My whole heart

mywholehearta

Love is so powerful…the more you love someone, they say, the more you will grieve them.  Loving someone is taking that chance.  Giving them your whole heart with that possibility, that the unthinkable will happen.

That the never never never will happen to my child will happen.  We pour love into them, soak them in it…

then suddenly they are snatched away.

You are left, as I said in a facebook post, with the breath knocked out of you.

Traumatized.

Crushed.

What do you do when someone you have given your heart to is gone?

You keep loving them.  You can’t stop loving them.

I try so very very hard to picture him in heaven, to think of him in heaven, to make heaven his new home in my mind.  I just can’t.  Its not that I don’t believe he’s there.  It’s that he was JUST here with me.  My frail human mind still cannot comprehend what has happened.  I’m not in denial, its just beyond the point of my ability to cope.

I try so hard…to be normal…I took Brooklyn shopping for an Easter dress.  I was trying so hard.  The first thing we walked past in the store were men’s shirts and ties.  Right in front was a silvery grey shirt and purple striped tie like he wore to homecoming.  Then of course we had to walk through rows and rows of men’s clothes each step feeling more suffocating than the last.  Found a dress, then a quick stop in the kids department for socks.  Simple right? The boys clothes were front and center. Immediately a huge lump in my throat.  I thought of his childhood.  Just being a little boy.  My little boy who was supposed to grow up into a man.

He will never grow up into a man.  He was almost a man.  He looked like a man.  But he wasn’t.

I gave my whole heart to a boy almost man and I wouldn’t change one single thing.  About how much love I poured into him.  Every person I ever told about my son, while he was still alive, heard with a beaming smile how wonderful of a kid he was.  How he just amazed me with his maturity and kindness and how I had just really lucked out.  I told everyone how much I appreciated his helpfulness.  I could not stop the praise from bubbling out.  I knew I had something very rare in him.  I had an old soul.

It was worth it.  Not that I could have loved him any less if I tried.  It was worth every tear and every pang and stab of agony.  To have him for however long I could, to enjoy every smile and every hug and every “love you mama” even if it was only fifteen years.

I think…

If I could love him this much how much does God love us?

If my insufficient, meager ability to love feels this powerful how ever so much powerful is God’s love? The love of the God of the whole universe? The thought sends chills up my spine.

How greatly do we underestimate God’s love and his ability to care for us, as we bustle around like little ants only worried about the next problem and the next bump in the road.  It is a continuous struggle- the earthly pulling us down and the heavenly pulling us up.  We must let God’s love pull us up.  Lift our eyes to the heavens.  Feel his love bathing us.  That resplendent, omnipresent love offered to us purely because of his grace and mercy.

Jesus says, I give you my whole heart for all of eternity.

Psalm 103:11

“For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him”

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”

-Augustine


5 Responses to My whole heart

Leave a Reply to Deb Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *