I knew it was coming, I saw it on the calendar, and with full honestly I’m always aware of these two days. It is the first reason I don’t like the month of May.
Nine years ago, May 7th our first child came and went too early, too quickly, too violently, too quietly. With no celebration, with no fanfare with no prayer of dedication our child was born, because he arrived too soon, because in his arrival he died. And five days later that year was mother’s day. The only thing that got me through that day was watching Brad baptize a handful of youth. I was able to rejoice with them and their decision to follow Jesus. And yet, it was a stark reminder of all the events, the milestones I would never bear witness to in my son’s life.
And so, my first mother’s day found me with empty arms and a broken heart. Feeling too much like a new mom, with swollen breasts and post partum cramping, and not like a mom at all. It renders mother’s day down to an impotent masquerade. I joined the ranks of millions of women all over the world, mother’s with empty arms, bearing their silent pain, their grief, guilt, loneliness like a one tonne elephant on their backs. Visible only to her. Not even the closest to her can see that it is there.
This is the first time in the nine years since that the two days have collided. I knew it was coming and so did my body. All week I was surprised with shadow kicks and phantom cramps. My hands would tremble on and off and I was exhausted. The body never forgets. When my eyes opened this morning I wanted to hide under the bed. The thought of going to church and screwing a smile on my face and being wished a happy mother’s day and then having to wish it back was exhausting.
But, up I got and showered and dressed and fed myself - all on auto pilot, just as I had the done the day after nine years ago. All while thinking about that day, all while asking God to help me through. I carried that elephant out of the house, into the car and into church. I thought I was making it through, holding it quiet. I thought no one could see.
Someone saw. And she asked the right question.
“how are you doing?”
That's it.
She already knew my story, and she has a story of her own. So she saw my elephant, I couldn’t hide it any longer, and she came over and hugged me so tight, that for a moment there was no room for the elephant. The burden I was bearing was made to lay bare and I wept into her bosom and she held my face with her eyes and spoke grace. And I could breathe. And the rest of the day wasn’t so horrible.
She doesn’t share my story, but she shouldered my burden. She reminded me that we make our own loneliness as much as we make our community. You may be in a community where no one else shares your story, and you just can’t bare to tell them. But then, how can they share God’s grace with you if you never give them the opportunity? You may not be ready to bear witness to your story, to turn that pain to grace, to sing joy in the sorrow, to say it is well with my soul. But don’t let that stop you from asking others how they can.
Later in the day the Spirit flashed a verse in my mind. And while it doesn’t fix what happened nine years ago, it is a reminder of the hope we have a Christ. That..
Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people can not see the scope of God’s work from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
