Above all else guard your heart. Proverbs 4:23
What is it you would say, dear heart? Weary and unstable heart. I will pour you a hot cup of creamy coffee and sit across from you as you watch the cream marry the steaming drink in the mug.
I think you would sit a long while before speaking, because you really are more introverted and quiet than the rest of me gives you credit for. You tend towards the deeper thoughts and slower responses, if only my mouth would fall in line behind you.
I would watch as you pensively look out the window, watching the sunlight caught on the leaves sway and dance. what are your thoughts, heart of mine? What do you fear? Oh, that is a locked door of darkness and deep unspoken fears and cries of "Please God, never."
What thoughts captivate you, dear heart? What do you have to say to me about where you are right now? Such a shaky battle ground lately. Nothing stable, steady or routine.
Dear heart, are you sad? Grieving still for the loss that came so suddenly. Grieving still over not enough time, not enough words spoken. The look in those blue eyes that I fear will one day fade. The last long hug where we both were standing side by side next to his chair as I said, "See you on the sand next time." In hopes of a vacation, the last one together that would actually not be. My arm around his middle, his arm over my shoulders in a squeeze. I love you, dad.
How I still grieve. and yet, I carry the weight of the pain that I see in the eyes of my loves who grieve too. How can a mother heart grieve alone? My two hearts grieve with me and the pain is intense at times. It comes like waves as I recall all the moments that made up the days from diagnosis to death. such few days. Such sudden days. Yet days that help hope that was unrealized.
Dear heart, when will you heal? How can you heal?
Time. Time does soften but it also fades the memories like the colors on a polaroid. Oh I don't want the colors to fade. But how else will the pain fade? I miss him. Those words are too small to hold the intensity of emotion that is within them.
Meanwhile I still carry the loss of familiarity and sameness. It was buried in the memories of that old house, those familiar roads, the voices and rhythms of that town. There is a sense of grief in that loss too. Memories that were all too quickly buried under the rubble of the most recent eruption. But memories that held such tenderness and sameness.
This heart carries not only the instability of the year for its own weight and pain and grief but it carries the weight of my two other hearts. Every emotion, fear, sadness, grief and instability they feel weighs on my own shoulders and burdens my own muscles with knots and twinges. How do I unload this, Lord? Where do I place this burden? How do I get to your feet from here? Don't you see all the burdens that weigh me down and keep me from being still? I fear being crushed if I am still too long, but then I fear being ripped apart if I don't sit for a spell and just soak in the air up here.
Help me meet with you, el Shaddai, until I begin to lose this weight. until my heart begins to feel again. Let this emotion lighten as I sit and pour out to you. you alone hold my hearts and carry those boys ahead into their futures. Be so big to them Lord and mend them where they are hurting and fill them where they lack as only you can. Then come and sit and fill me too. Mend me too. Draw me ever nearer to your precious bleeding side.
