Young Writers Society

In a crowded school hallway,
I count my children zooming beside me:
One... two... three... four... five...
And stop.

My oldest laughs. "You forgot the sixth one!
You forgot Thomas!" And, as if to remind me,
She curls an arm around me and pats my
Growing belly with her hand.

"I did not forget him!" I say.
"I can feel him moving deep inside
And it feels like he is tickling me
From within. But I am not afraid of
Losing him."

And then I hesitate.

But my oldest child laughs,
Chiding me off my forgetfulness
For how can a mother forget her child?
And I laugh with her as well, and wonder
How to tell her how much I love them all
And how I can never forget them.

I always wondered about the ending of
The Book of Job. How is happily ever after
Ended with Job getting a new family and then
Everything was all better again. Never mind
That the devil wrecked havoc in his life and
Killed his entire family. No! And then Job's friends
Chided him for mourning too long and suggested
That he repent to God for he must have sinned badly.
After all, if everything happens for a reason then
God must be punishing him! To which God comes

And assures Job that his friends are wrong and that

He is God

And Job immediately understands and trusts.

And I always wondered about that story for
When I wondered about it theoretically
I never understand why Job would simply trust
In God after God allowed his family to die.
I never knew how Job could surrender so easily
And let God take control of his life again
After abandoning him so completely.

Nor did I understand how there is comfort
For God being Good when there is so much
Suffering in this world.

But it begins to make sense to me:

Because, yes, there is sorrow and loss in this world
And sometimes we rage and cry against God
And demand answers to questions that we
Cannot comprehend, like children crying against
Our parents for the cruelty in this world.

But God is God and He listens
To the anger of our grief and then
Invites us to move on and put our trust in Him
To open our hearts once again
To the people in this life He brings to us
So that we may learn to love.

And I don't know why our lives are
Filled with broken dreams and
Unfinished goodbyes. I don't know why
Loss punctuates all our crises
And buried traumas and plagues the very
Marrow of our bones. Many times I've wondered
Whether loving ghosts makes me more like one too
For I feel like I wander the earth searching
For a home that is not my own with loved ones
filling inside the living spaces and not just
Haunting picture frames.

They say that Heaven is that home and my heart
Feels torn apart. How can a home be so far away
And inaccessible? To live and to have Heaven
as a home is to be homeless and my heart
cries out for the end of that awful separation.
To be reunited with all that are lost and to see
fully the love that we were made to endure.

And I don't know why loss must hurt so much,
Why love must hurt so much, but I know
How to walk, step by step. I know how to breathe
How to laugh, how to cry, and so cry I will
While talking the next steps and
laughing through my tears.

For I am alive and life surrounds me. Even now
The touch of yarn slipping through my fingers
reminds me of green fields full of hay. There is joy,
Real joy in life amid the sorrow and I will let my tears
Fall in the sunshine so that a rainbow might come.

For rainbows are miracles from God
And miracles should not be taken for granted.