When your BRAVE is BROKEN

I don’t know, dear ones. How can I write again on this space? Or better yet, should I even write again on this space? I mean, of course, I will write again, in some way. But does it need to be here? Because if you scroll back just one page you will see it is the announcement for my son’s funeral. And it has been 20 months since that happened. 20 months and 4 days since he died, to be exact. So why write again on the blog that announed your son’s death and that was started to celebrate his life? He taught me how to be brave and when he died, my brave broke in a way. In these past 20 months we have been healing and aching and learning a bit more about courage.

 

So I write because I serve a King who makes beauty from ashes and who crushed the curse of death so that it will not sting forever. Yes, it stings on this side of heaven. I cannot say that missing Adam does not sting. BUT GOD has made a way for it to not sting forever. As Andrew Peterson wrote “to lay down to die is to lay down to live”. My son is living and he is experiencing joy and healing and freedom beyond what my feeble, yet imaginative, mind can dare to comprehend.

I also think I can write again because my King is one who promises His once weary people that He will restore the years the locusts have eaten. He spoke those words to a hungry and broken people who had seen their crops destroyed by locust after locust. They looked behind them and saw only death and destruction, yet a thrill of hope was given to their aching bones that the future was going to be different. Their lost, hard years would be restored and rich restoration and redemption would be theirs!

So, I also write here again because I know this is not the end of the story. It is not the end of Adam’s story nor our family’s story because the bits and pieces we see in our day to day life are only glittering fragments of the greater narrative spoken over all mankind. And I know the story ends well, despite the current chapters we may find ourselves.

I write again because my brave was broken but I let God in. Because God is the one who restored the years the locusts have eaten & He is the Author of the narrative that I know ends better that we could ever ask or imagine.

How did I learn to let God into these broken places? By truth spoken thru the ones I still have here with me. I have those two sweet boys who were nearly 4 and 2 when Adam breathed his last and I also have (surprise to you blog readers who have not known what is going on in my life) an energetic 13 month old boy who keeps us all laughing as we chase after him every day. Those two sweet brothers who had to say goodbye to their “baya” (older brother) went thru a lot of grief stricken days these past 20 months. They have cried and acted out and questioned a lot. But those emotions have also been met with some of the most tender God moments I have witnessed on this earth. Some of those conversations are what penned that phrase in my mind for the last year

“when your brave is broken you let God in”

I still remember walking them home from a playground last summer when one of the boys cried and moaned about a fall he had taken at the park. Instead of the typical play by play explanation he whimpered “moooom, my brave was broken” as he sat atop my shoulders. I stopped walking and asked him to repeat it because that was poetry and I wanted to write it down.

A few months prior I remember his brother who was so upset before an afternoon quiet time. He was in a stage of being afraid of quiet time and wanting all the lights on and all the doors open. But on this particular afternoon, he firmly shut his door and sprinted to his bed. I opened the door and asked him why he had shut it so firmly and why it needed to be closed. He said because he was angry.

I asked why he was angry and he responded “because I miss Adam”
I said I understood and could come sit with him.
“No”, he said.
I asked if his dad could come
“No”, he responded tearfully.
“what about your brother, can he come in with you?”
Another “no” from his little body.
“Well, who can come with you?”

Still tearfully, he responded “God can come with me”.

Pindrop silence.

No wonder He said he has hidden things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children.  Because when I sense a loss of courage thru the death of a child, I became cynical and full of doubt.

 

I shut my door to the Name above all names and meanwhile scroll thru everyone else’s names to find an answer.

I close my mind to hearing his truths and instead ask everyone else for wisdom.

I get lost on crooked roads in the wild places of my mind and forget a grand Author who makes straight a way in the wilderness.

BUT GOD.

He who works in paradoxical ways turns my wisdom into foolishness thru the words of my grieving sons. He will make what seems foolish in my eyes to be deep wisdom and a means of grace to me and this grieving world.

 

He will let me sit on His shoulders and confess that my brave is broken. And when no words of man will satisfy and I want to shut the door on everyone, I can let Him in. In fact, I should let Him in. He is my safe place.

This world seems so very disoriented these days and it often feels like it may seize right off its axis with all the tremors and aches and suffering it holds. May we let Him in. Because the world my seem splayed open but there was One who came from Heaven, all on His own, to be splayed open and to be blood poured out on our behalf. And He did it so that these aching days would not seize the world off its axis. Because He breathed life into it and He holds it in his hands. He breathes courage and grace into all of us who will receive it. And we all, if we are honest, need courage and grace to get thru these days. So let him in.

Even when your brave is broken, let God in.

 

 

 

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Dear ones, we have seen glory and power even in these hard months. I hope to share with you all on this space some of those glimpses. We let God in and He has shown us that this is not the end of the story.

 

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