It still blows my mind that I would have 3 boys, the oldest turning 9 this year. Our Glenn passed away 3 days before Mother's Day in 2004, and we held his memorial service on Mother's Day of that year. I know that seems skewed, going to your baby's funeral on Mother's Day. I wondered, "Am I still a mother even though I lost my only child?" That Mother's Day was a chance for me to celebrate the life of the child I had just lost, and ever since then and after the addition of 2 more phenomenal boys to our family, the meaning of Mother's Day for me is something I just cannot put into words adequately. It is the sadness and grief of losing a child, the peace of knowing he is now healthy and happy and not suffering in a broken body like he was here on earth. It is the comfort of knowing we will see him again one day. It is a feeling of being blessed to have been able to love him and take care of him. It is looking at the 2 beautiful boys we have now and feeling lucky and blessed to have them as well as watching them grow, laugh, play, and be "all boy." How lucky are we to have Glennie, Jeff, and Jack!
There is a Bible verse that has been rolling around in my head for the past several days. It is 1 Corinthians 13:12.
"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."
We don't know the reason our little Glenn died. We know that it was to make us better in some way or ways and perhaps to help other people who knew him be better. I believe that in the end, everything God does is for good, even though it is sometimes hard to wrap my brain around what could be good about suffering. In the book "One Thousand Gifts," Anne Voskamp writes about Exodus 33:22-23 where God says to Moses, "When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back."
Anne writes, "Is that it? When it gets dark, it's only because God has tucked me in a cleft of the rock and covered me, protected, with His hand? In the pitch, I feel like I'm falling, sense the bridge giving way, God long absent. In the dark, the bridge and my world shake, cracking dreams. But maybe this is true reality: It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us, I-beam supporting in earthquake. Then He will remove His hand. Then we will look. Then we look back and see His back."
I always think of how Glennie would be 8. He probably would have long ago insisted we no longer call him Glennie but Glenn. Then I think, "Would we have had Jeff and Jack if Glennie had been alive?" Who knows. Who knows how life would have turned out if things were different. That's the thing about life. Are there really any "what if's?" Back when Glennie was first diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy and we were told he wouldn't live to see his 2nd birthday, I would think, "What if he were healthy? Where would we be now, where would we be going, if our sweet baby was not terminally ill?" It wasn't long before I realized that there was no such thing as "what if's." This had always been God's plan, for whatever reasons we may not understand now, that now we may know only "in part." Though I know this had always been His plan, I still wonder what Glennie would be like today and imagine him interacting with his brothers. Despite everything we have been through, I still have trust. I trust that God knows what is best for me, even when life is tumbling down. I trust that He is there when I can't see through the blackness. I trust that someday I will "know fully."
