I didn’t bring flowers to your grave, but I brought tears. As I leaned down the tears splashed on your headstone. So I dipped my finger in the puddle and used it as an inkwell to trace your name.
I know you are more alive than ever and in heaven right now but the mother in me is still connected to the rest of you that lies in wait beneath this earth.
It was hard to leave you behind 3 years ago when we watched them lower you into this tomb. I was your starting place. God knit you together in my womb. It felt wrong for this to be the place that received what began inside of me. So wrong. It seemed the opposite of what God intended when He gave us a curly headed, blue-eyed boy that sparkled like sunshine.
Death is wrong but wrong didn’t start here. Wrong started back in the garden of Eden when sin first entered God’s world. And since that day, God’s story of redemption has been playing out to fix the wrong that made a sweet boy not be able to keep himself alive.
Wrong didn’t win the day you died. God won. He reached down and whisked you home.
The vacuum left behind is all of us waiting until we can come home, too. Every day that we look to Him with trust for His timeline and how He is using your story is one more way the wrong is redeemed.
I cry over your name written here, marking your grave, but your name is written above in His book of Life. And that’s where you really are. Perfectly known, and perfectly knowing, while we wait well to see you again.
Dear God, I never thought I would write my boy’s name on a grave stone. I wrote it on a cake and a poster and a surprise party card that he never got to see. But now his name is written on cold, hard granite. Will this rock cry out to You when You come again? Split these rocks apart as You redeem the last of the curse on resurrection day. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus! Amen.
