loss (noun)- the failure to continue to have something, like when you’re at a loss for words because loss has come seeping into your life all harsh and weeping

Two pictures.

That’s what I have in my head. Two impossibly opposite pictures that I can’t fit together no matter how hard I try. One is sharp and clear, an ideal sketched by thousands of other tiny memories and drawn together by time. The other is foggy and dim, a recent, darkened image that slides away into the edges of my mind when I try to bring it into focus.

The first is a little boy with brown eyes and a wide smile. A ready laugh. He can’t say his Rs. Sometimes he carries a plastic lightsaber.

The second—but there it goes. Slinking off again, too horrible to be real. But oh, God. It is.

I keep calling them back, trying to overlay them somehow, because I know I have to. It’s “real life” in all its ugly, all its dreadful heartbreak, and no amount of ignorance is going to change the reality of this world.

And yet.

If this is real life, then so is a phone ringing and answered from miles away: a hand stretched out and grasped tight. So are arms that open and wrap and hold. And this reality repels the other again and again like the two poles of a magnet, just like those pictures in my mind, and I know that when it is finished, it won’t be the darkness that gets the final word.

newborn (adjective): brand new and wide-eyed in the world, like this tiny Caleb-child, and his momma and daddy, too

               “Don’t worry about posting too many pictures of Caleb. People post way more annoying things. I mean, would you rather have your newsfeed full of stuff about Trump, or your friend’s babies?”

  

                That was the advice given to me by a friend this past week. And while I am trying to keep myself reigned in a little when it comes to oversharing pictures of my little baby son, I’m going to have to ask for a little grace. Believe it or not, I am showing restraint: you should see the array of expressions – from adorable to burst-out-laughing ridiculous—that cross his face in a given moment. Just know that whatever I do end up posting is narrowed down from the amount of pictures I’ve actually taken. 

                You see, over the past three weeks, your worlds have been going on pretty much as they have been. Mine, on the other hand, has been flipped around and turned inside out, and its focus has narrowed and widened all at once. Everybody tells you that having a baby will change your life, but they don’t tell you how… at least, not beforehand. They leave you to assume that the biggest challenges you’ll be facing are lack of sleep and an altered lifestyle, so when you wake up one morning and realize something is different—that these aren’t the same false contractions you’ve been having for the last few weeks—you’re not exactly ready for what’s about to come. You make the calls, you pack the car and drive to the hospital “just in case”, but you’re really expecting to be sent back home. And even when they tell you it’s on—that you’ll be holding a baby by midnight—it still hasn’t hit you. And then things get hard and serious and you’re not really you for a while, and even after the pain finally leaves with that last slippery rush and they put your new, tiny person on your chest, you still don’t get it.

                No… that comes later. And it comes slowly, hesitating for a long time on the edges of what you know and what you can articulate. The first hint comes while you’re lying in the dark between the two you love most in all the world, the boy you married and this other one, the one you hardly know but you’ve already endured so much for. You’re tired and aching, but each time that quick little breath catches, yours does too. And that’s it. That’s when it starts. That’s when you begin to see that the agony of labor was just the very, very beginning of how your world is being reordered. This awareness unfolds a little more with each day, until you acknowledge that it will be going on for the rest of your life. It isn’t just your baby who is newborn in this world… but you.

                Those first few days, or weeks, even, might be the hardest thing you’ve ever experienced; worse than the hours of labor. It’s during this time that you realize that you could never be ready for this perfect new person even in these small early things, and the terrifying weight of all those bigger ways in which you aren’t ready sinks in. You’re so worn out that you just want these infant days to be over, but at the same time, you’re praying that you can sink down into them like a stone in a river and let each moment flow long and sweet over you.

Like when you run your hand over his back, over the fine ripples of his tiny bones, in absolute wonder at skin so soft you aren’t actually sure you’re touching it.

And when you take that baby into your arms again and again in the middle of the night to nurse him, or clean up a new mess just seconds after you finished the last one.

And when he turns his head and looks around, wide-eyed, lips pursed in wonder at everything.

Or when you’ve done all you know to do for him and he’s still screaming and you’re left crying hard while you rock him.

These are the moments when all the weight and glory of parenthood come down. It is in these moments, behind all the practicalities of having a baby, that the fiercest kind of love is born: the mother-love that teaches of the Father’s love. It goes beyond the scope of conventional words and Hallmark wishes; beyond what you can know until you’ve labored and delivered and held. And even now, newborn parent that I am, I know I’m just seeing the beginning of this. I think it will be the hardest thing I will ever do.

And the best.

                

snapshot (noun): an informal photograph taken quickly; one that captures a small moment out of a string of moments that are maybe bigger or brighter or flashier, but one that you want to remember anyway, if only because it is beautiful, somehow, in its smallness

It’s cold again. My body remembers it so well: this falling toward winter, this time of afternoon light stretching shadows long. The wind sharpens, making my cheeks blush and my eyes tear up, and there’s a part of me that clenches up tight, tries to shrink away from the cold and the coming winter. Spring’s excited whisper is long gone, and the clinging heat of summer has faded, replaced more than a month ago by the snap of early fall. And it was beautiful, wasn’t it? All those trees, setting fire to the mountains like they’d been waiting all season to do just that? The tart juice of a just-picked apple, sharp and delicious on your tongue? The warmth of sliding into a sweater again, for the first time in months?

Beautiful.

But now, it’s November. Now, the bright colors and the newness of the season are gone, and when the evenings come early, the last of the sunlight is fractured as it sinks into a net of stark, leafless branches. The former glory of the trees, fallen now and fading to brown, is scattered beneath them, dry and cracked and dead.

And it’s cold again. I tug my jacket more tightly around me, my steps wandering, following the most gnarled of the leaves just to hear them crunch under my soles. I’m not really dressed for a walk in the woods today, but the nature preserve is right on my way home from work, and there’s still plenty of light left for a short walk down the trail and back. It’s long and low, that dying golden sun, and something about the slant of its rays draw out colors from the drab November woods that I hadn’t noticed before. How many shades of grey are there in an oak tree’s trunk? More than I know names for, certainly. And how had I not seen that the backs of those leaves I’d been happily stepping on a moment ago aren’t bronze like their fronts, but silver-white?

I turn to leave, walking slow with eyes wide. This subtle loveliness is so easy to miss after the vibrancy and exuberance of October, and while I remember the cold of this time of year, I seem to have forgotten it’s beauty. My mind tends to jump from one obvious grace to the next: the moment that first burst of fall color begins to fade, I’m already looking ahead to those falling snow-kisses, their elegance piling up and covering the dark branches of the trees.

But I shouldn’t. There’s a beauty here I’m missing out on if I charge blithely on. I reach the edge of the woods and pause, looking back through the trees, and maybe I’m seeing them—really seeing them—for the first time. In the spring, the hinting green buds lend them an air of promise, and in the summer, they hide behind the bright green of healthy growth. Early fall is maybe their best moment, when they light their leaves up and burn, but what now? What now, when there are no buds or leaves or even snow, just the slender trunks crowned by interlaced branches?

They are stripped bare, and I can see the shades of color—white and black, grey and silver, brown and bronze— varying from tree to tree. I can see every knot, every snapped-off branch, every crack breaking in deep through the bark. I can see the graceful arc of branches lifted to the purpling sky above them, like raised hands. Like they’re shrugging quietly, “This is all I am. Can you call this beautiful?”

My breath catches.

I walk back just a few steps and press my hand against the craggy bark of the nearest tree: an oak. I look up, into the lacy web of branches high above my head, and I do: I see the beautiful here, in this imperfect tree gripping the earth and reaching for the sunset sky. In this November woods. In this almost-gone day. And as I do, I realize that this is something I want to remember. Not the cold of this season, or the glory of other seasons. Just this.

Because it is beautiful.

response (noun) – a reaction to something (it can be knee-jerk or it can be deliberate but usually it’s somewhere in the middle, some kind of mix of both, and you know what, that’s just fine)

Hey,

You were saying on the phone the other day that you really appreciate words from people, because you sometimes feel like your confidence is all bluster; that inside, you’re less self-assured than you let on. So words of assurance from people who know you and love you helps.

(I don’t think you’re alone in that, by the way.)

So I could take a lot of time right now to describe how great you are, and how flat-out amazed  by you I am. And maybe I’ll do that later, or by text or Snapchat or something. But I want to say something first: something you can consider a long-distance hug.

This whole situation that you’re going through… it really, really sucks. You’re not going to find an easy answer, either, because this is your “one wild and precious life”, and nobody else, for all their experience, has been in your exact same situation. They can and probably have been in shoes similar to yours… but not exactly the same. And so nobody, for all that they’ve lived and loved and cried and laughed, can predict what will happen if you make one decision over another. Some people take wild chances and risk the world as they know it, and other people live out dares to protect their corner of the world, and who’s to say which was the right decision and which was the wrong one… if there even was such a thing? And I’m not talking about absolutes and morals and truth with a capital T here: I’m talking about those everyday decisions you have to make.

The subtle ones.

The ones that aren’t black and white.

The ones that stack up eventually into a life.

That’s so much pressure!

But then again, it’s not. Not for you and I, right? Even though we don’t know what we’re doing, we’re not the ones with our hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. We’re really just along for the ride. And God (‘cause you know he’s the driver in this super-cheesy analogy, right?) he’s the most amazing tour-of-life guide you could ask for, because he has a penchant for taking all the back roads, the ones we never even heard of, that we didn’t think existed. And he’s beyond excited to point out all the sights we would probably miss otherwise. I can just picture him, leaning across the passenger seat to point out the window—

Hey kid, look! Look at this bridge, at that rushing water beneath us, at the sturdiness of the supports planted against that turbulence.

Look upriver a ways—see that waterfall kicking its heels up, celebrating even as it tumbles past rocks?

Look back at where we’ve come from. That beautiful ribbon-road winding its way down the craggy, grinning mountains? That was where you were afraid of falling, remember?

It’s all mine—all my gift to you. Open your hands and take it.

We’re not a people who hunker down and shove through life just to make it through. And we’re not a people who close eyes and cover ears and say “It’s all good!” as loud as we can to drown out reality. We’re a people of hope. We’re a people who try to see the world as God sees it, not limited by our understanding of the shape of things, and respond in kind, whether that means reacting with tears or with laughter.

Remember when the prophet Samuel went to anoint the next king of Israel? He was looking at all of David’s brothers, and pretty much thought each of them was “the one” God had in mind.

“Aha! You mean this guy, right God? I could so totally tell!”

“Ummm, you could, huh? ‘Cause that’s not the guy… you’re not exactly looking at this the right way.”

“Oh. Okay. Hmmm… got it! THIS guy!”

(Facepalm)“Try again, Samuel….”

And so on, until Samuel thought he’d exhausted all his options. And then God’s like, taa-daa! here’s the next king of Israel! And it’s David… and look at all he goes on to do.

I think the close-up version of this story is God trying to get the right guy as king of Israel, because Saul wasn’t super great. But if you zoom out, you see a bigger picture: David is the great-something-grandpa of Jesus. This one little moment of Samuel going down the line of Jesse’s sons is part of God’s great love story to the world.

But nobody saw it like that. Which is why God had to step in and remind them that we’re working in an infinity here, not in the world as we know it, so hey—let me drive this road, okay, and you sit back and spread your arms wide and take it all in and do whatever you need to do. Cry. Yell. Laugh. Whisper. Whatever.

This moment you’re in, beloved child of mine? The one that’s causing you all this heart-hurt? Open your hands. Trust me.

This is part of my love story for the world. You are part of my story.

So hang on to that, okay? I know you know that you’ll be okay, in the long run: you just wish the long run would hurry up and get here. But wait for the Lord; be strong, take heart, and wait for the Lord. Part of his timeline of grace is learning how to hope.

Love ya lots, more, and most.

-Kate