Brave Love

i carefully and ever so quietly let the doorknob shift in my fingers. 

Wilder is ready to go down for his morning nap and Andrew is still attempting to sleep and fight off his cold. 

as i begin to sway, the ceiling fan blades accompany my coaxing and Wilder’s eyes begin to easily close. 

it is such a peaceful and quiet Sunday morning and I try to stretch out every inch of it before the world wakes up. 

much as i always do when the world is quiet my mind moves to Brave. I often imagine what the moment would be like should he be here with us. 

today, I have him tucked in his daddy’s arms lying in our bed while I rock Wilder. i dream of our family all together and crowded perfectly in this small bedroom. 

my family. my loves. my boys.

i let myself pretend for just a moment they are all here and the world is right and that none of us are still waiting for glory.

but the wood floor shifts beneath my feet and my heart reminds me that we are not all here together in this room living life as a family, we are separated. 

i move strategically towards the bassinet to lay Wilder down, i am aware that my arms never want to put him down. these arms summon me to hold him while he sleeps, to hold this precious one. these arms, my arms are thirsty for lost hours, lost years. 

no happy endings yet, just two beautiful boys who love me, 

and teach me, 

and remind me that i have been gifted by them both,

and beckon me to hold on to hope,

hope for something more than this life. 

I love traditions, 

and rituals, 

and anything of methodical rhythm. 

Bedtimes are being created in our home. 

Wilder gets to sit under his Brave mobile and watch the prisms and angel wing twirl as I put lavender lotion and give him a “baby massage” to which he squeals with delight. 

Then we read a bit in the rocking chair. 

I am reading from the Children’s Bible, the one Wilder’s Nana got him. She originally got it for Brave but later gifted it to Wilder in memory of Brave. 

I am reading the story of Jesus being born to Mary. 

Reading about God’s excitement to tell the world of His Son who has come as a little baby…the animated words convey an elated Father who is proclaiming His love, His admiration for His little boy. 

I tear up a lot. Often at just little things, the veil is thin around my heart. 

Wilder is engrossed in the brilliant yellow that surrounds the angel proclaiming Jesus’ arrival to the shepherds. 

i laugh out loud, startling Wilder a little, at the shepherd’s response.

“Glory to God. Honor and all the fame to Him and all of our hoorays.”

“all of our hoorays.” 

that is just precious. 

I turn off the light, and begin to rock Wilder as I sing. 

here again, i cry, as i always cry when I sing him to sleep. 

“all of our hoorays…to God and His Son.”

my song quiets and i hear myself say aloud. 

“i love you God.

but it still hurts.”

It’s the first time I have said that aloud since losing Brave. 

I pause in the dark, its stillness reminds me God isn’t surprised. He also doesn’t seem terribly moved by my confession. 

I sigh. It has been a long road of grief, a long time with much distance. maybe it is my own relief I feel that I can honestly say I love this silent deity who has given and taken Brave.

Wilder is sleeping soundly. I kiss him and thank him for being here. I simply blow a kiss toward the window view of the night sky. I walk the tiresome path of grief and joy. 

i can hear Andrew talking to Wilder in the bathroom. 

supposedly, I am doing homework and Andrew is on Wilder patrol. 

do you know that I love you?

do you? do you know that I love you Wilder?

because I do. 

do you know that?

Wilder is cooing back at Andrew’s voice and I am smiling as Andrew continues to confess his uninhabited love for Wilder. 

as I turn to read another article I hear Andrew again. 

good Wilder, just so you know that I love you. 

i wonder what the world would be like if we all had such a good daddy.

five years last night.

our church Awake celebrated another birthday.

each year illuminated and remembered. 

1,2,3,4,5.

happy memories coupled by stories of disappointment. 

like fingernails filled with dirt and pieces of shattered glass.

words sewing hope between our hands. 

We found much beauty last night.

and as in expected tradition, we ended the evening with hours on the dance floor. dance has become essential in our church.

it was just before we headed out the door to pick up our son Wilder, the song started. Andrew and my lyrical love affair with Macklemore needs not to even be communicated and we found ourselves back there on the dance floor, squeezing between sweaty faces and knowing smiles we know so well.

those words began to call to me.

“this is the moment, tonight is the night, we will fight til it is over and we put our hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us. 

we came to live life like no one was watching.

we put our hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us.”

I have spent weekends in auditoriums for worship services, hours playing and singing my guitar in praise, but something about this moment surpassed them all. Something about his words, his hope calling to us. to live life like no one was watching, to press through the ceiling and reach heaven. this is what I have found in my community, in these friendships, amongst these who have held my weeping and writhing form. Who have showered laughter graciously spilling through my bones. 

and we danced, jumping with our hands up like we would demand earth to be as it is in heaven. tear down the ceiling so that the veil between heaven and earth would hang thinner than before.

From evil.

From evil, deliver us.

This is the mantra we are teaching from at church during Lent this year. 

Our community has compiled daily writings on the topic and my days are each inviting me into an awareness that my life matters,

My choices matter,

My words matter,

My calling matters,

and being alive is to live a part of a larger story.

A story in which if we engage we must pray to be delivered from evil.

i sat next to a demon last night in my office.

My final client of the evening and I convened in awe of the coldness that resided after the encounter.

Tuesdays are my long days at work.

There was much contemplation on my bus ride home.

Demons aren’t a normal occurrence

i usually wrestle with the coy lies and contempt in the spiritual and emotional arenas of beauty, body and sexuality.

So, maybe demons are a common occurrence.

Deliver us from evil.

That is my most recent life prayer.

The truth, if I am honest, is everyday I fight evil,

Everyday I pray to be delivered from it.

Demons and evil are big, awkward words that stumble out of my theology with knicks and bruises.

Yet within my days of writing dissertations and counseling therapists,

I wrestle them,

But even louder, on days of kissing Wilder and longing for Brave, I wrestle them.

I look down at Wilder’s sleeping body strapped to my chest,

Every few minutes I hold my breathe to feel his belly expand against mine.

I wrestle to have peace that he continues to live. To hold hope that he will not stop breathing.

Daily, I allow Wilder to play, to wear, or to be in something that was intended to be for Brave.

And just as I stop to feel for Wilder’s breathe, I still pause and listen for sound to come from places Brave was meant to be.

The tension to hold and honor life and death are exhausting,

But I continue to wrestle,

Sometimes with God,

Sometimes with Evil.

I believe God has power over Evil…I only just recently am learning to hope God will deliver us from Evil. 

Selah.

“it makes it some much easier to go to work if you have good child care.”

She is telling me this on my first day back to work, as I explain my hesitation to leave Wilder, how even my body longs to be near him when I am away.

Good childcare.

I can at least breathe easier when I know Wilder is cared for…

but my little Brave. Who cares for him? 

Some things went missing at Brave’s gravesite this week and my tears and rage surface. The mother bear in me emerges instantly these days.

How much more can you take? There is so little left, how can someone take the little we have left?

The few gentle trinkets we had there, his pictures and the words of longing and love are the kindest things that meet me when I go to see where we laid him…but they are gone.

I carefully lay the delicate red flowers near his headstone, I know their petals will be gone within an hour of this brutal cold wind, but I want to desperately leave something delicate near his body. desperate to put myself near him.

so I lay it down, allowing it to take up some of the emptiness of the missing box, lantern and chimes.

It still looks so empty,

just like my breast, just like my belly, just like my arms…

so empty without my Brave in them.

Wilder teaches me what Brave never could and Brave teaches me what Wilder can not, which is my hands are empty from the power I believed I had,

and though I would like to believe it,

I have no control,

all I can choose to muster is hope.

all I can do is breathe and tell my heart that it has been asked to hold too much.

This momma bear has no control to protect and save her little Brave.

So, I guess I remind myself that I must trust the mother bear in God, that She has a heart of fierceness which protects my Brave from the cold and the hurt…and ultimately the death we all feared.

I tell myself to demand the mother bear in me to pray for resurrection, as absurd as it is…but I can’t seem to today.

The mother bear in me is looking for the mother bear in God,

to remember She has won and death is no more,

and all I have to endure is the separation within my hope until we are reunited for eternity.

So, with all the bravery I have inside of myself, I bend to kiss the empty grass that separates me from what remains of my little boy’s sweet earthly body.

May God kiss you Brave, may She fill your little face with as many kisses as it might hold, the way I kiss Wilder over and over, may the Mother God I believe in kiss you Brave…and maybe even whisper, much like I do to Wilder, 

“Your momma loves you, oh how your momma loves you.”

to write everyday.

fast from sugar?

or no social media.

i scribble these words on my bulletin during the announcements at church service. Lent has seemingly caught me by surprise as Ash Wednesday comes quickly. I tap my pen on the paper, looking at the words, retracing them as if one will confirm itself to me. 

They each sound physically annoying to give up for forty days but not necessarily what I am looking to accomplish. 

What am I looking to accomplish exactly? 

nagging in the back of my mind is the idea of a desire to give up something more, something bigger. Something that makes me desperate to know God differently, more fully. Something that dares God to bring Brave back to me, 

or, in the least, a way to connect to Brave or know him more. 

a fasting of something that brings honor. 

dare. 

risk. 

not just an annoyance but truly to engage deprivation, engage lent. 

even as I write these words, I am too aware of my deprivation, there is no need to try to engage it, I always carry it with me. 

church is ending and the same silly options stare back at me. I hear our pastor’s words as we leave. 

“give us the courage when we need the nudge of where we have not been emptied and the comfort where we have already been emptied.”

His eyes are clear and alert in the soft glow of the Christmas tree. 

It can’t be much past 3am. 

Our almost one month old loves to eat right about quarter past three. 

I feel dazed and sleep as his head finds my chest. 

It is Christmas morning I remind myself. 

If you would have asked me this night last year if I could imagine he would be here, suckling at my breast…oh, this night last year.

last year Christmas Eve I laid on the floor weeping next to my husband as the fresh pain of our son Brave’s death tortured our waking hours. 

tonight, I sit with Wilder in my arms and soft Christmas music playing. 

we are not healed, 

but we are mending.

between accolades of Wilder’s sweetness and voiced longings of our lost Brave.

we keep breathing.

Brave’s loss is somehow magnified in our joy of Wilder…maybe now we know what we lost rather than only imagining. 

yet holidays are kinder this year. 

God is somehow kinder this year.