Purest Form

There is a sort of hurt, settled so deep down and buried you can choose to live above it.  Breathe deeply.  Avert your eyes.  Let it settle like sediment at your feet, swirling like eddies.  To look would cause too much pain, to acknowledge it would be like releasing the dammed waters.  So you rise above it.  It becomes a part of you, nestled under your arms, lingering like old perfume behind your ear.

You can live with this sort of hurt and still experience the most immense amount of joy.  Actually, to be able to feel immense joy, the pain might be necessary.  

It might be inevitable.

I prayed.  Asked.  Begged, even.  

For a different kind of story.

For those so called desires of my heart.  

But that is not how my story will go.  

That is not how it was meant to be for me.  

I held Judah close, his face snuggled in a space between my collar and my chin.  A space hollowed out for him.  A space I hope always fits him somehow.  I think may I can grow.  I think life may stretch me, so no matter how big he grows, I may be his safe place.

And I whispered thank you.  Even though no one was there to hear me.  

Two weeks old. His eyes are changing color.  And his umbilical cord is about to fall off.  His head is growing, so his hair looks like it's thinning.  The baby soft skin on his hands and feet is peeling off, and every single day he spends more time with his eyes wide open. Staring.  Absorbing.  Learning.  Sometimes he smiles in his sleep.  And grabs my finger with his not-so-small hands.  

Thank you.

~

What then, will this story look like?  

The hurt is still there.  A tender, aching place I can find when I breathe deeply enough.  A hope, deflated.  Like so much saved room, laying empty and unfulfilled.  

There is a space I fit.  And I've been praying ever since I found it.  I've cried over it, walked away from it, always returning.  Always missing it.  I found myself there, again, on Tuesday.  Feeling as though the levees had broken and if I breathed just too deeply, I might be wracked by the weeping.  I had known, somewhere deeper than I wanted to dig.  I had held my breath, waiting, bolstered against the pain.

But it came anyway.

Much like a contraction.  

A wave of pressure and escalating pain.  Rising.  Intensifying.  Instinctually, you stop breathing.  Your shoulders tense, tighten.  And you push at whatever your hands can find -- as if to keep the hurt from finding you.

But you learn, too late sometimes, the only way to survive it -- the contraction -- is to breathe through it.  

How, I continuously wonder, can you feel such pain and joy at the same time?  

How can our testimonies be so full of hurt, making way for joy, and yet in the middle of it we forget the purpose.  They are the strongest of us, those who breathe through the pain, knowing life and peace will find them.

~

And it’s right there at the beginning….

and it’s quite something….

how even at the sharpest edge of things, there are wings (Voskamp)

~

I wonder, now, where we go from here.  

How will our story be written, what will the road look like?  

How long will it take before I look back to this day, understanding all this we had to wade through?

Everything works out for the good.  The desires of our heart.  The promises and encouragement are abounding, but I am not sure my heart believes them yet.  Not in regards to this.  

My heart has swollen, stretching to occupy the unmatched love I feel for this small little boy.  This small little boy who is mine.  

One day I will tell this story and today will not be the end of it.  There will be some conclusion, and there is some redemption waiting to happen.  A circling back around, a wrapping up of things, just like a good story... Intertwined and built up and connected in a deep and intrinsic way.  

There is this I hope for, but dare not say.  

I settle back and watch the stories of others, trying not to compare.  Trying not to be jealous.  Rejoicing with them as they rejoice in their marriages, in their homes, in their dreams come true.  All stories are different, she said.  

And I just nod quietly.  Just hoping mine is one worth telling.

Stare quietly into his eyes, blue transforming into gray then brown.  A soul in its purest form**.  Perhaps, my story will be about making his story worth telling.  Perhaps my desires will never be met, but I can pour myself into his life.  Into raising a good man.  

A good, strong, lion of a man.  















**Not my words, but the words a friend used to describe his first encounter with Judah: "Amazing to see a soul in its purest form".