It’s been over a decade now. I’m counting in decades. Not only years or months. Weeks or days. We have grown to decades of loss. Nearly eleven years since I held you last. Since my heart tore deep and started bleeding for you, for love, for loss. Since I felt your last breath against my chest, the weight of your body heavy in my arms. Your soul gently swept away from the agony of this earthly life and straight into Jesus’ arms. A decade has passed and yet I grieve deep for you, sweet boy. Life isn’t fair. No one promised me it would be. I just didn’t realize how unfair or how hard or how much pain life would bring.
And yet so much beauty. Art is made from ashes. From dust and dirt and mud and pain and brokenness, comes the most beautiful creations. This is how we love. This is how we know love and feel love and comprehend goodness and grace.
I still weep when I think of those moments. The most holy moments, the most faithful God, the indescribable pain all somehow intertwined in such chaos and suffering and stillness and peace. It doesn’t make sense. It seems so contradictory and strange and yet it is. Over and over again I play those moments in my mind and nothing changes. Life and death, beauty and ashes, worship and weeping. I long for it and push it away.
The further from your life I am, the more questions I have. The more i long for the day when all death is undone and all wrong is made right and I see you again. Sweet Thao, this week and these journals, notes on loss and love and longing, are for you. And for me. And for every grieving mama out there.
