Trenches and Tapestries

This was a weird week.

Ian's funeral was Thursday. That was a hard day.
I came home from work, made a mad dash to change my clothes, and then rushed to the church. When I walked into the sanctuary, the service had already started. It was dark, as a montage of pictures of baby Ian and his family flashed across the big screen in front. In the dark, I couldn't see where Dad and Nana were sitting, so I found an empty pew, and was starting to sit down...and then I saw it. The tiny, little coffin at the front of the sanctuary. The sight of it choked me...with his little nose and forehead poking out of the top of the open casket..and the recieving blanket and the two or three treasured stuffed animals tucked carefully around him. I...I don't even know how I can explain what it felt like to me...the rush of sadness, and confusion, and anger, and memory. The realization that the very alive little boy on the screen, and the cold, lifeless form in the casket below were the same. The inability to resolve that thought in my mind. Shock. Sadness. Heartache. Fear.

I dissolved...I just melted. Before I even sank into the pew, I was bawling. Dad came up behind me and asked if I wanted to sit with him and Nana, and he showed me to their pew. I sat down and immediately dove into my purse for the emergency reserve of tissues I had hurriedly stuffed into the side pocket before I dashed out the door.

What a hard thing. I leaned into Dad's shoulder and cried...cried hard...cried without reservation, and without any ability to contain it. They played "Blessed Be Your Name" and they played "Held", both of which were played at Mom's memorial service. They played "Daddy's Song", something Dennis Jernigan wrote, that Mr. Giger sings to his kids as a lullaby...the song he sang to each of them when they were born. The original track was a story, spoken with music running under it, about a Father (metaphorically, God) and His son (us), and he would lull the son to sleep with Daddy's Song.

"The father very gently cradled his son in his arms. The little boy loved the way his father held him, because he held him a lot. Sometimes the father would sing to him while he held him."

I'll have no other for I love you only,
I'll never forsake you or leave you alone.
I love you, oh how I love you.
I love you, oh how I love you.
I'll have no other for I love you only
I'll never forsake you or leave you alone

"...and the boy would sing and answer..."

Here in your arms I'll always be,
At rest in the precious love you have for me.
I love you, oh how I love you,
I love you, oh how I love you.
Here in your arms I'll always be
At rest in the precious love you have for me.


...that song was playing when I walked in and saw him lying there. What a hard, heart-rending thing.

I'm finding myself pacing back and forth over the same circles I was pacing nine months ago, over and over again, until I've trodden a veritable trench in the ground. I was telling Amanda, I'm back on the "not-fair" cicruit...

"This isn't fair!"
I know...it's not about fair.

"But what about Ian's life?? He had a whole life ahead of him, and he's been robbed!"
Ian's happier now than he would ever have been here on earth. One of my friends was talking about Satan's quote-unquote victory in Ian's death, "...But the Enemy loses either way. If he wins, the child goes to be with the Father, out of his reach and into paradise. If he loses, the child grows to be a man who will crush the serpent's head under his heel."

"But what about his family?? This was NOT right. I know this is horrific for his poor family, and the others who loved him. This is NOT good to us!"
But the Lord causes ALL things to work together for the good of those who love Him. That's His promise to us. Like one friend reminded me when he prayed for me shortly after my own mother's death, "We know that You work all things together *for* the good. That doesn't always mean that things *are* good, but You work them for the good of those who love You in spite of the situation."

But I still want to argue that it's not fair, it's not right, it's not good.
I want to be mad at God for making me hurt again.

And that's where it is.

I want to be mad at God. Because it hurts again.

God taught me, all the way back in February, that just because I'm hurting, that doesn't mean He stops being good. I know that. I KNOW that! So why is it that everything feels.....godless? There are some days when I just can't see His hand in anything. Everything feels dark, and silent, and wrong.

I love my Lord. And I'm so glad that His faithfulness and His goodness don't depend on my feelings, and they don't change with the circumstances.

At night, when it gets quiet, I find my mind reeling with the still-present shock of Ian's death, and with my indignance and anger with God, mixed with--and perhaps fueled by--memories of the days following Mom's death. And the things that I thought I had learned so well....God is always good....God's plans are higher than ours....God weeps over us when we hurt.....are things that I find myself tripping over in the well-trodden circles I'm walking again. I know they're truth. I know...and I know that it's when I can't see Him that He is working His fiercest in my life. Time has shown that to be true over and over again. But I can never seem to remember it when it counts.

Who told us we'd be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved
From the nightmares?
We're asking why this happened
To us, who have died to live.
It's unfair.

This is what it means to be held,
How it feels
When the sacred is torn from your life--
And you survive.
This is what it is to be held,
And to know
That the promise was when everything fell,
We'd be held.

Our God holds us so tenderly, so gently, so lovingly. And He does weep over us when we're made to be broken. He doesn't allow us to hurt like this unless it is absoloutely necessary. I don't know why it has to happen. I don't know why He allows it. But I know that what the Enemy means for evil, God means for good.
And I know that God *is* good. All the time.
And that just because my perspective changes, that doesn't mean that His goodness has changed, or even diminished.
My own finite knowledge is just a stitch in a vast tapestry that I can't even begin to comprehend.
And it will be beautiful.