unexpected miracles

the other day, a fellow grief sojourner and i were talking...she is and has been a great friend to me in my suffering. i treasure the example she has set in her own losses and i can't quite explain how it just feels like coming home, so comfortable and familiar, to talk to another mom who has lost babies like i have. she gets so much about me. she gets how social things are still hard sometimes, how grief floods your soul at weird times like at 10am at the Gap sale when i see a pretty pink dress, she gets how i don't think it's weird to talk about heaven so casually, like it's a state or country away she calls it and we can't wait to get there, she gets the dark days and the overwhelming season of sadness that comes in the months before birthdays and deathdays and the month after it and how it totally wrecks you socially. she gets the faith struggle and the grasping for truth when you want to give up...

we were talking about our kids. the ones that live in that different country and how lucky they are, no more suffering. and how we may still suffer here, in their absence, but it's our suffering, not theirs. it's ours to deal with, not them, not ever. they are free from the ugly trap of suffering and pain and hurt.

i was sharing with her about a twelve year old little girl who fought a brave fight of two brain tumors and started an organization and raised money and awareness for children's cancer..and how she died that day. and how so many people were responding in sadness and "this is horrible" statements. which i totally agree with. it's heartbreaking and seems so unfair. but then i told her how i thought i was weird because my next reaction and response was simply, she is so lucky. in her short 12 years, she made more of a difference than some 50yr olds who are living selfish american dream lives. she loved Jesus and was an excellent foot solider in her short life and made sure all knew where her hope was found. she was on mission. and when it was time for her to be done, she went home. she was freed from her suffering....her family will still suffer and miss her, but her mission was accomplished and she fought the good fight and was finally healed. her miracle happened. just not on this earth.

ian plays on sundays for church. every sunday since he's been there was a man, standing at the back of the sanctuary, dead center, right in ian's path from his drum kit. ian would play and pray and sing and play and watch every sunday as this man would sing, arms always raised high, unabashedly...in praise to his King. with cancer. at least ten years, living with cancer. right in ian's view every sunday. this last week, ian had the privilege and honor of playing at his memorial service. and the worship band was asked to play because he would have wanted it that way, praise and celebration. and as ian was playing at the same kit as every sunday, the sweet man raising his arms with wild abandon was not there. there was an empty spot at the back of the sanctuary. but ian smiled in his heart and played loudly as he knew the giant man of faith was now praising his King in HIS presence. what a miracle he thought. maybe not physical bodily healing. but after all those sundays and all the stories of his faith and love for his God, ian knew the miracle of that day was that this man was healed and whole and living and singing and had attained the prize. his faith had become sight. miracle!!


my friend and i both talked about how we pray for healing. and how we expect it to mostly come in miraculous ways of physical healing. cures.

the other day, the boys and i were driving down the highway, radio cranked up loud and we were singing, "ooohhhh praise Him, oh praise Him...He is holy....He is holy" henry was singing la, la, la and in my rear view mirror i could see liam moving his lips and singing to the song with me. and i smiled so big and sang inside past little tears as i thought back to four years ago when i couldn't say that with loud song or joy, while saying goodbye to my daughter. i couldn't see forward to four years when i would be praising him with all my heart in my car with my boys. i kept thinking, with this delicate tension or balance that grief has and God gives, where you can feel sadness yet total peace at the same time...that this moment was a miracle. i was singing and driving and watching my boys and thinking about the fact that i was singing happily to my God after all the loss and the pain and the dark days, God in his goodness and mercy had spared my broken heart from getting hard. bitter and calloused. nothing i could do on my own but all Him. it was a miracle. ugly flicking off God pain four years ago had been transformed to a beautiful painful heart bent lovingly to it's creator. in simple song.

later that morning, when talking to my friend about miracles, i realized as she was talking to me about how maybe that the healing of a child's body didn't happen, the miracle didn't happen that way but God not allowing the mother to turn bitter and angry as the years go on is a HUGE miracle.

broken relationships, shattered dreams. destroyed expectations...strained family dynamics, devastating diagnosis after diagnosis....all these things beg for miracles.

oh how we must champion ourselves to remember that the ultimate miracle already happened. at the Cross. that was and is the true miracle. that a God man overcame the grave and ugly death. she challenged me to look at miracles in a new way. and i thought back to the drive over to her house, us scream-singing and me being so happy that i could sing, that i wanted to sing...that God had saved me, protected me from bitterness and gave me true open eyed-open hearted graceFULL mercy.....yes, our daughter did die and nothing could be done to save her. yes, i did miscarry a year later and become crushed again with deafening loss. yes, i can never again carry a child in my womb and that was a new season to grieve....but miraculously he saved my heart. in the midst of it all. he longs to restore us back to him after such loss, such pain. he is never content to just let us wander, in pain. he comes after us. in pain, he came after us.


and that is something to sing about it. and that there, peeled back under layers of broken heart is a miracle!!