Some Women Were Watching

“Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.” Mark 15:40, 41 TNIV

I know many women who have experienced the death of a child. We have grieved the loss of babies lost to miscarriages and in infancy. Children lost to physical death. Teenagers and adult children dead before their mothers. Mothers who cared deeply for their children and their needs. Who held their breath and watched as they could only hope that the darkness of death would pass over.

My son was not crucified. I am not Mary. I am a woman, a wife, a mother to a son. I know “my place” is not always to preach and teach but to “share” and “give testimony”. I imagine Jesus on the cross, the crowds, the centurion, and then the women.

I remember my then four-year-old son’s body lying near lifeless on the adult-sized hospital gurney. Those hours took me to despair and hours of darkness. Tubes, machines, drugs, doctors, and nothing helped so they sunk him closer to death. And I sat there. I watched until they forced me to leave. I touched him when others poked and prodded and walked away. I spoke to him, sang to him, prayed for him while others talked about him and walked away.

I know it was a miracle. I was there. I was watching.

On this dark Good Friday I remember what Jesus did and who he is. I read the scripture knowing what happens and how the disciples run away and hide just when I want to hear their voices loud and clear. And then I see them and hear them. Some women were watching.

 

Impatiently Waiting for the Good News of Easter

The day between death and life and defeat and victory is a long one. I am impatient. I cannot wait. I do not like sitting and waiting. I want to move. I want answers.

Good Friday and what Jesus accomplished on the cross doesn’t become Good News until I’ve sat through Friday and Saturday. Until I’ve allowed myself to taste the anguish and utter devastation of losing and loss, of death, of fear. I’ve come as close as a mother ever wants to that kind of anguish, of losing her son while clinging to the tiniest hope that all is not lost forever. No, my son is no Jesus nor is he a savior, but I remember and can still feel that loss and grief and fear and hopelessness wash over me as I picture a curtain not tearing in two but separating us from the flurry of doctors and equipment.

And then there was the waiting. The in between I find myself sitting in now. The initial shock and reminders are over, and I wait. There is a way to mark Friday and Sunday but what about the in between? Waiting for Easter and the little boys and girls in their Holy Sunday finest (that is not the fight I chose to fight with my now not so little ones) because it is new and exciting and hopeful and in so many ways easier for me than to sit here on Saturday night. Waiting.

There are only a few minutes left of this day, and it is finally time to sit and wait and prepare my heart again. I’m thinking of friends who are waiting and hoping for God to make all things new because the brokenness of Good Friday in our daily lives is almost too much to bear. I remember sitting and keeping watch over my son as he lay in a drug-induced coma thinking I was either going to have to prepare for his burial, just like the women did so early that morning, or find that this time around death would not have victory, just like the women did so early that morning.

I am so impatient. Just a few more minutes.

From Death to Life Through the Elias’ Eyes

Last Sunday Elias came out of Children’s Church with a tombstone. It was supposed to be a replica of the stone that covered Jesus’ tomb, and on the stone the children were supposed to write what they were thankful for this Easter.

My heart nearly skipped a beat when I saw what Elias had written:

“Getting through two seizures in one day”

Where is the innocent thankfulness for chocolate eggs?

To add to my shock, Elias added a drawing after the incomplete sentence – a smiley face, a circle that he had colored in which looked like an exaggerated dot or period, and then another smiley face.

Someday I will explain to him how amazingly accurate his picture story was…It was a beautiful Tuesday in June four years ago – a friend took some amazing photographs of Elias smiling and playing in the open fields at Cedar Campus. By Wednesday, Elias had literally gone dark – just like the circle he had colored in – clinging to life, intubated, on a ventilator with nothing for us to do but pray and cry. Two hospitals, a team of doctors and specialists, a battery of tests and we still had no answers. There was nothing to do but wait. By Thursday morning, Elias was back to smiling though still regaining his fine and gross motor skills.

It was nothing short of a miracle. And for that miracle we are thankful.

Smiley face. Dark circle. Smiley face.

For some reason, the pattern makes me think of Good Friday. Holy Saturday. Resurrection Sunday.

I can smile on Good Friday because I know how the story ends, just like I can smile now because I know how that week in June ended for Elias. I know that in the midst of Christ’s suffering there remains the shadow of hope that grows and groans.

But as we wait to celebrate Easter, there is the dot – a pause button, if you will, filled and empty with silence, stillness, grief, waiting, and certainty because once again we know how the story ends, just like there was certainty for me in the hospital and the life flight to Ann Arbor and in the PICU even if in that moment we didn’t know how the short-term would end. Certainly God was with me and with Elias and with Peter and our other two children and our friend Andrea and her two children who traveled with Peter while I flew with Elias. I was and remain certain of it. Certainly God is in the silence and in the in between.

And I smile this morning having been greeted by Elias’ smile and signature, “Oh, Mom!” He doesn’t remember the seizures or the emergency medical flight to Ann Arbor. He doesn’t remember the spinal tap, the multiple scans of his brain and body. He doesn’t remember so much because his life had momentarily gone dark, just like that circle he had colored in. He remembers to be thankful and he really lives life like a celebration.

This Easter I have been reminded by my youngest child to be thankful for the smiles and everything in between. Even the circles that have been colored in with darkness because I am certain.

He is risen. Indeed.