Missing Isaac

Missing this little guy a lot tonight...

...wondering what he looks like by now. He should be almost 6 months old had he had a chance to live here on earth this side of heaven. But then, I guess he's actually 6 months young now! No more "old!" in heaven! Here are some pics of the other boys at 6 months:

Ian's too old to have digital pictures readily available from 6 months old. :-)

 Here's Tyler (6 months) and Ian (2 1/2)

And Matthew (6 months)

 I often wonder what Isaac will grow to look like. I've always imagined him having Tyler's brown skin, Wilson-blue eyes, and Matthew's curls, but brown-haired. I bet his great-grandparents are having a blast with him!

Thanks for indulging me; just keeping it real tonight (not that I don't always try to do so). We're missing watching him laugh and play and be entertained by his amazing big brothers. I was so excited to watch them all together.

As always, I'm so thankful for the HOPE that we have because of Christ.

Love you, Isaac Joseph!

A Crusty Cocoon, Bitter Herbs, and Hope

If I were an artist, I'd create a massive mural of all of the different images that have been so poignantly descriptive of my journey over the last 7 1/2 months. Actually, the months extend long before the gut-wrenching Day. The images began a good 16 months ago. One day, I'll share them all, but we'll stick with the now for now. :-)

The cocoon- a crusty one. It's a word picture descriptive of my interior right now. Yes- crusty. And cocooned. It's an ugly picture, but it isn't without hope.

Last night, our family sat together to remember the Passover. The years of suffering. The bitter pill that the Israelites had to swallow in their captivity. The blood of the lamb marking them as the LORD's, and His rescue of His people. And then~ the ultimate blood of The Lamb that marks us and redeems us as His. We had a joyful, crazy, Jewish-dance(attempt!)-filled, occasional meltdown-filled (since it was 9 o clock when we finally began after soccer practice!) time

together. In my mind's eye, I imagine this sacred tradition being very solemn, somber, sacred, and somewhat intense. We got the intense. With 3 boys, we get a lot of intense around here! But then, isn't the sacred simply the presence of God? Emmanuel. And it's just like God to meet us in the messy- even when it looks like yelling boys and tired tears from a 7 year old who just wants to light a few more candles and a mom nervously reminding, 'please don't break the crystal'  when really, we are remembering The Lamb of God being completely broken for us. It's there that He meets us. Right. In. Our Mess. He's so unlike us. I want to run from the mess, but He. He comes into it and transforms us amidst it.

So we're following this printed liturgy, and we get to the part about the parsley. I don't know if it's because we used a different liturgy this go-round or if it's that I arrived at the table with new glasses this year. But these words- they jumped out at me: "The parsley symbolizes the growth of springtime and is a sign of hope

and renewal." Huh? This paradox: bitterness and renewal. Though bitter, parsley is green with life, and it is a sign of spring. A sign of hope. A sign of renewal. We eat it remembering the bitter enslavement of God's people that would eventually end. We eat it remembering that it's our own rebellion that has enslaved us, and we are pierced with the Truth that Jesus took on the bitterness of the whole world so that through sacrificing Himself, the only Way to be truly free would be freely available to us. Hope in the bitterness. Beauty in the brokenness. Or maybe beauty through the brokenness? The cross wasn't the dead end. It was just the beginning. The brokenness yielded full redemption and LIFE!

The bitter parsley reminds me of my own cocoon. Both are pregnant with paradox. These seven months have been a season of deep bitterness. I don't mean that my heart has been bitter, but that my Isaac's too-soon-for-my-liking heaven-going has been a deeply bitter pill for me to swallow. But this cocoon of late-- it's a hard place in which to wait. Because that's what it is-- a season of waiting, not knowing exactly for what I'm waiting. Learning to be ok with the wait, knowing that Jesus will birth something (hopefully it'll look more like a butterfly than a moth! ha!) out of my cocooned brokenness, because that's just the kind of God that I follow. This is the hope that Jesus gives me. "This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for [my] soul." Heb. 6:19

What's the wait in which you find yourself? Are you willing to settle into it knowing that the "cocoon" truly is where transformation happens?