needed things

And he is six and he walks into the kitchen, all tousled hair, sleepy eyes, and sweetness.  And we tell him. His face is so small and dear, so tiny and he doesn't understand the depth of our words.  In that moment I am 11 and instantly have wisdom beyond my years because of that look of innocence and because I know a little more than he.

And he is thirteen and he is confused, growing and lonely.  I'm driving us down the road and I'm singing a song of love for a God Who is beginning to fill in my blank and wrecked spaces.  He is dozing beside me, mumbling that I am a good singer, that he likes the song.  Yet I cannot be the arms that hold him because my own grief wells inside of me, by times, that I fear it may consume me.  He is still so small and young and yet he knows too much and has felt too much.  I feel I am his protector and I am not able to fix this.  I cannot be what he needs and there is an ache that I shouldn't know and I do and because of it I feel I am undone.

And he is sixteen and he is angry and hurt.  He hurls insults and I stand between he and the one who has caused the deeper wound.  I stand in the middle.  He is misunderstood and confused.  Trying to see beyond this thing that has grown to be insurmountable.  This thing that has shaped and will form his hard edges and the lines of his grief.  He is helpless against it.  I hide in a quiet place and pray for peace to settle into this house where I no longer live.  I too want to be free of these things and I'm beginning to stand taller in my brokenness as my God becomes my strength.  

And he is thirty something.  Driving in grief to be by the bed of one who has poured life into him, given him her soft, warm hugs, her encouragement and her heart.  She, who is an answer to prayer, walked in the shoes of someone taken too soon.  She did it willingly and lovingly.  Her kind influence on the sweet six year old boy.  How his heart breaks as he makes his way to be with her; to hug her, to tell her what she means to him.  Arms that embraced, words that encouraged and with a heart full and outpouring for children that were not her own.  She could give him more than I could, the child I was myself.  She walked into his heart and patched a little bit of the wounded bits, the needed things.

"You took over and set everything right;

    when I needed you, you were there, taking charge."

Psalm 9:4