Moving Day

Moving to our new house, Mama? Will we take baby? What about Daddy? And my books? Will we take my blanket and my soft pillow? Little hearts are processing this transition as well as they can. Moving is hard to understand when you are two.

Cardboard brown is everywhere. Things disappearing as the days wear on. The screeching sound of tape as we seal the boxes shut. So many things hidden in this house. Some things I had forgotten. Others never discovered. All to be uncovered in the moving,

The box of size 5 outfits with tags still hanging forlornly. The hairbrush full of long blonde hair that tumbled down from the closet shelf. Her pink silk pillow. The bag of rocks she picked out when we visited the Grand Canyon. Her rainbow colored clip dancing in the bottom of my makeup drawer. Her art table hiding in the back of the pantry. The bottle of her favorite salad dressing that sat unopened and unnoticed on a back shelf for the last three years. Her tiny pink apron that she wore when we were baking cookies. Pretty princess dresses climbing down from the attic.

The dollhouse. I had to open and pack up the dollhouse. I have had it locked all this time. Untouched in a sort of timeless state. Waiting for little fingers to come and play again. I have already taken pictures of the little blonde girl tucked gently between her mom and dad in the upside down dollhouse bed. But what I did not see until I moved them was the three girls, 2 older sisters and a baby, lined up underneath them.

The second family. Waiting patiently to be discovered. You couldn’t see them until the first one was scattered. I shake my head and tears well up. I look at my mom, and she says with a quivering voice, “This is hard.” I nod.

A few weeks ago I was unloading the girls to walk into church. As I started to unbuckle Abby, she ran her finger across my necklace- a tiny picture of Makiah. “Mommy,” she said. “Sissy Kiah. Kiah not coming home. Kiah not come home to see me.” I took a deep breath. I have been dreading these conversations for two and a half years, but it still seemed catch me off guard. “No, baby. Kiah is not coming home. She is in heaven…” Abby interrupts me suddenly, “In heaven with Jesus!” She smiles as if she is satisfied and wriggles down from her car seat.

Big sisters who don’t come home are hard to understand when you are two. And when you are much older than two…

A sweet friend wrote to me on Makiah’s birthday that she hoped I would have sweet memories of her as I looked around at the spaces she inhabited. And I did. I can look at the fireplace and see her kneeling there playing with our little Christmas bear ornaments. I glance at the bar and in my minds eye she is sitting there licking her spoonful of peanut butter. In my bathroom I can see her long legs splashing in my tub while she plays with mermaids. In our bonus room upstairs, affectionately nicknamed ‘the upper room,’ I see her twirling a sash and dancing to worship music. Treasures hidden in my heart. Memories of her in this space.

I also found my missing journal. The one I was keeping when Makiah died. The last entry was 9/26/10… just twelve days before we lost her. The last words I wrote were a result of some complications with the twin pregnancy. I was 15 weeks pregnant. I thought that was what I was writing about…

“Lord, help me to press into you and to come to a deeper place of knowing and believing you. John 6:29 says the work God has for me is to believe in the One He has sent! I know you will bring treasure from this trial. Give me the grace to endure with joy and to cultivate an awareness of your presence.”

I had no idea what trial would engulf me. And no idea that I would indeed find that in my utter helplessness the only work I could do was believe. In the One. He has sent. And no idea of the grace (Or the Maddie Grace!) that He would pour out on our weary souls. No idea that you could keep on living after dying. No idea that joy really does come in the morning.

In the moving and the finding of bittersweet surprises comes another surprise. The knowing that there really is freedom for those who are bound. And there really is healing for the broken. And there really is resurrection for the dead. And the living dead.

Before my heavy eyelids lose their battle tonight, I want to say I am thankful that all the painful moments of leaving and loss are trumped in the end by this truth. The truth that this is not really the end…