The leprechaun visited last night: ornery little rascal! He is so unlike the other holidays’ visitors! Santa may eat our cookies and leave a boot print now and then, but he fills our stockings to overflowing and stacks the presents high. The Easter bunny is even more thoughtful: he never leaves anything nibbled or messy, just fills Peter Rabbit baskets up to the brim with a pastel rainbow of candies and new Jesus books. But the leprechaun??? He makes a mess! He breaks into the specially-purchased Lucky Charms box and throws corn cereal and magically flavored marshmallows all over the kitchen. He tears into our bag of chocolates, nibbling some, littering wrappers and bites of chocolate on every surface. Then—to add insult to injury—he always leaves green pee in at least one of our toilets along with little green footprints on the seat! I wake every St.Patrick’s day to the gleeful sound of giggling little boys, and a big ol’ mess to clean up. And I remember a day without all of this.
Fourteen years ago today, our dreams lay in a pile of mess.
Fourteen years ago today, I asked God if he had cursed me.
Fourteen years ago today, I laid in my mother’s bed and waited for Jack’s plane to land, for his father to deliver him safe to my side, so we could walk together the dark road of birthing and mourning our firstborn son.
I remember my mom telling me, as I sat in an empty house later that year, that someday my home would burst at the seams with children, that I would grow to see this loss within a wider frame: a gentler picture, no longer dominated by the black and white stark of grief, softened by the pastel colors of joy.
Fourteen years later, I wake to leprechaun pee and smile at Caleb’s little brothers’ laughter. Jack takes a break from his work and we walk down the road to Gleneden beach, as our doodle Ezekiel (God will strengthen) runs ahead chasing gulls and hunting for sticks.
“Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” we nod to each other, our words heavy with memory as we watch the Oregon waves crash against the sand beneath a gray March sky.
How has this day turned happy? I wonder to myself. How have all the tears I’ve cried added up to joy and leprechauns?
I return to the cabin, boys wrestling with fractions and Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. I feed the doodle and pour another cup of coffee. I text my girlfriend happy birthday,
Happy birthday, sister. Can’t imagine life without you.
I wish our dear aunt happy birthday, and count the blessings these two women have poured into my life.
I smile at my brooding seventh grader, who looks at me and asks,
“Mama, why are you always smiling at me?”
I look at him and say,
“Because 14 years ago on my worst day, I couldn’t imagine that God was bringing you to me. That every year since, you would be our rainbow. That every year after that first year He could fill all my sadness up with joy.”
How does loss so devastating transform into joy?
We will all face it: a loss we don’t know how to survive.
We will all be caught in the snare of deep despair.
But on my fourteenth year of grieving a son we did not get to raise,
I see that where the deepest chasms gape, God stands ready to make us whole.
He comes close to the broken and holds us in our hospital beds.
He kneels beside our loved ones’ graves, right beside us on the broken earth.
He holds us through the dark nights when no sleep comes, as the grief threatens to break us in two.
Fourteen years ago today I could never have imagined we could befriend another family with three boys the exact same ages as ours. I couldn’t foresee how their fourteen year old son would climb into our SUV across from me and tell me about his March birthday: the Lego technic car he received, the cinnamon rolls his mama baked him for breakfast. That I could smile and feel grateful that this gift comes to me when I am whole enough to receive it, to set aside my losing to receive a small glimpse of the boy I might have raised.
This St. Patrick’s day overflows with math tests and Amelia Earhart book reports, doodle barking, beach walks, March Madness (Go Zags!). I clean up after that darn leprechaun and I smile through tears. How did the mess of my life, all of my broken dreams, transform into beautiful? I breathe deep at the knowing found only on the devastating shores of loss:
There is no place I can find myself, no pain so deep, where He is not already busy in the miracle of resurrection.
So I trust Him with the dreams still eluding me, the messes I cannot clean up on my own, and I retell my heart:
“I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you HOPE and a future.”
May you find the fullness of God’s grace pouring into your mess today. And may you know the deepest satisfaction of standing in awe as your Maker transfigures it all for your good.
Joyfully,
Taylor
Thank YOU so much! Such a testimony!