one~

I've been avoiding this post for a day. And it's not because I want to get all emotional and sappy and woe is me. Trust me. That's the last place I want to sit. And somewhere down deep, it's as if I believe if I don't type it, it won't be true. Isn't that so ridiculous? Utterly ridiculous. But I think that must be what we do. We rationalize our own idiocy and irrational imagination into make believe and wishful thinking. At least that's where I find myself much of the time lately.

Yesterday was December 10th.

Yesterday marked one.

One month since our beautiful Seth met his Maker; face to glorious face.

And y'all, I'm just a mess this weekend. I'm hiding it well. At least I'm trying to. I never expected to get over him quickly. I never want to get over him at all. I mean, I didn't even know him. But I desperately loved him. I never touched him. But I absolutely felt him. I completely wanted him. Yet I never had him. He was and is, the Lord's. Why that hurts so much, I just don't know. There's so much though, that I never knew.

I never knew how quickly and savagely grief can overtake you. How you can be going through your day and a thought, a mention of something or someone; can make you ache all over.

I never knew that you could feel so much loss and so much gain at the same time. That joy and grief can be so intertwined as if they are married; as if they are one flesh. Our loss is Seth's gain. I know that full well. Loss and gain existing together. How they collide is a beautiful mess.

I never knew how comforting it could be for the Body of Christ to hurt with you. How selfish this sounds but how incredibly reassuring. So many fellow believers have called and written and met us with hugs and tears and have altogether mourned with us. Last night. Even today. A month later. How beautiful is the Body of Christ.

The Scripture in Isaiah 61 about how the Lord comforts those who mourn and gives them beauty for ashes is on the forefront of my mind. That verse keeps coming back to me over and over. I was teaching our 7-8th grade girls in Sunday School this morning about Ruth and her story of grace and her kinsmen redeemer Boaz who pointed us to Jesus. We talked about how desolate she was; she and her mother in law, Naomi. How widows and orphans were the most pitied in society. And how, with the death of their husbands, their lives were living examples of ashes. But God's plan was to redeem her and not only that, to send the Messiah to the Earth through her. How beautiful.

Beauty from ashes.

Goodness. If you want a good Christmas story. Pick up the Bible and read the Book of Ruth. You'll be hard pressed to find a better one outside of the Gospels. And I could hardly put a cohesive thought together for my sweet girls in Sunday School. I choked up reading some of the last few verses of chapter four...

"So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, 'Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.' And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, 'A son has been born to Naomi.' They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David."

I can't get over the greatness of our God. We know that Jesus was from the line of David...this line that included Ruth. How God orchestrated the sending of His son through the pain and suffering...and loss that Ruth endured. Among others. Just take a gander at the genealogy of Christ. It is wrought with these things. Terrible hardship. Sin a plenty. Great suffering. I don't pretend at all to have carried the burdens of others. In the grand scheme of this life, I don't know suffering like others who are so intimate with it. I'm the first to admit that. Many, many others are walking much more difficult roads than we are walking.

Yet. It can't be for nothing. It can't surely be that God merely wanted Seth home and healed. Can it? There must be more. Maybe I'm wrong. But in my head; in my heart, there is some purpose. I can't reason why he died. We will never have the details of his death. We have asked. And have been denied that. It's a blessing and a curse. I was telling a friend this weekend, that it's a gift of sorts. To lay in bed, put head to pillow and dream up my own beautiful ending to Seth's life. I have that privilege. I have the privilege of not knowing. And I carry the burden of not knowing.

We have been given some insight in recent days though. Our pediatric cardiologist as well as a friend's who asked on our behalf...both feel that Seth must have gotten sick. Both speculated that he had pneumonia and that it took him quickly. That some sickness settled in his weak little body and he was overtaken. There was nothing in his last cardiogram to reveal anything major had changed. We were ecstatic to hear that. That two cardiograms, 11 months apart, showed minimal damage being done to his heart. His lung pressures were stable. His pictures were beautiful. Plump, full pink lips on pictures from October 12th.

But on November 10th, he was gone. And we are left with questions. Not questioning. I know God's ways are not my ways. I'm finite, He is infinite. Everything He does is right and just and perfect. I don't doubt His sovereignty. But my questions linger. They are loud in my mind. They scream at me. And I want to scream back.

I want to grab his birth mom with both hands and tell her that she was wrong. That she made a bad decision. That's not for me to say and I'm aware of that. I have no idea the circumstances she found herself in and it's unfair for me to speculate. I haven't walked ten feet in her shoes; much less a mile. My life doesn't compare to hers in most any regard. Except that we are moms. Goodness. We are moms. And maybe she was doing the best for him. Maybe she was young. Too young. A baby having a baby who found herself in a life or death situation. This makes my heart hurt. I can't fathom this. I have no answers...so I just continue to try and make sense out of something that is completely senseless. I want peace for her. I desperately want Jesus for her. Something happened. Something went wrong and whatever that was, whatever the circumstance was that threw her into the moment where she lay him on the ground...I want it to be made right. I want beauty for her from her own ashes.

But in the back of my mind {again, this is unfair on my part}, I wonder if this wasn't the case, that he may be alive if she had just loved him despite his deformity. That his beautiful right arm that was too short and his hand that was clubbed inward was not enough of a reason to leave him there. How dare she abandon him for police to find. How dare she not love him despite it. We believe that they had no idea his heart was bad. No idea. The defects to his heart were discovered when he was four months old. Gorgeous, healthy male babies are not abandoned in China.

Imperfect looking ones are.

And this keeps me up at night. This thought haunts me. That maybe it was his little arm that made her do it. Or made her husband force her to do it. Or his parents. Or some stupid culture that goes away from God and doesn't value its children. Goodness y'all. I'm so mad. I'm so mad at her. I'm eternally grateful to her. But I just want to hit her. Isn't that terrible? I'm so sinful. I'm so angry and in my anger, I'm sinful because I want her to hurt as badly as I do now. Maybe she does feel this way and it's deplorable for me to even guess that she doesn't. I just want to hit something until it feels like this feels. I shouldn't judge her. I have no right. I am not privy to the motivations of the woman who bore our Seth. But Lord, I wish I was. What in the world will take this away from me?

Only Jesus. Over and over I say to myself, and to Him...

You are my Peace.

You are good.

You are enough.

Your plans are not to harm me.

You are faithful.

You can be trusted.

You alone are my portion.

Over and over and over I tell Jesus. Over and over and over, I tell myself. And I know, someday we will step into a room, and be handed a beautiful child. Probably one whose heart needs fixing. And I will say to him, "You were worth it all. You were worth the loss. You were worth the hurt. You are the beauty from our ashes." And I will mean it. I really, really will.