i forget, for a moment, how angry i am at God, when i hold my new nephew, whose brown feet conduct an invisible orchestra.
babies give God a face, and when you look at them, it’s so easy to believe.
but when they die, at 18 months, it’s so easy to stop believing. because then God has died. all over again.
and there’s heaven, where all babies go, i believe, where innocence is resurrected but we are left here on earth. the parents, left here on earth, and it’s now hell.
it’s cold here in calgary. my sister and i have been eating brownies and holding malachi and listening to him breathe. it sounds like a heart, pumping love and peace and everything good.
the service is on tuesday. it feels wrong to go to a cemetery for an infant. it feels wrong to think of burying new life, but where else do you go when the heart stops?
their one prayer was that she’d learn to hold her head up. this baby girl you’ve prayed for, for so long, this savannah. the one with the rare genetic disorder, the one this couple tried for, for eight years. i’ve never known a mother who loved her child more. it took hours to feed savannah. hours. only to do it over again, and this mother, she never complained.
and now she has to bury her child on tuesday.
and i think i was wrong. i don’t think babies give God a face. i think mothers do.
(please pray for this couple, friends. i know you will. love you.)