Can Somebody Pray?

Posted on April 16, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized, Parenting, Trusting God, Faith, Grace, Courage, Family |

For a couple of days now, I’ve noticed that my forehead is tender to the touch. When I run my fingers across it, it’s sore, sensitive and hurts . . . like the way your skin feels before you get the flu, kind of achy. Curious. It wasn’t until yesterday that I figured it out. I guess that the motion my face makes when I cry uses muscles in my face that are rarely used otherwise, and since the loss of our grandchild this past weekend, I’ve done a lot of crying, so my facial muscles are sore, like when you go back to the gym after having not gone in a while and suddenly sitting in a chair feels like climbing Mt. Everest. Which is what my life and our lives have been for the past four days or so; like climbing a Mt. Everest of sorrow, grief, confusion, pain, regret, disappointment, unbelief, prayer, petition, faith, and a host of other things that I didn’t realize could all be experienced at once.

Audrey Lynn Walters, the name that they refused to tell us for fear of it too being rejected like all the others they proposed, was stillborn Monday, April 14th at 1:00 in the morning. Her first name means noble strength, and my son and his lovely wife did her namesake proud as they, through their tears and sadness but shrouded in the thinnest veil of peace and faith, endured over 24 hours of labor knowing that the little girl being born to them actually belonged to God in the realest sense.

I have tried, in emails to my friends and family and in my own personal ramblings, to communicate the glimpses of God and beauty which pierced through that darkest night, but words mostly seem stupid and clumsy and a poor vehicle to use, but they are all I have and I still can’t make them fit. All I know is that when your son has collapsed to the floor and you hear yourself whining “Lord, have mercy” over and over again like a mantra, He does. Or that when your younger son finds himself, for the first time in his life, holding the entire and massive weight of his older brother and needing the strength of God to do so, God gives it. Or that when your usually quiet husband, while holding his beautiful but gone grand girl, finds himself searching for words of hope, future, thanksgiving and surrender because your daughter-in-love from her hospital bed asks, “Can somebody pray?” God gives them. That’s all I know. That and my forehead hurts, just like my heart.

Comments

2 Responses to “Can Somebody Pray?”

  1. Michele Steffens on April 16th, 2008 3:37 pm

    Nicole,
    I don’t know you very well, but my heart hurts for you…God is an awesome God. Let him hold you…and your forehead.

  2. mygoodness on April 28th, 2008 2:37 pm

    Thanks for the card and your prayers Michele. God is faithful in our grief.

Leave a Reply