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Weeping Forward


I opened the red, leather bag to pack for the two nights away.  We were going to a conference at a church in the next state that we have attended twice a year since Makiah was born- well, until the accident.   I like to go because I can be anonymous and disappear into the crowd of worshipers.  This is a big step for me.  An act of reaching up to heaven… to God.  It was also another hurdle because of some very special nursery workers who kept her each time since she was a baby and always looked for her to come.  I knew they didn’t know.

As I swept my hand across the bottom of the bag, my eye caught a glimmer of something glistening and my heart dropped.  I felt the rough edges and pulled it up to the light.  Was it?  Yes…  Broken glass.  From the accident.  Her window or mine?  I cringe again at the image of the sickening crunch.  I thought we had wiped all the traces away!  Did you know shards of glass can cut into your soul?  Beyond flesh and bone, the deepest wounds are those that only the Maker’s eye can see.  I feel the withering inside.  The weariness.  The sting of remembering the thing I can never remember to forget.  I look at Cameron and he says knowingly, “Pull out.”  So this time I do.  I grit my teeth and pack the bag and decide to go and expect.

I am not disappointed.  Well, maybe a little because I had no angelic visitation or vivid dreams of heaven.  But I did feel God and I did feel closer to her- surprisingly.  The sweet nursery ladies did remember and ask and cry.  “Miss Mimi” made a special trip to see Kiah’s sisters.   She said she remembered one time when she was writing (she is left handed) and Makiah said, “Miss Mimi, dat’s not how you’re posed to write.  You’re using duh wrong hand!”  So she explained herself to my precocious little one!  Then Makiah put her tiny hand on Miss Mimi’s, and they colored together like lefties.   I laughed.  And I cried.  And maybe this weekend I healed a bit inside.

The summer before she died I did a bible study on the book of Ruth.  One thing the author said that struck a deep cord in me even then, in some strange and terrible foreshadowing sort of way, was that it matters what direction you weep in.  Ruth and her sister-n-law, Orphah, both lost their husbands.  Both were broken and mourning and desolate.  They could follow their mother-n-law, Naomi, back to the land of her people, God’s chosen people, or return to their home in a pagan country.  Orphah decided to go back to what she always knew- the familiar, but Ruth choose to go on with Naomi, to weep forward.  When we are weeping we are still walking.  With our teary steps we can slowly trudge back towards darkness or creep painstakingly forward towards God and the unknowable plan He has for us.  We will all face pain and sorrow in this broken world.  Although I feel so heavily the lifting of each foot, I want to be like Ruth and purpose  to weep forward.  Will you?

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