand. Distraught, I scoured Facebook for anything that could explain this to me.

"If he's only three months old," she reasoned, "I don't think he could have wandered off . . ." my mom gently tried to prepare me for the most obvious conclusion.

But I wasn't ready to accept it. Especially not without details. I would continue to hope there was simply a misunderstanding. That there would be more photos to come and this was just a small glitch that would be ironed out.

Because there was no way that a little girl on the other side of the state had "lost" her Bubba. Or that this bright, beautiful day, the kind of day that just makes you want to get outside and glory in living, could hold anything other than that - living.

But it did.

And our hearts grieved. Grieved for a little boy we'd met only once, his tiny little body curled against his mother - I'll hold him another time, I had thought that day. I sobbed. For a mother I'd seen casually at Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's - brief visits, ones where we watch the kids play and don't do much talking of our own. The one who shared my name and now shares my heart.

A year later, my heart continues to grieve. Timehop can be a treasure and a torture - and re-living those beautiful moments is such joyful sorrow. Joy for the life that was - waves of sorrow for the life that was "lost."

So today, this weekend, and, really, every time I savor the laughter of my own sweet little one, I remember. I remember Maverick. And I pray. I pray for those who held him in their arms - whose arms will ever be void of that little lucky charm.

His tiny life has forever touched ours.

Of Changed Plans

I wake up earlier than I want on a Saturday morning (but that's nothing new, is it?). The plans for today aren't what I had looked forward to. I had anticipated a lazy day, where we had no plans, because sometimes no plan at all is just the plan you need to re-charge and reconnect as a family - particularly when the last time you had that no-plan, a mere week ago, Mommy spent the morning raging at kids who didn't deserve it, slamming cabinets until their frames fell apart, and finally leaving the mess for her husband to deal with, because something inside her just couldn't take it all - all of this thing called life.

Yet, on this same Saturday morning, another woman awakes - if she slept at all, because who can sleep when the warmth beside her is gone? When there were sounds through the night and your protector is missing - and won't ever return? She awakes, if she even caught those forty winks, through the night-sounds and the nightmares, to find she is still in the nightmare.

How had she planned, just a week ago, to spend this day? Was there a birthday party to attend? A gathering of friends, family? Was he finally going to get to that project she'd been bothering him to finish? Or just mow the yard so it could be clean cut for another week? Had she planned to snuggle in just a little longer next to that man of hers, pretending they couldn't hear the kids down the hall, for just a few minutes? Or do their boys toddle in to crawl into bed, asking where's Daddy? At work? No, not at work, because he never made it to work on Tuesday morning, when he slipped quietly out of the house in the early morning hours to go earn a paycheck and take care of his family.

I grieve for her. I grieve for the third time in less than a year and a half for a woman too young to be widowed. A woman now left alone with two little boys who don't understand why they can't wrestle with Daddy - one of whom may be too young to even remember his face a year from now. And then there's the one in her womb - the one they announced to the world only a few weeks ago - the one who will never meet this man called "Daddy."

And she'll have to do it all alone. Or at the very least without the one who is half of the life inside of her - who was all of her life on the outside. The ultrasounds, the first kicks, the first contractions, the first push, the first cry - all without him who helped her create this miracle (though, thankfully, she has Him Who is the creator of all miracles).

And I thought my life was too much?

So I awake on this Saturday morning, the same one where she will be saying final good-byes to a man with whom she had planned to spend her entire life, not realizing his would end at twenty-four, to serve her. A minuscule gesture of love to someone who is hurting more than I can imagine. In a world that is too much pain.

And it's not what I planned, but then, it's not what she planned, either.

Of Our Hope in Troubled Times

We received one of those phone calls today that comes from a most unexpected place. Because who ever honestly expects to answer the ringing or click open the text to learn someone they love has endured the unthinkable?

That the photos you saw on Facebook yesterday of a little girl placing a plastic crown atop the head of her baby brother, calling him "Princess Bubba" as he sat in his bouncer, those pictures that made you smile and warmed you with the love that Facebook-posting momma has for her precious little ones, that momma you saw at Thanksgiving nestling her weeks-old son in her careful arms, would be the last you would see of that toddler sister loving on her little brother.

When someone you love woke to a sunny Saturday morning, only to go to bed physically aching for a little boy that's not coming back into her arms. While my body squirms with the life inside bursting to get out, her body seeks the suckler that won't return, whose life has vanished too quickly.

How can this be fair? How can one not collapse under the weight of such a world where things happen we can't control and life changes without a moment's notice?

Only hope.

Only faith.

Only by the knowledge that there is a God in Heaven who nestles the little one in His arms - the little one we would all snatch back without a second thought, given the chance. And that God is our Rock. When nothing else makes sense. When the pain is great and undeserved, He remains faithful, the strength of our hearts, when no other strength can be found within us.

In this truth we hope. Without it we are nothing.

So we rest in that hope tonight. Lifting prayers for the hurting and asking peace for those to whom our human words are meaningless. Because we have nothing more to offer.