House on the Rock

This past week was brutally, brutally hard. The ache for my mom was almost stronger than it’s ever been before. I felt desperate to call her, hug her, and tell her what an amazing mom she was. I longed for her presence, her laugh, her somehow perfect wisdom of when to give counsel and when to just say, “that sucks, baby girl!”

We got to celebrate the most stunning gender reveal where blue cupcake icing and powder cannons announced the coming of our precious baby boy. Luke Thomas — because Luke means “light-giving,” and the gift of this child is an incredibly bright light at the end of a long and dark year. And then Thomas, whose first recorded words in the Bible were “Let us also go, that we may die with Him” (John 11:16).

We ate ribs, told stories, and dove fully-clothed into a pool surrounded by all of our precious family. All, of course, except one.

I think from that moment on I’ve been a bit off. Excited and grateful of course, but aching, longing, unable to look past the all-too-obvious gap that screams across all family photos. Counting down the days where we get to snuggle our son, but lamenting that the person I most want to pass him off to won’t be right there beside me.

It’s been a year since we got that devastating phone call from a straight-shooter oncologist who shattered our worlds with words like, “it’s bad,” “terminal,” and “she doesn’t have much time.” This time last year was a strange season of believing but not convinced, as we believed her doctor’s diagnoses were correct, but her health and heart and happiness had us convinced she’d outlive us. She walked faster and further than anyone else, slept soundly, laughed hard, and initiated more hugs in that whirlwind month than the rest of her life combined.

If you’ve been following this blog long enough, you know the story doesn’t end on that note. Cancer slowly consumed her brain and we’ll soon have to pass the one-year anniversaries of her strokes, her seizures, her death. And I think the combination of those things — looking at life this time a year ago and looking at life with her gone — is sort of crushing me. It’s making this week, like I said, brutally, brutally hard.

But of course, it’s in the brutally hard and the miserably dark that the light of our God shines the brightest. And in the same way He graced our patio with morning glories at this exact time last year, I woke up twice this week to texts from dearly beloved women in my life. One was my grandma, who said her morning glories had sprouted at last. The second was a mentor with a message just the same. Mine were, once again, a viney mess, so I didn’t have much hope of a harvest.

But I dragged myself out of bed and onto the front porch, weary from a week of work and weeping. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that the goodness of God once again graced our doorstep, once again when I needed it most. I gasped at the bursting blooms of morning glories pouring over pots on the porch.

As I knelt down to cradle one, I noticed a hole in its petal. It’s a bit incomplete, broken, missing a piece. And I thought oh, that feels so much like me! I can’t look long at our family pictures or dwell on the barbecue-themed baby bash that should have had her there. It’s all incomplete, broken, missing a piece.

But the brokenness of that purple petal in no way diminishes its glory. If anything, it’s more beautiful, because it’s learned how to grow with a gap. That’s what we’re all trying to do here. Broken, yet awaiting the promise of future fullness. Incomplete, but knowing that growing with a gap means we get to fill that gap with our Savior. Missing something, but gleaming with glory because of Jesus.

I find it incredibly fitting that this year’s front-porch flowering was marked by a hole: I can’t even describe the hole that has been left in our world since Mama died. But this little blooming blessing serves as a sanctifying reminder that our holes will one day be filled — not because “time heals” or we’ll “move past our mourning”, but because there is a man who has holes in His hands. A man who was broken on the cross so that we would one day be complete. A man who spent days missing His Father’s presence so that we would never have to.

The wounds, the gaps, the holes, and the hurts are all part of God’s perfect plan for our good and His glory. The hard weeks make me cling to Him more. The broken flower petals point me toward a future home that will leave nothing incomplete. And the holes of this life force me to fill them with Jesus, who took holes in His hands and stabs in His sides because He loved us enough to die. His death fills the deepest holes in our hearts, and it promises that one day, every tribe, tongue, and nation of faithful followers will be united in the fullest family picture for an eternal new-earth barbecue. No holes, no gaps, nothing incomplete. Right by Mama’s side once again, but all the more, next to Jesus. That’s how I can make it through today.

Because wounds which marred the Chosen One bring many sons to glory.