::Left me:

oday, for just a few moments, I thought Norah had left me.

I pulled the back-carrier, in which she was tucked, from my back. I saw a tiny pale face with eyes closed. Is she blue? I called her name. I called it more loudly. I patted her cheeks. I began to pull her to me. Nothing. Eyes stayed closed. Panic. She's gone! God, no!

Perhaps it was seconds. Maybe years. But her eyes opened.
And. I. Wept.
So many tears over a loss that was felt deeply, but never truly came.

When I saw my tiny pale baby I was seeing another boy on another floor, unmoving. Eyes closed. Head in my hands. Rocking over him with only prayers to offer.

His eyes opened too. Much more slowly.

How long will I be seeing loss before it comes?

In this house there have been falls. Gashed chins and torn lips. Cries and blood. But in those things I see life. In silence and stillness I see death. Every mother has hovered over the crib of their new one. Listening. Listening.

My heart has been broken and re-broken over these weeks for the mothers whose children eyes never opened. Who never woke up. If I should die before I wake. . . That gentle drifting that steals away our babies and leaves no room for goodbyes.
My tears were for those mothers too.

"...how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." {Matt 23:37}
Jesus speaks his words to an Israel who is rejecting him. But to me, my eyes and ears still full of stillness, it sounds as though he is speaking to death. Hating it for clutching the children he loves in its grip. The last enemy. Vanquished. Yet present.
The dark veil we must pass through to get to Jesus.

But.
There.
He.
Stands.
Waiting.
Arms.
Open.

Victorious.

Tiny Annorah, if you should die before you wake, your soul my Saviour longs to take.
Amen.