The week of Tiggy’s birthday, we decided to take a vacation. Time to get away, time to not think of the little boy who wouldn’t be celebrating his birthday with us anymore, time to meet some of the many wonderful people who have supported us for so long though we knew each other only through the pixels of a computer screen.

And we went hoping to share stories of children in Nepal who had escaped horrific tortures we are uncomfortable even speaking about, much less in front of children, and the hope that was offered them through the gospel. We shared the mission of Tiny Hands International and how they could help provide a loving home and a future full of dreams for these children by helping raise money for Tiggy’s House.

But we didn’t expect to be so blessed ourselves. So many people opened their homes and their hearts to us and presented us with a beautiful gift that is but a small symbol of the many fingerprints that have touched our lives over the last 14 and a half months.

Our own blassing tree.

Thank you, everyone. You cannot know how much your comments, emails and facebook chatter have meant to me through this time. You have all left fingerprints on my life which I know are the fingerprints of God.

My little four year old LE, I think, has been teaching me something about prayer. A little about patience. A little about the faith of a child. A little about thankfulness. But mostly about prayer.

At bedtime, you see, we read a little story, talk about it and then pray. And Bug, though she is a little older, goes first, because LE’s prayers go on and on and on and on and Bug invariably falls asleep.

“Dear God,” she begins.

“I love you so much I just want to kiss and hug you. When I get to heaven, I’m going to give you a big kiss right on the cheek and I’m never going to stop kissing and hugging you . . .”

["um, Mommy? Do you think God would like it if I kissed him?" -- "Yes, dear. I think God would like that."]

“. . . Thank you for Mookie and for Tiggy and Bug and Bear and Mouse. And thank you for giving us such a good mommy and daddy. Thank you for Bunny and my bed and my sheets. Thank you for my bear and my ponies and my bus that says the ABC’s. Do you like my drawings on my wall? I made those for you. And thank you for my wall . . . “

And my mind started wandering in there somewhere after thanking God for her wall. And I prayed my own prayer of thankfulness for this little girl overflowing with love for her God. And I prayed for a small measure of her thankfulness that sees everything around her as a beautiful gift.

“. . . and thank you for Jesus and octopuses and glasses. Amen.”

The baby naps, Bear and Mouse watch a movie, Bug and LE are having a picnic, the house is quiet. The stillness of the house makes the churning in my stomach grow louder. I wander a bit from sweeping the front room to making the bed to filling the sink with water to staring out the window. Our property and the adjacent field is bathed in golden light and I decide to take the dogs for a walk.

And I think back on last year. On the hours spent playing board games with the kids. On the hours spent pacing through the house. On the hours spent staring out my window. On the moment life became a prison sentence. And this churning in the pit of my stomach knows no end.

I think of the conversations I have had with other mothers who tell me the second year was harder than the first. To the counselor who told me it can take years to really recover from the shock of losing a child unexpectedly. But I don’t have years. I have children. Children who need more than a mother who is coping.

But I know it has gotten better. It doesn’t always feel like it has, I think because so much of last year was lost to a haze I can scarcely see through. I don’t really remember what it was like. Not clearly. But I do know that a year ago I would not have stepped outside. To feed the chickens, yes. If the children called me out, maybe. But because the property was bathed in a golden light and I thought I might find some peace standing in its midst? Never.

A year ago, I was dead inside and I didn’t really care if I ever felt anything else. Now, there is just this churning, this continual anxiety that rests in the pit of my stomach and never quite takes over and never quite goes away.

“Lord, please . . . “

I ask. But I don’t quite know what I’m praying for. My soul pleads, but there are no words so I turn toward the cemetary where I can see the cedar trees lining the northern edge. The dogs stop at the edge of our windbreak, waiting to see if I’m going to walk to the pasture or just stand there and then I see it.

A beautiful rainbow stretching across the sky. One of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

And the tears begin to flow and my chest heaves with its sobs. I know what the rainbow means, but I want those promises for me. I want to know my children will come through this. I want to know that Micah won’t struggle because so much of his early life was dominated by his mother’s grief. I want to know that this won’t happen again.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

I hear Bug calling from the windbreak. I struggle to regain my composure as she runs up to me.

“Mommy! Mommy! Do you see the rainbow? Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yes, it is sweetheart. It’s very beautiful.”

I say it without looking. My back to the rainbow, I look at her shining face.

“Look, Mommy! You have to look!”

I turn, and I look, and I see. A double rainbow.

And the knot in my stomach eases just a little bit.

__________________________________

Julie is looking to possibly head up our first book discussion if there is any interest. If you would be interested in joining in a discussion of the book “When Life is Hard” by James MacDonald, pop in and let her know!

Sitting at a concert, only two minutes in and the tears have already begun to flow. I know this song. I’ve sung it with the kids in the car. They don’t really understand it, but it is a bounce around in your seatbelt while trying to sing along song and they like it. It isn’t normally the kind of song that would bring tears to your eyes.

Except I know what comes next.

” . . . I’ve been given more than Regis ever gave away . . . “

And I know that the man about to sing those words also lost a child. And I needed to hear those words. And I needed to hear them from someone who understood.

Since that night, I have talked to so many women who have lost a child. Some encourage me to keep breathing, keep walking, keep searching out the joy. Others look at me with a hint of panic in their eyes and tell me it never gets any better. I’ve talked to women who have asked for help listing reasons to stay in this world because they couldn’t come up with any of their own.

And only yesterday I found myself on the phone with police in a different state giving sketchy details about a woman I’ve never met because she had a date and a plan and I didn’t know what else to do.

And sometimes it scares me because I understand. I can see how this ache in my soul could grow and settle into a weariness of life.

But I don’t want it to. I fight against it. Even in my darkest hours when all the world seems to be crashing in, I have held on to the hope that there is another side. That the threads of my life that came unraveled that night can be gathered together again and woven into something new.

I needed to hear someone who had lost a child years before get up on stage and sing about how much they had been given.

Because I have been given more — so much more — than anything anyone could ever take away. I have been given a hope and a future.

I have been given His son. And with that, in time, my own.

______________________________

And the song, for those of you who just need to remember the rest of the words now.

I’m wondering because someone at church thought I must train my children well because of something they did but I sort of set the whole thing up. But I guess I should back up a bit.

See, there’s this lady at church. I’ve always lliked her, though I never really knew her. She’s older. Well, OK, she’s elderly. But I used to sit in church and think things like, “I hope I have so much beauty and grace as she when I’m that age.” I don’t even know why. We hardly exchanged more than two words before the funeral. After the funeral, however, she told me she had lost a son many years ago.

So now the connection is rather strong. It’s like this sisterhood of grief I’d do almost anything to not know anything about, but the people in it are so breathtakingly amazing to get to know. And now I talk to her whenever she makes it to church.

But on Sunday she seemed rather lonely.

She complained of feeling like a stranger because it had been so long since she had been to church.

I thought about being dependent on others to get to church. Of living with Parkinson’s. Of needing help to walk. Of losing a child so many years ago. And of loneliness setting it.

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say something. I wanted to make her feel better. But everything that came to mind seemed so dismissive of her hurting. So I gave her a hug, told her I always missed her when she wasn’t there and was glad the other lady with us seemed to have more of an idea of what to say.

And then I went to collect my children. As we entered the sanctuary, I leaned over and whispered in their ear.

“Hey, you guys, Mrs. H. is feeling kind of lonely. I think it would mean a lot to her if you stopped and said hi.”

And they all did.

And she beamed.

She even told me twice how wonderful my children were and how I must train them well because most children don’t pay any attention to an old woman in church.

And I totally wanted to confess that I told them to do it. Except that seemed like it would take away from her joy and that didn’t seem quite right, either. So I just kept it to myself.

But I still feel like the praise was undeserved. So can you cheat at good parenting?

LE got a rabbit.

From a friend of a friend, my little girl received her first pet. Sally. We made her a home next to the porch, as close to having her indoors as we could without actually bringing her into the house. There she was for treats and attention on the way to the car. There she was for treats and attention on the way to the garden. There she was for a little extra something when LE left her to pick mulberries by the barn.

There she was to be read to while Mom made breakfast.

There the roof of the porch protected her hutch from the rain and the house protected her from the wind. Or so I thought.

But a storm . . . a real storm . . . with 60 mph winds and a wall of water drew me to the window where I saw the hutch on its side and pieces of it thrown about the lawn. My heart sank and I felt sick to my stomach.

“Oh, please Lord . . .”

But I didn’t get very far in the prayer. Because it is just a rabbit. And as much as I love that little bunny and as hard as it will be to tell little LE in the morning, it is hard to pray for the safety of a rabbit when my son’s grave is being soaked in the very same storm.

“Oh, please Lord . . .”

I’m not sure I got much further that night. I cried out to the Lord, but there weren’t a lot of words. My thoughts weren’t any more coherent than my speech when all I seemed to be able to tell dispatch was my address. Over and over and over.

“Oh, please Lord . . .”

Thinking of LE, I began again and stepped out into the storm. With flashes making the night as bright as day, thunder echoing in my chest and tears mixing with the deluge pouring forth from the heavens, I walked outside to pick up the hutch.

Empty. Except for the little dish of clover LE had picked her bunny before bedtime, the hutch was empty.

I was already soaked. I looked up at the storm and thought it might be smarter to go to the basement than to search for a rabbit in the dark in a storm that picked up her hutch and threw it. I thought maybe I’d bring Micah down to the basement and come back out because maybe she didn’t go far. And I had to try. So wishing things had turned out a little differently on the wings of a similar prayer, I began again.

“Oh, please Lord . . . “

Turning toward the house, I almost tripped over Sally as she climbed on my feet in the dark in a storm where all I could see was the outline of the world with every flash.

And that left me with a rabbit in a laundry basket and a weight so heavy on my chest it leaves me gasping for breath between the sobs overtaking my body.

Because really, I just want to trade.

This is the story of our dog Hunter, the most annoying dog in the world. This is him now.

His hind legs are paralyzed, but not his spirit. That’s why I want to tell you his story.

It started when he was just a puppy.

His mother was the most annoying dog in the neighborhood.  She spent most of her time chained in her backyard barking. The rest of the time she spent roaming the neighborhood barking. At least until her owners got her a present. Or maybe it was one of the neighbors. One can never be too sure about these things.

That ended her barking. But not her wandering. Every six months or so there was another sign about free puppies as you drove into town and every six months or so the remainder were taken to the pound. How we ended up with one is a whole ‘nuther story. Maybe I’ll tell it to you in the comments if anyone wants to know.

Anyway, he apparently took careful notes from his mother because when he came to live at our house, he displayed one great talent.

If I put him in the backyard, he barked.

If I had him in the front room, he barked.

When I had enough and put him in the kennel in my room, he screamed.

When the kids went out the back door, he would knock them over to get out.

Then I had to go out and chase him. Not that I could catch him. He would run in little circles around me, always just out of reach, always barking like his life depended on it.

And I thought all sorts of horrible things.

I knew he wasn’t getting enough walks. He was a big dog and a high energy dog. I resolved multiple times to take him for more walks and longer walks to just try to wear him out.

But I just couldn’t afford it.

So I resolved to take him to the pound. Over and over and over. Sometimes, I fantasized about it. While chasing him across the field behind our house, I’d imagine myself driving around with the minivan and opening the door, the one trick that almost always worked. Then I’d drive to the pound and leave him, the barking and the three leashes he’d eat on the way behind me. Sometimes I even told him all about it.

I might have even carried through if it weren’t for one thing.

He wasn’t my dog. I mean, he lived in my house and ate my dog food and got on my nerves, but he had chosen my son as His Boy. And my quirkly little boy had a lot of trouble fitting in and needed all the unconditional love he could get. Even if it came in the form of the most annoying dog in the world.

To be continued . . .with Part II.

I think it started Sunday morning, this feeling of exhaustion. Physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. I feel somewhat like I’ve run a race, but I only feel the winded with tired and sore muscles part. There’s no feeling of accomplishment, only of a certain edginess that makes getting through the day challenging.

And I’m tired of saying “I’m sorry.”

The daily challenges continue. A keet escaped and never came home. Several chickens escaped through a hole in the fence we didn’t know we had. One was killed. We think one is missing. It bothers me that I’m not even sure whether one is missing because somewhere along the way, I lost count of how many we actually have. Hunter chewed through the new harness I bought for his wheelchair. A coyote came up from behind me while I was getting something out of the car and stood not 30 feet from me and just watched. In the morning, I found a package from him in my driveway.

And as I stand on my porch at two in the morning and listen to their verbal volleys with my dogs, hear them as they surround the property and close in, I worry that more is in danger here than a couple of chickens and an invalid dog that has to be chained or on a leash or he will take off after them.

Because even without the use of his hind legs, Hunter has not given up his self-appointed duty to protect his family.

I feel like giving up, but I’m not even sure what that means. Slaughter the chickens? Put Hunter to sleep? Till under the garden? Sell the land? Send the kids to school and devote my life to Facebook?

I look at Hunter and there is a tenacity there I wish I possessed. A need to do what he was created to do despite all obstacles. He lay on the lawn for weeks eating only the food I placed in his mouth and drinking only the water I gave him with a syringe until that first coyote made its challenge. He got up and he ran on two legs, dragging his back legs behind him, but the coyote retreated. Now he is back to his old self. Alert, happy, eating and drinking.

And I have to chain him in the morning or he’ll chase the mailman.

My limbs feel heavy, like lead. I have little appetite. And I can’t sleep, though all I want to do is go back to bed, pull the covers over my head and shut out the rest of the world.

And yet . . .

And yet there’s always something coaxing me along, whispering for me to keep going, giving me just enough encouragement to try for one more day.

Bear has trouble sleeping at night. He misses his roommate. He knows it will be a very long time before the baby is old enough to move down to his room. He is lonely and a little scared and can tell me the lineup of speakers that goes well past midnight on the Christian radio station he listens to.

And then a stray shows up and attaches himself to Bear and follows him everywhere and sleeps on a mat in his room.

“Luke is going to be the best dog ever,” he tells me.

LE crawls in my lap, sadness in her eyes.

“I want a kitty, mommy.”

“Maybe when you’re six.”

“How about when I’m four?”

I hear the sadness. See her love for all our animals. Understand her desire for an animal that is her own. And I want to say yes, but we really don’t need another cat.

Then a friend of a friend moves and needs to rehome their rabbit. And LE is smitten. She leaps out of bed to feed it and water it and sneak it a treat and if I’m making breakfast and can’t get Sally out for her, she will sit on the porch and read to her.

Feeling a little isolated, we decided to go to the street dedication in our little town. Cheered on the children as they competed in a pedal tractor pull. Stepped outside of ourselves and tried it as well. Felt a little more like a part of this community.

Wondering if we should just give up on poultry but not being able to imagine going outside without the chickie chickies Mattias loved so much, I received an email from a stranger who had taken on a little more than she could manage. Did we want her surplus? And that included ducklings.

Oh, how I love ducklings.

Then I walked into the garden to see what two weeks in Texas has done to it and wasn’t sure it is worth the work to try to save the plants that are still struggling to survive. And my corn I thought might survive never developed any ears and finally died back. How can you have a garden this large and not have corn? Two years in a row? The one vegetable I thought I could produce enough of to last us the year and we haven’t gotten a single ear.

But a lady from church called and says she needs to go out into her field. Her corn is coming in faster than she can harvest it and she doesn’t want it to go to waste. Would we want to come out and collect some?

And garden fresh corn on the cob sounds really good right now.

. . . continued from A really bad day of vacation (Part I) That just doesn’t end (Part II) . . .

I looked in the rearview mirror and saw my son’s eyes in the dimness of the dome light in the back of the SUV. The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach returned, I felt nauseous and like all the oxygen had left the air in my lungs. I had seen those eyes before.

“What does it all mean, Mommy? What does it all mean?”

“What does what mean, sweetheart?”

“All the bad things. Everything that went wrong today. Oh, Mommy, what does it all mean?”

“I don’t know that it means anything. I was just making a joke, honey.”

“Mommy, my tummy feels sick like it did the night Tiggy died. Like something really bad is going to happen. Mommy, something really bad is going to happen.”

“Bear, that night you knew Tiggy was hurt really bad. You saw something horrible and you knew he might not live. That’s why your tummy felt sick then. Right now you are just worried and your tummy remembers that night so it is feeling the same way. It doesn’t mean anything bad is going to happen.”

“Mommy, I’m so scared.”

“You know something? Nothing bad actually happened today. We were blessed with one good thing after another all day. It was only frustrating because our plans didn’t go the way we wanted.”

“But what about the car? And not being able to pick us up?”

“Can you imagine what would have happened to us if the idler arm had come off while we were driving on all those windy roads? If we suddenly couldn’t steer? We would have lost control and maybe had a really bad accident. Sweetie, that happening when it did might have saved our lives. And we were helped so much by strangers, we can’t really say the frustrating part was really ‘bad.’”

“And your purse?”

“It wasn’t stolen. It was stressful for a few minutes, but nothing bad happened. And honey, for all we know, God had that little boy pick up my purse to keep us at the park.”

“What do you mean?”

“That tree hadn’t been on the road for long or someone else would have moved it. What if we were held up just long enough so it wouldn’t fall on us?”

“Really, Mommy?”

“I don’t know, but it could be.”

And the fear left his eyes as he recounted an episode of Paws and Tales where Papa Bear and his young friend endure multiple set backs that lead to them being in the right place at the right time. He was happy, chattery and went to bed without a single complaint about his tummy or how he wanted me to sleep with him.

I went to bed in a somewhat more somber mood.

My little boy trusts me. I make a careless joke at the end of a stressful day and he becomes sick with fear. I tell him God is looking over us and he rejoices. The words I speak into his life are powerful and I am not sure I am equipped for that level of responsibility.

I don’t have all the answers.

I’m not even sure how I feel about what I told him.

I’ve always had a sort of uneasy relationship with the idea of divine intervention. It isn’t really what the Bible says so much as all the problems we so faithfully commit to the Lord with the assurance that “the Lord will find a way” though they are hardly problems at all. At least not when you think about the problems a mother on the other side of the world must be facing when she decides to sell her daughter into slavery.

And there is that one moment in our story where God withheld His protective hand. Where our prayers went unanswered. Where we, for a moment, felt lost.

But mostly I think it is because in my daily walk, my life gets so cluttered with all the things I’ve thrown in my path that I lose sight of the destination. I let my eyes fall from the promise and start to behave as if this right here is all I have.

My stomach gets tied up in knots and I wonder what it all means because I forget that the worst that can happen is death and after that comes the prize.

__________________________

This post is entered in the Lessons from the Road (Trips) link up over at I Live in an Antbed.

Five children, my mom and I packed into a car with all we need for almost two weeks on the road. A cooler separates two children in the back. Bags, chairs, odds and ends take up the leg room for everyone not fortunate enough to still need a car seat. There’s no room because my one rule for traveling is that nothing can be packed higher than the seats. I don’t want a deer or a minor fender bender or even slamming on the brakes to turn our stuff into deadly projectiles. Tired, uncomfortable and irritable, our vacation begins.

As did the bickering. The arguing. The poking. The kicking of seats. For 350 miles to our first stop at a little campsite in Oklahoma, the children argued.

“Do you want to go to camp?” I asked. “Is it worth the drive? Or do you want to turn back?”

Yes, they wanted to go. They all agreed. But as nine became ten and ten became eleven and no one showed any signs of sleeping, I began to wonder.

A little after midnight, I finally pulled into the campsite. As I tried to make myself comfortable somewhere between a toddler seat and a steering wheel, I wondered some more.

“Is it worth the drive?“

This journey through life is not easy. I am often cramped in a position I see no way out of, sitting next to someone I don’t always get along with thinking all the while that somehow everyone else has it a little better. And if only I could change this little bit, everything would be better.

And now that I have had a taste of real suffering, the veil has been lifted. The veil that allowed me to say, “Smile and be happy!” while all of creation groans under the weight of sin has been lifted and I groan alongside it.

I used to look forward to the future, to the adventure each day brought, to the fulfillment of dreams painted on a canvas of late night conversations and musings about all that life could be. But the color has gone out of my dreams as I realize just how unimportant most of my pursuits have become. How unimportant they always have been, though I never recognized it before.

But now I look forward to a different future.

The children are better at it than I am. LE sometimes prays that God would let Tiggy sleep in His big bed. Bug wants to know if Jesus plays chase with him the way we did. They talk about Heaven the way I used to talk about this property: full of work and play and loved ones and life.

Sometimes I listen to them talk and I get glimpses of Heaven. Of eternity. Of life with God and the saints and Tiggy. Forever. I imagine the brilliance of Heaven and all I ever hoped for in this world pales in comparison. Standing at the gates of eternity, it is hard to imagine that the temporal struggles of this world will have quite the same importance as they seem to now.

Isn’t it worth the drive? Through the inconveniences, the struggles and the heartache, isn’t Heaven worth it?