Happy Birthday Mother

I love birthdays but then who doesn’t?  I’ve always loved my birthdays as they were always large affairs.  I spent a few hours every year surrounded by people who loved and adored me.  As I got older, I realized I was very naive.  My birthdays were memorable because of my mother.   I didn’t realize it until my 33^rd birthday.  I spent that birthday, writing in a journal and ranting at God because the doctor used the word “cancer” in the same sentence he had used to refer to my mother.  Cancer is something that happened to other people.  Not my mother.  

If she was scared, she never said.  If she was worried about the outcome, she never let it show.  I hated the fact that I was spending my birthday sitting in a hospital room with my mom.  When I got to her room that day, she told me happy birthday.  In that moment I realized the significance of birthdays.  A woman is first a daughter but if she’s lucky she becomes a mother and then maybe even a grandmother.  My son was two years almost and in that moment I realized that a birthday connects two people, the child who is born and the woman who births her.  

I wasn’t sure how I would manage this day.  It surprised me.  I got a card from a dear friend who reminded me that I am the best parts of my mother.  It was better than I would have hoped and I like to think that if she is indeed looking down from heaven she would approve.  We are fractured but healing will come with time.  I believe this now.  If you had asked me a week ago, I would not have had the faith.  

As I sit here writing this, I’m realizing that this is my new normal.  This year is coming to a close.  I spent rang in 2014 with my best friend.  I remember calling my mother and wishing her a Happy New Year.  I saw her in passing when I came back from Brooklyn.  I could regret it, but the writer in me sees only the foreshadowing of the events that transpired.  I will never share any birthdays with her.  There will never be any more new years for either one of us.  

Yet, I’m ok with that.  In part because I have to be, but in truth because as much as I miss her, she will always be an intricate part of me.  The beauty is slowly beginning to emerge from the ashes. 

....this is my Christmas wish...

Upon much reflection I must admit, “[i]t is well with my soul”.  I have cried and grieved much, perhaps far more than I would like.  I cry and grieve still.  Yet life move forwards.  As the day of my mother’s birth approaches, two days before Christmas in fact, my thoughts turn more and more towards that babe born in a manger over 2,000 years ago.  I can’t escape this emptiness within my heart, the ache deep in my soul.  I am broken.  Permanently.  There is no quick fix or even a lengthy recovery from this.  Her material possessions are as cold as the grave I will never visit.  Her warmth is gone as is the tender care with which she nurtured all things, living and non-living.  

On this day, when despair would devour me whole, I find myself listening to Horatio Spafford’s hymn “It Is Well With My Soul”.  I know the song and the story of its composition well but I never paused to dwell on the lyrics before.  I was hoping to gain comfort form the following words:

“When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

Instead, I found a promise….

“Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!”

I have been attacked to my core this past week from those closest to me.  I don’t say this as a means of complaint against anyone.  Rather, I say this with the realization that we don’t have defenses against those we love the most.  We can guard our hearts, but not against those we love.  It's not possible.  That is how the enemy will come, as a slithering serpent into our very garden of Eden, to break, to steal, to destroy, until we have nothing left.  The last few weeks have been filled with anger, pain, and a lot of hurt.  I have spent two week amidst harsh economic conditions and the end just doesn’t seem in sight.  Then I really heard the words to the song.  

Christ has regarded that I would be here, right now, and He has shed His blood for my soul!  In the midst of this raging storm in my life, my emotions, my thoughts, my peace are all under attack, but Christ knew this.  He has shed His blood for MY soul.  Not in part, by in whole.  How profound is that thought, not only the sin that I committed yesterday but the one I have yet to commit.  I am imperfect.  He is perfect.  I will respond in a way that is less than perfect.  To err is human as the poet said.  I will err over and over and over again.  Yet, 2,000 years ago before He appeared in the manger, He chose to regard my helpless estate and shed His blood for my soul.  Not in part, but in whole, until I draw my last breath.  It humbled me unlike anything else has ever done in my life.  If I hadn’t done this before, when I gave my life to him all those years ago, I do so now and humble myself to Him and offer my complete and total surrender.  

“And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend
Even so, it is well, with my soul.”

I thought of my mother and those last few weeks when she came home.  We are human and parting for us is sorrowful at the best of times.  We hold each other up the best that we can.  We react, we ache, we hurt, we mourn, we grieve, and we do whatever we have to do to go through the motions of living because we are still here on this earth.   Our life continues on.  Time moves on.  

In those last few weeks, though I didn’t know it then and wouldn’t for a good while, the doorway to heaven was open.  She wasn’t waiting to go, with her bags all packed.  No, she was waiting for her Jesus to come and get her.  The presence of God grew stronger as the day for her departure came nearer.  Only God knows the hour when He will come.  For those of us who were fortunate to be able to visit with her, we got to experience that awesome presence of God.  When I arrived at the house after her departure, the presence was gone.  The Lord of hosts had descended in the night while we slept and as quietly as the babe was born in the manger amidst Mary’s agony and Joseph’s concerned helplessness, He took my mother’s hand and she left with Him.  She was ready.  Are we?

As we go through the last minute checks on the gifts and the parties, pause for a moment and dwell on that night.  A mother close to her time.  A world in turmoil.  Labor pains begin and there is no room at the inn.  A husband, desperately concerned for his wife and the well-being of the child she’s about to bring into this world.  Into this scene came the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, the Messiah the world was waiting for.  He regarded our helpless, hopeless estate and He came into this world still knowing, He would die on that cross for our souls!  

I hope this Christmas season, you can reflect on your circumstances and know that all is well with your soul because that babe, born in the manger at Bethlehem died for your soul.  Our sins, not in part, but in whole was nailed to the cross.  So whoever you are, wherever you are, you don’t have to carry whatever you are carrying.  Take the gift that has been given to you.  Be free and let it be well with your soul.

Breaking my silence

Nothing speaks quite as eloquently as silence.  If one remains still long enough, the silence can be more deafening than the loudest noise.  Silence is the absence of words when everything else is used to speak volumes that no words could possibly articulate.  As I sit here, I am throwing my words down on paper or in this case the screen of my computer and then releasing them into the cyberspace that is known as the internet.  Without having made a sound, I have broken my silence. 

I have been lost for far too long.  My words are uttered as a beacon, a flare in the dark abyss of this ocean of grief in which I am drowning.  All around me is the echo of my errant thoughts.  I can’t bare it anymore, this silence that is threatening to consume me. 

The words I desire to hear will never be uttered.  They are etched in my memory as I last heard them but sometimes, I wonder if perhaps I didn’t imagine them.  The words that I remember hearing had been spoken in love and had been filled with love.  My life is now void of that love and I am lost, alone in a sea of my own grief, drowning.  Who will rescue me?

It has been over two months since she died; the she, who had dominated so much of my life that her absence has left a void the size of a sinkhole beneath the foundation of my life.  I am lost.  She’s gone.  No one will find me now.  I want to come back home to myself but I no longer know where I am.  I am lost.

The pain is like an ever present shadow that hovers over my shoulders, like a deadly asp, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.  It is all consuming, like a raging forest fire and all my tears are in vain as the fire can’t be put out with such pathetic torrents.  It grips my heart like a manacle, a tight vise made of steel from which I can’t break free.  All around is darkness and I am lost in it.  My light has gone out.  The love that had been my constant guiding light will be no more.  I am lost and alone, swimming in the sea of my grief.

There is a hand and five little fingers.  It reaches for me.  There is a voice that calls out my name.  Mae!

The girl is gone.  She has drowned in her grief.  Only the woman remains.  Her shadow is larger than mine ever was.  She reaches for the hand and finds three more.  Another voice cries out.  Mummy!

There is light in the distance, a shore.  Breaking free of her cocoon of pain, she moves her arms through the water of her grief.  A flutter of wings, break the silence surrounding her.  She sees the distant shore just beyond.  There are small lights, shining through three pairs of eyes, like six little dots of flame dancing on the distant shore.  She pulls herself forward, her arms treading the pain that would be her watery grave.  Her legs kick.  

The voices call out her name.  Mae!  Mummy!  Love!

I slip and fall beneath, drowning in my pain.  My loss is too great to keep swimming.  She breaks free, we are no longer one.  As I gasp my last breath, she takes her first.  It’s a noise that breaks the silence.

I am free, she cries.  The sound is deafening.

Finally she understands.  The wings on her back flutter.  It’s not necessary to swim , not when you have wings to fly.  

They are calling my name.  Mae!  Mummy!  Love!

I whisper, loud as thunder, the words spoken with the clarity of ringing bells, I am coming home.  

The silence is broken at last and the soft whisper of the butterfly’s wings taking flight is deafening this time, drowning out the silence instead.