You little dervish
All red hair and fire
Pint-sized
You would get in a mood and storm
Then get distracted by your toys
Begin alternating between
The distraction of playtime and the vague memory that you had been
so recently aggrieved
If I am honest, you were often a pain in the ass. Your attachment disorder meant that I was the primary target of your anger when you were growing up, which was not fun, but good for me.
I remember you when you were little, I remember the stress, chaos and exhaustion. We would look at you and Charles when you were asleep and say, they are cute when they are asleep.
find myself trying to construct an old play fort out of this gray day, the sky folded into the quilted tent
This is heaven, I tell myself, this is Mary, she was college-aged, after all. She could be here, Heaven could be this, the thin line between the realms could be as gossamer as time itself–
Yesterday you were among the living
And now I return to the prayers I prayed when I held you as a child, fierce ball of anger
Oh, God,
Make us real
Make us vivid
Wipe away the tears, the past, the unbearable
All things made new
I don’t have time to write this blog. My house is chaos, I am behind in my “day job,” and my adopted granddaughters live with us now.
Both girls have been through fires, literally and figuratively.
As I see headlines about the Texas heartbeat law, I cannot stop thinking about what an appalling loss to me and the world entire it would be if they were not here.
They, like all my kids, light up my world. If one were missing, the loss would be unbearable.
That is what the rhetoric hides–each child saved from abortion is a
Little girl twirling in a princess dress
A little boy looking for spiny lizards
A child who knows grownup words long before they should
An irreplaceable light in the darkness.
Daniel 10:12-14 KJV
[12] Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. [13] But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia. [14] Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.
We have so misunderstood and utterly misrepresented
What angels do
Who they are
Or how they might appear
(While surely they might be anyone–
Women, children, the dispossessed)
They stand their ground
Fight for us
Maybe when it would seem
We are otherwise entirely
Abandoned
I have friend who is an aficionado of romance. I am too old for that stuff myself, but I tell her that
Jesus is like the nerdy guy who likes you at the lunchroom table you should sit at but what will the cool kids think?
Yep. I am way past cool kids and would argue that if that were a thing, the guy who pays it all for us would have to be the coolest one of us all
But he is ok being
The nerdy guy who
Sends us love songs
All the time
It is scary not being able to breath properly. It looks like you have Covid lung the doctor said, congestive heart failure…
My husband told my daughters what pills to give me and when, bypassing me entirely because the lack of oxygen meant fatigue and fuzzy thinking
I had put my soul at the center of this. Dying was just a space in my peripheral vision, something that was going to be inevitable at the rate I was going.
I tried to sing these songs. Eventually I had to just sit in their presence while others sang.
I talked to Jesus about the pain and paper sack lungs. He told me he took the true agony of a pair of dying lungs so that I could be given
More time, heaven after
When I began to think I would actually live a little longer, I was still afraid to take it for granted
I had to talk myself into the river. Tell myself I could ease in, keep your head above water
When I could go under
Hold my breath
Swim again
I told Jesus I would never tell the story without full acknowledgement
He healed me. He gave me back my life at his own deep expense
His lungs for mine
Matthew 25:35-39 KJV
[35] For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: [36] Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. [37] Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? [38] When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee ? [39] Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
When Charles went to juvenile detention for a plea bargained mitigation of a monstrous charge, he received support, letters, cards, an outpouring of support.
I attributed this odd behavior from “good people” (rewarding a child abuser) thus–
Could have been something else, but whatever the motivations, his victims often did not get the same level of support he did. The people who comforted Charles did not comfort his victims.
Only two people outside our family confronted him on his sins.
To this day he does not acknowledge
What he did was wrong
There are lots of hard parts within the gaps between what the
Lord and the Righteous see
Matthew 25:35-39 KJV
[35] For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: [36] Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. [37] Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? [38] When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee ? [39] Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
The test of the I-was-es:
Seeing Jesus in all our weakness and need
Recently I told this story to a friend facing loss–
It was a beautiful, uncharacteristically sunny day in Beaver, PA. There was a cop car parked a block from us, I suspected they suspected I might run to Canada with you. You had a cute Sesame Street ensemble on, replete with orange coat. Our church friends were there to help us through.
Your dad wept. He is not usually a crier. I did not. I did not believe at that time that you were going to be away more than a long weekend.
I knew God was gonna bring you back.
The pain that followed was truly unspeakable. I questioned my faith. How could I have been so sure that I would get you back?
I asked God
And He said
“You were not wrong to believe you would get her back, it was just your timeline was off a bit.”
I know you will always be God’s baby girl, because you have always been mine💗
Carrying Light 