Bird

So, as most of you know, Jack said his first word when he was ridiculously young. I thought it was when he was 6 months old, but when I looked it up in his baby calendar last night, I see it was a few days after her turned 7 months. He started imitating a hand motion I made when I changed his diaper under his origami bird mobile, and then he said it aloud. He was VERY pleased with himself.

Here he is making the cute motion:

It became a fixture in our house. People would think he was so clever to know how to wave, but he was really just saying bird.

Well, at the beginning of October, when Andrew turned 6 months old, he started making the same hand motion. It was so darn cute! He would stare at his hand and do the royal wave. He entertained himself in church, in the car, and around the house. Of course, it reminded us so much of Jack, and felt like real God-wink. Even when Andrew would awake at night due to being sick, he would thrust his hand in the air and do his little wave.

I've been wanting to share this with you, with the caveat that we are NOT trying to make Andrew into a little Jack. It has just been so fun to watch. We say "bird" when he does it, but to Andrew, it probably means something entirely different that we haven't decoded yet. It comes and goes.

It was very special to have him do it last weekend when Tim's parents were in town, because he could show Grandma Mary-- a huge bird lover who helped Jack get into birds in the first place. Here they are, looking very serious as they check out our feeder together:

This past weekend the weather was even better, and we were able to be outside quite a bit more, which Andrew enjoyed. He is still battling congestion, so sleep is not great, but the smiles help everyone!

Happy Monday!?!

p.s. Have you entered my jewelry giveaway?

What's the Plan, Stan?

I've heard from others, and maybe even said to people before: "God knows just how you feel because he had to experience the death of his own beloved son."

Here's the thing: I do believe God knows exactly how I feel because, well, he's God. He knows everything and He cares deeply. But acknowledging that He suffered when Jesus died just doesn't do it for me. I mean, God is GOD. I am a 42 year old mortal woman. He breathed life into the Universe. I just breathe.

God willingly sacrificed His son to save us from our sins. I just let my 12 year old go outside and play under very questionable circumstances. God had a plan with the death of Jesus. God knew the plan, and Jesus did too.

I am not privy to what the plan is here. It certainly doesn't mesh with my simple, possibly mundane life goals of raising 2 kids to love God, love others, have decent taste, and hopefully not turn out to be big jerks. As a family-- to know each other and be known. Oh, and to eventually get at least a few grand kids out of the deal.

In the loss of His son, God had the big picture in mind. I have a limited, dim picture, and what I can see is too hard and unsatisfying.

Just as we have more than amply ascertained that I am NOT God, Jack is NOT Jesus. He is just a kid. A special, soulful kid who got caught up in a bad situation. And besides, Jesus got to come back after 3 days and hang out with his friends and family.

I don't think that's asking too much.

A Different Kind of Bridge

A blog reader living in Mozambique sent a photo she took while driving in South Africa with her husband.

She felt compelled to capture this Bible verse , which Jack considered his "life verse," on the back of the truck in front of them, as she had just been thinking of Jack and our family.

It took her a while to get a non-blurry shot, and when she did, she was surprised and amazed to see what was visible in the frame of the photo.

As am I. Wow.




Thank you, friends, for loving us. For lifting us up all around the world. For not forgetting. For sharing these amazing experiences with us, so we can learn from them and share them with others. Thank you.

Rare Bird, Part 2

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

I am amazed and grateful at how gifts of comfort come at just the right time. While this post may come across as long and convoluted, I hope you’ll hang on for the ride.

First of all, I feel as if the poem I posted on Friday was divinely inspired. While my friend’s son and Jack hadn’t played together since preschool, and she and I had only seen each other a handful of times in recent years, she chose a bird as her primary image to beautifully convey Jack in the poem. It could not have been a more perfect gift to us. We treasure it.

I had already written the “Rare Bird” post but was unable to publish it Thursday night because the electricity went out, shutting down my computer. As you know, Jack died on a Thursday evening during a terrible storm, and the lack of electricity was a big factor in his death.

So here I was on another shitty Thursday, shortly after 6 pm (the exact time Jack disappeared), alone in my dark house, a crazy storm raging outside my window. I asked God, “Seriously????” but was filled with a sense of calm, knowing that many, many people were praying for me at that instant. Instead of replaying the horror of that night in my mind, as would be my nature, I was able to sit calmly for hours until Tom and Margaret got home. One of the reasons I could be so calm was a little bird.

As had happened in another part of the house one week before, I heard a bird singing, so loudly and beautifully that it seemed to be inside the house. The first time it happened, I was in the family room. It was sunny and calm outside, so I didn’t think much of it except, to note, “That is one LOUD bird.”

But how a bird could sing during such a storm was beyond me. I just cherished it as I sat on the living room couch in the dark, a little smile on my face, knowing that when the electricity came on I already had a post ready to share with you about my boy entitled, “Rare Bird.” I loved that.

What could have been a horrible night was the opposite, because of many prayers and the visit of a little songbird. Margaret and Tim eventually came home and the three of us tucked ourselves into our queen-sized bed, the electricity still out. We were able to laugh and talk before falling asleep, which was far different from the moaning sobs that stormy night 5 weeks ago.

The next morning I told them about the bird and as I did, the loud singing began again. We looked around and found a cute brown songbird sitting contentedly in a flowerpot on our screened porch. He must have gotten trapped inside and ridden out the storm there. We let him out, and I smiled again. Bird.

What I hadn’t told you yet was that a different friend, whom I have not seen in 20 years and who, therefore, had never met Jack, had been lifting us up via loving emails each day. Several of her emails over these past few weeks, in addition to prayers and hugs, mentioned sending a little blue jay my way. Well, umm, okay. Not sure what that meant. And I’ve never really liked blue jays, but I decided I’d take all the love I could get.

It wasn’t until she read Friday’s blog post, that this friend let me know what she meant in those previous emails. She had seen a particular bird often since the accident, and each time she saw it was filled with a sense that my Jack was MORE THAN OKAY. When she would look at the blue jay, the words, “Rare Bird” came to her, again and again, which she found odd, because blue jays are not rare. After reading the poem on Friday, and seeing the title, "Rare Bird," she immediately KNEW that the “rare bird” she had been thinking of was not a bird, but was Jack.

She was able to pass along to me many comforting assurances about Jack, and because of the beautiful poem, and the bird that had sung to me Thursday night, I was able to hear her and be comforted. Wow.

Well, there’s more:

So yesterday, while we were getting ready to go to go to a school picnic, something we dreaded because Jack wouldn’t be there with his friends, my cell phone started playing music. I say cell phone, because even though it’s an iPhone, I am not a music-girl, and I didn’t even know it had music on it. Turns out, Tim loaded some songs when I first got the phone, but I had no idea.

The song playing, “The Solace of You,” was one of our favorites when were dating many years ago in our Mix-tape days. Tim and I were able to smile, hug, take solace, get in the car, and do something hard.

The music would not have touched me if all of these other things hadn’t happened to help me be open to the idea of COMFORT coming to us through varied ways. I would have just thought-- “Wow, my cell phone is jacked up!”

So, I realize I’ve been being eased into accepting this comfort, from the Bible verse showing up on my phone that first terrible night, friends telling me they sensed Jack was reunited with my mother in heaven, and the prescient Bible verse Margaret found last summer. It goes on and on.

Just as God has used numbness and shock to NOT let me feel the weight of this grief all at once, he seems to be giving comfort in just the right doses, lots and lots of doses, to bring me solace.

So later last night, when I heard music playing on my phone inside my purse, I wasn’t all that surprised. It was another song from our dating years. When I asked Tim what it was called, he said:

“’Song Bird’ by Fleetwood Mac.”

Of course it was.

Thanks, God! Thanks, Jack!

I'm Your Worst Nightmare

...or at least I know I’m living it right now. And I hate that. I want to inspire you, make you laugh, and make you feel better about this whole hard, wonderful mothering and life thing. But instead, the very thought of me breaks your heart. When I cross your mind during the day, or for some of you even in the middle of the night, it’s like a sucker punch to the gut, isn’t it?

I’d love to encourage you and charm you right now, but all I can say is, this grief thing? A million times worse than I ever could have expected or feared. I thought I’d done pretty well when my mom died when I was 18 and she was 46. You know-- kept putting one foot in front of the other, wrote a slew of thank you notes, and stayed true to the kind of upbringing she had given me.

But THIS? Dear God! This?

Where being home is untenable and being out is unbearable and the longing is unquenchable.

There are many glimmers of good things happening as a result of my little boy’s life, many, many good things such as families growing closer, people leaning on God, and a community loving on a broken family. I aim to share those things with you on this blog because, as my sister says, “I don’t believe God caused this to happen, but I believe He can redeem it.” Amen, Sister.

But do those good things make the aching abate; do they make us miss our wonderful little boy any less? Hell No. Would we rather have our boy back in place of all of the amazing transformation that is occurring as a result of his short but generous little life? Hell Yes.

By the way, does anyone else find it interesting that after almost 4 years of blogging in anonymity and using very proper language (except for an occasional reference to pantiliners) that now, when my “cover is blown” and people know who I am, I feel the need to curse more than ever before? And, now that my former English students know who I am, I can’t seem to stop beginning all of my sentences with “And and But?” Oh well. I really don’t give a crap.

The truth is, there has been so much going on here, by way of warnings and comfort and…otherworldliness…that it can only be from God. The foreboding both Tim and I got one week before the accident when we found out some important dynamics in our environs were shifting. The weird moment on our evacuation ride home from the beach when Margaret turned to Jack and told him she had a feeling he was going to die young (He just kept on reading Oliver Twist.) The unbelievably prescient Bible verse God gave Margaret six weeks before the accident. The list goes on and on. I do not know what to make of it, but it is surely something.

For those of you who were unable to be at Jack’s service or listen to it online , I want to make sure you know of something very special that happened the night he died. Our electricity was out because of the storms, and if I ever post the gut-wrenching account of what happened that horrific night, you’ll understand more about the role the lack of electricity played in Jack’s death. But it did serve as a measure of comfort as well.

I sat on the couch weeping, rocking, keening, and reading the Facebook posts that poured in all night. The electricity came on at about 2:30 in the morning and Tim came downstairs to plug in our cell phones. When he plugged mine in, instead of my password screen and regular app screen coming up, a Bible application, open to a particular verse, popped up. The only one who had ever used that app was Jack, for school last year, under a fair share of duress at Bible memory verse time. Here is the screen shot:

What comfort. What a gift. Thank you.

Then, this week, as the numbness started to wear off and the pain seeped into my bones, I plugged in my phone for charging and something else popped up. This image is from a different Bible memory app, also used only by Jack, almost a year ago. Here’s the screen shot:

Just a picture of Jesus, with the words, Follow Me.

Believe me. I’m trying. I’m trying. I won’t quit trying.

And on the past two Thursdays since his death-- in a month of rain and clouds and the kind of days that have elementary teachers turning toward the bottle at the thought of one more indoor recess-- at sunset, at the exact time that Jack was missing that horrible Thursday night, the rain stopped and we were met with the most amazing, vibrant, multi-colored sunsets we have ever seen. The sun set right over the paltry little creek bed, now almost dry, where Jack left this earth in a rush of raging water. Many friends in our town saw the sunsets and thought of Jack.

So there are feelings, nudges, and blessings, and we know God is part of all of this somehow. And I don’t want us to forget about that as we navigate this waking nightmare. So I’ll write what I can here.



And we don’t want you to forget about us, either. All four of us. Our sweet Jack and the three left here to mourn, and miss him, and figure things out.

Love Letters

During each of my moves, a few boxes of letters have moved with me. They are all special to me, but one box stands out. It is a box of love letters. I am a saver, so some of these date back to high school when boys finally started to notice me (quite a few years after I first noticed them). Others are from college and beyond. The letters are worn out from being read, studied, and examined to the nth degree. Through these letters I learned of the writer’s character, how he felt about me, and his plans for us. I learned his strengths, weaknesses, and his values.

I remember walking to my mailbox with my breath held, hoping for a glimpse of familiar handwriting (maybe now it’s the feeling we get when we check our in-box for emails). As I look back over these letters, I laugh at the jokes and sigh over young romance. I remember studying each word, each nuance, each punctuation mark—analyzing the messages within. The contents filled me with joy and excitement, or, as relationships soured, with sadness and feelings of inadequacy. I cringe when I think of how I hurt the writers, or how they hurt me. I remember how sometimes we tried to make a relationship when there was no substance at all. Each one of these relationships held a degree of disappointment or disillusionment the more and more I got to know the person.

You see, even the letters from the man I would marry could not satisfy all the longings of my heart or explain why I am in this world. I have come to understand, as much as I enjoy these letters, there is only one love letter that cannot disappoint me. It is filled with stories of the past and plans for the future. It tells of ultimate sacrifice in the name of love. Its author is infallible and by His very nature cannot let me down. This love letter is to you and to me. It is God’s word in the Bible. I sometimes forget about this love letter and look elsewhere for my hope, leaving it unopened on my bedside table like a glorified coaster, and during those times I know I miss out.


Jeremiah 29:1

“For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”

Happy Easter!

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