Mourn with Those Who Mourn

Tomboy Shenanigans

              I was a pretty brave tomboy growing up–sporty and spunky and full of zeal. I was filled to the brim with a fiercely competitive spirit. I played many an evening outside. I was tough and tumble and unafraid. I did not know what I wanted to do or be when I grew up, other than firmly believing I was completely capable of becoming anything I wanted to be, an Olympic Gymnast or Ice Skater in particular, despite the fact that I had little to no training. Turns out, a little more than a dream is required to make a dream like that come true.

            My older sister and I spent many long evenings hitting a tennis ball back and forth in the street. We rode our bikes mercilessly. We played football with the boys and basketball with each other (as we repeated the epic Teen Wolf scene at the end of the movie, slow-motion style with comparable slow-motion noises we created with our mouths. You know the scene. The one where he wins the big championship in his less monstrous skin). My little sister, however, was rarely to be found outdoors, other than to find reason to tattle on us from time to time. We were older and wiser. She was younger and had mastered the art of child-like manipulation tactics in her tattling antics. Let’s face it, every baby of the family has. It must be a gift awarded them by the parental elites. My little sister, she stayed inside. She stayed inside to care for her baby dolls. They needed fed, walked, talked to. These fictitious children she cared for so deeply gave nothing back, but she poured, and poured, and poured and has been pouring ever since.

            As I sit here today, I do not think about the ways in which my little sister and I differ, but simply the way God has designed us both to be and the beauty that lies therein.

Infertility Among the Maternal

            My baby sister is struggling with infertility. My baby sister cannot have babies. My baby sister that played with dolls, while I played with dirt. My baby sister that prettied her dolls’ hair, while I ratted out my own. My baby sister that hugged and snuggled and tucked these little ones in at night has no one to tuck in at night, and I cannot understand why.

            I have not been there for the challenging conversations she has had to endure with doctors, but I do know she has had them. I know what it is like to walk away from a doctor with an empty womb that was once full (read some of my personal journey here) but not with one that cannot be filled up. I can only imagine and try to understand the grief of this longing unfulfilled. How do you fill up these empty spaces of such big maternal longings? How do you reconcile the broken things that seem to be abandoned? I do not know the answers, but I know they can only be found in God. No earthly being can right that wrong. No human scientist, scholar, psychiatrist, parent, etc. can fill the gut-wrenching breaking that leaves a hole in our stomach and an ache in our chest. More importantly, I know that the breaking is a result of a broken world, not a broken God. Broken people can at times, cause even more breaking or at minimum hope-deferred, but our unique brokenness causes echo chambers of the already broken places.

            The triune God alone is the God of the broken places.

            The triune God alone will restore what has been lost.

            The triune God alone is in the miracle working business.

            My baby sister is a stayer. I’ll elaborate. She stays when others go. A few years back a hurricane came through Florida and she sheltered in place during the storm. She stayed. I mock these crazies that stay during big storms. I mock them when I see them on the news and I hold great disdain for their unsafe decisions. Regardless of another’s perspective, she boards up and hunkers down. I find great peace in that. She stayed when others left, and she survived the storm. This storm is not unlike the other. She will stay and hunker down, boarded up, protecting the things she loves, but as she does, would you hunker down within her, Lord? Would you stay low with her as the storms of life are swirling high?

            As I mentally tuck in my baby sister from afar tonight, I rest knowing this maternal mother, not yet a mom, has mothered so many. In her Sarah-like spirit she’s been a mother to the masses, but tonight, Lord, I prayerfully ask that you’d make her a mother of one.