Last night, I had an awesome dream. I was pregnant, near my due date and in the kitchen of one of my aunts. I suddenly knew I was in labor and felt the baby moving and could see by looking down that the baby was head up, so I gently rolled my hand over my stomach from top to bottom and that’s all that was needed for the baby to somersault forward and begin kicking into my ribs so I knew the baby was now head down. One of my sisters was sitting there and I told her she could come feel the baby move if she wanted to, so she did. I realized that the baby was lower now, and that birth was going to happen any moment. Nothing was crazy or stressful, it was just matter-of-fact. My sister said it couldn’t happen that quickly, and everyone else there thought there was no way this could really be happening right now, but I just bent down slightly and held out my hands and delivered my own baby. My sister looked shocked yet so excited and happy. It was so lifelike graphically, and I’ll spare those details, but it was not painful or difficult or anything. The delivery felt physically exactly like something I have felt before, but at just shy of 14 weeks along. This dream birth was effortless and swift and peaceful. I held the baby in front of me to check that everything was okay. Brown hair, light pink complexion, sweet face that looked more like Warren as a newborn than Colbie but not the same as either, and (had to look and see of course) the baby was a boy. He quietly looked around as I examined him, just as Warren had been silent upon birth, simply taking in the world. Suddenly, I could tell he was beginning to get cold or agitated, so I held him to my chest and he quieted. I got just a flicker of a moment of that newborn skin-to-skin embrace and then I woke up.
Yes, I woke up from that awesome dream. And the tears fell of their own accord. When you lose someone, whoever it was and however long ago and in whatever way, the mind often fills with the what-ifs, would-have-beens, even what we consider “should”-have-beens with our wonderings, thoughts and, in my most recent case, dreams. I do have a little boy heavenside, who is with my Savior and so many loved ones, and I can’t help but wonder what he would have looked like at just over 3 ½. What he would have especially liked, or been afraid of, or which buttons he’d push of his siblings. What would his full-term, healthy birth have been like, and what would his first noises have sounded like, what color would his eyes be today, and which letters would he be mispronouncing right about now? Those things are lost to me and, because I don’t know how heaven “works”, I don’t know whether I’ll ever know or whether they’ll much matter once I get to see him again someday. But I will get to see him again someday, and I wonder if heavenly hugs are even better than earthly ones.
I could blog about my emotions and thoughts this morning, and try to put into words how somehow I do have this deep peace and wellness in my soul even on the days when my eyes do their thing and let some grief spill onto my cheeks. But this isn’t a journal, and that’s not why I’m sharing this. I am posting about this because of the thought the Lord gave me in the midst of my tears this morning.
I unabashedly adore my two earthside children. They are joy and wonder and laughter and they hint at heaven to me in their faith and love. I am, and feel, so abundantly blessed through my children. My tears today are not a reflection on them as if they are not “enough” or that they are somehow lesser to me because one of their siblings isn’t here with them. Not at all. The loss of Jacob is something separate and complete of its own. Just as we, human beings, are each separate to the Lord. Each and every one of us matters to Him.
Matthew 18:10-14 is one of the scriptures which tell us of Jesus sharing the parable of the lost sheep.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.”
Many – so many more than 99 – will choose to accept our Father’s love and His grace. Others do not. If my heart this morning was any insight into the Lord’s heart for all people, I don’t know how He does it. Truly, no one but He could ever know. Many choose to spend our lives with Him, indeed to spend forever with Him; but for those who are lost, it is a far greater loss than any temporary losses we experience on earth. The Lord knows who each person could be, grow into, become, the experiences through which each would hold His hand as a steady friend and those through which we’d cling to Him as our only Rock like never before. He knows the friendships and relationships which would form, the strongholds that would be broken, and all the blessings that would flow. He knows all the would-be’s, which are undoubtedly better, and yet has to watch as we exercise His gift of free will and choose to do it “alone.” It must be so much harder to know what would have been, what could be, and yet is not. I think it is often a grace to not know for sure.
I am in awe of my God this morning. That He has chosen to create us, care for us, love us, die for us, spend time with us and spend our whole lives finding ways to show us that He is here and that He is for us. How He never gives up. God’s “mind” has always been a beautiful, utterly incomprehensible mystery to me, and the wonders He has given us to discover, marvel and contemplate have spoken to my depths for as long as I can remember. But His “heart”… I feel like I continue to be blown away as He allows me to uncover small insights as to who He is and just how deep and unending is His love. As unsearchable as his knowledge and wisdom. Overwhelming falls so short.
While I am still processing and listening, I do know that love propels. It prompts. It cannot sit still for long. When we sense the Lord’s heavenly love for us in a new or deeper way, we need to pray for the outflow which is sure to follow. We cannot help but to act on it. I suppose my writing this is part of that outflow from my heart this morning, and it may be more personal than usual, but I feel like I am supposed to share for my own heart, and maybe for yours, too.
As Ephesians 3:18-19, says, may you “have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Romans 8:37-39,
HLC
sacred strokes 