Redemptive Rainbows

Today was gloomy, rainy, and heavy.  Today was also the first day we could place our holiday floral arrangements at Haddy’s grave.  I had to leave his vase empty a few weeks ago because the flowers needed to be brought home instead of thrown away.  They were just a few weeks old.  I need to do this grave tending.  It is a thing in my grieving that I didn’t expect.  I NEED to tend to Haddy’s grave.  It is a comfort and it is incredibly painful.  Juxtaposition...again.  

Do you want to know something?  Grief leaves an emptiness, a loneliness that sits down in your soul.  I can’t shake it.  Leaving that vase empty a few weeks ago for the grounds to be cleaned left my heart reeling.  As if the cold, hard stone that screams his name wasn’t enough for my aching heart, that empty vase was the proclamation of the state of my heart.  I wept there laying on his grave.  In fact, I wailed.  My own wailing haunts me, to be honest.  My teeth chatter and these inescapable groans pour out.  My mind quickly moves back to the emergency room.  My own wailing is a trigger.  (I shudder just typing this.) It is uncontrollable and undoing.  Yet, somehow...eventually, it provides some tiny bit of relief from the anguish within.  This is my lot and my grieving is important work.  Still, these outward signs of inward emotions can send me into storms of emotions in an instant.  His grave is obviously a frequent place where storms arise.

The death of my child has left me with this hard reality.  I will be undone in a way that simply is more than I can bear on my own.  My tears will be my food (Psalm 42:3).  The longing and yearning for my boy is now part of me.  It isn’t all of me though.  I am a bereaved mother.  We are a family that will always feel incomplete this side of heaven.  This isn’t our most defining characteristic as a family though.  I pray that what defines us most is the overflow of the immensity of God’s love upon us.  In this grief and with so much need, I still believe that can be true of our Hampton brood.  So, I pray for God to show us His love, remind us of His goodness, and redeem what has been broken.  

Today, He did that.  As we packed up the van with our kiddos after I put together Haddy’s holiday floral arrangement and loaded the car with a grave blanket some sweet friends dropped off yesterday, the anxiety was building.  Grief anxiety.  It’s a thing.  I was dreading the weight of grief that would surely sit heavy on my soul as we approached.  When the kids are with me, I try to refrain from wailing.  I have no problem letting them see me cry or even sob, but the wailing is reserved for me and Jesus..and sometimes my Jason these days.  Still, I was remembering my last two visits there and anticipating the anguish.

As we arrived, Jason pointed off into the horizon and we all noticed a rainbow peeking out.  Jason jumped out of the van and the big three ran over to Haddy’s grave with him.  They had all been caught up in the rain, rainbow, wind, and umbrellas and forgot that I may need a few extra hands.  I had Sweet Selah in her cute little boots next to me holding her umbrella in the wind while I sprayed my floral arrangement with the color protectant.  I am wrestling in the van with this grave blanket, trying to settle Selah who now has an umbrella flipped up from the wind, but I manage to get us and the things for the grave over massive puddles and to Haddy’s grave.  As I approached with full hands, Jason is shouting about the rainbow.  Then, I look up.  

There in the sky is the most magnificent rainbow I have ever seen.  The second rainbow in the sky was more faint, but my heart was simply bursting with hope.  You see, I don’t see the brilliant display of God’s creation as communication from Haddy.  I see a promise from God Himself.  I see this sign that He will fulfill His promises (Genesis 9:13-15).  Rainbows are a sign of hope because of my Lord.  In those moments, my heart was full to the brim with hope and with tender intimacy from my God.  It rained all day and in the perfect timing, this massive display of God’s faithfulness filled the sky, just as we walked over to the grave of our two year old son.  My friends, there is something very mysterious but very powerful about our God.  This moment though, I was filled with awe, with the tender care of a God who put His faithfulness on display for me to see, to notice and remember that the promises He makes are true, right, and real.  His love is immeasurable.  He is our Redeemer.  One day sin, death, suffering, pain, and tears will be no more.  

So, in the tension of the ‘already, not yet’, I am waiting.  God delivers big hope in real time sometimes with brilliant rainbows.  It is brilliant and lovely.  Gracious, it is also a salve to my soul.  Redemption is touching the juxtaposition that is my life with my baby in heaven and my other four love bugs here with us.  I mean, I am shopping for one less child this Christmas season.  That is HARD.  Honestly, that will always be hard.  I am praying to God that I can put His love on display this Christmas in the midst of unspeakable grief.  You know what?  Today, I remembered that God sees my aching heart, he hears my crying out to Him, and He knows my anguish even better than I do.  Today, he provided joy in a place where we feel immense sorrow and gravity.  No Momma ever wants to even imagine laying over the body of her baby with so much earth between.  There, in that space where the floodgates of my heart have opened up, He brought just another taste of redemption.  I have asked specifically for tastes of redemption with regard to the death of my baby.  There, in that very hard place, was one.

Will you all join me in prayer for the Advent season to be full of worship for us?  It’s our only hope to make it through with more than just survival as our goal.  I really do want more for all of us.  I want to sit in the eager longing for Jesus and rejoice that He came in flesh.  I want to grieve with growing hope this Christmas.  I want rejoicing in my sorrow and joy in my pain.  I want to train my children that these conflicted feelings won't go with us in eternity.  I want to raise them up to live their lives with heaven on their minds.  Will you pray to that end with me?  Will you look with me for redemption and hope?  Will you share that hope with someone to spur them on?  How is God using ordinary means to show you His extraordinary, intimate love?  How is He making Himself known to you in your hardships, your grief?  Will you ask Him to help you see with me?  I am in great need, but I know that I am not alone.  In our need, He is faithful to deliver the reminder that He will fulfill all of His promises, even through those magnificent, redemptive rainbows.