Permanent

I did a thing, a something I thought I would always be too indecisive for completing.  I got a tattoo.  There are a list of reasons that I chose this specific expression in the mystery of grief.  It is a sigh of relief in a peculiar way, a physical thing I carry with me in the agonizing absence of presence.  I need to carry something from my boy into the future while I wait. 

The truth is, love grows in so many of our relationships, people colliding into one another in the messy spaces and places of life.  Our hearts are always confronted with decisions, markers in the continuum of time.  We choose love and we feel love in those moments.  For example, Haddy loved to rock, his deep breathing a blanket of rest and peace.  If you ever had the distinct blessing of that experience, you know it's beauty surpasses that which words can describe.  You know the exchange of brilliant, unconditional love.  We have these moments with all of the loves in our lives.  They cannot be repeated with another soul, defined by the perfectly unique characters experiencing the intensity of those moments suspended in time.  The relationship changes and becomes something other because of God's tender mercy and care in these mundane yet defining moments.  It is exhilarating, mysterious, and precious.  Most of all, it is a glimpse into the boundless, steadfast love of God and an evidence of His matchless grace.  

God has given to me so abundantly, far surpassing my wildest dreams.  I must add, I am convinced that God, in His sovereignty, has the absolute right to give and take away.  I can rest in Him, even in this bitter providence, and still trust in His goodness.  Yet, without Haddy's presence, I am forced within my own soul to redefine how I will express my growing love for him.  It is entirely disorienting.  I don't know how to stop loving Haddy more with each passing day.  I can't.  It is impossible.  I can only imagine my love growing for all of my children.  It is woven into the core of my motherhood and given by my Father who saw fit to honor me with my children.  So here I sit, recognizing I was all out of moments, time, and decisions, except I didn't know.  I didn't know when I was holding his hand for the last time or kissing his cheek for the last time.  Somehow, in my aching, I wish I could remember.  Remembering is an expression of love.  Tears are an expression of love.  Yet, maybe God's grace is that I can't remember them all.  I would surely be so paralyzed, examining every angle of sincerity and depth, that maybe I would never get any more living done.  Truthfully, the mystery of expressing a growing love relationship with one person in Glory far surpasses my current understanding.  My honest answer to my own pondering is simply that I don't have any idea how I will do it.  What I gathered, though, was that I need a marker, a physical something to touch while I pray, cry, work, cook...be.  It feels undoing to take off the ring my mother gave to me at Christmas with my children's names engraved.  All of the jewelry I have been given to commemorate my Haddy is very dear to me, but I take it off at night.  I needed something that remains.  The permanence of his death will only release it's grip on me in Glory.  So, he is etched permanently on my body with this verse of Scripture beneath it.  

Psalm 116:15
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. 

Those words are a proclamation to myself that God’s delight is much greater than mine.  Haddon James Hampton isn't missing out.  He is experiencing the fullest delight.  In my daydreaming, my faith imagination, I let my heart settle into the matchless love of Jesus and wonder and ponder on how He may be belly laughing at Haddy's silliness, completely delighted with every nuance of his person.  This passage brings rest to my aching soul.  Despite all of our sin, the Lord delights in our homecoming.  If that doesn't shake you to the core and breathe life into your weary bones, I'm not sure what will.  This Scripture, the sheer joy of imagining God's delight over my own homecoming, woos me to live, to delight in the midst of my aching.  Amidst the deepest tragedy I have ever known, the yearning to please my Lord remains.  To live is Christ, to die is gain (Phillipians 1:21).  In all of the aching and longing ahead of me, I want my eyes fixed on the One who is rest for my weary soul.  If I'm really honest, I just don't feel cut out for this kind of loss, this life I'm now living in.  I am quite certain nobody does.  Yet, no matter how strongly I feel, I know that God's plan for my life is somehow better than mine.  There is a certain kind of submission now etched onto my arm, and Lord willing my heart as I go about the call to live in the midst of profound loss.  

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the man our sweet Haddy was named after, had some commentary I found on Psalm 116 that brought me the sweetest relief as I read it.  I want to share an excerpt of it here.

Verse 15. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints, and therefore he did not suffer the Psalmist to die, but delivered his soul from death. This seems to indicate that the song was meant to remind Jewish families of the mercies received by any one of the household, supposing him to have been sore sick and to have been restored to health, for the Lord values the lives of his saints, and often spares them where others perish. They shall not die prematurely; they shall be immortal till their work is done; and when their time shall come to die, then their deaths shall be precious. The Lord watches over their dying beds, smooths their pillows, sustains their hearts, and receives their souls. Those who are redeemed with precious blood are so dear to God that even their deaths are precious to him. The deathbeds of saints are very precious to the church, she often learns much from them; they are very precious to all believers, who delight to treasure up the last words of the departed; but they are most of all precious to the Lord Jehovah himself, who views the triumphant deaths of his gracious ones with sacred delight. If we have walked before him in the land of the living, we need not fear to die before him when the hour of our departure is at hand. 

This tattoo is certainly a way to carry my son into my future if even just his memory, a quiet way to allow myself to grieve even when my present circumstances don’t give me the opportunity.  More importantly, as I carry on in this life completely altered by the lens of suffering, it preaches truth to me every day as I learn to endure the affliction of living life without one of my children with me. The truth is that choosing life in the mundane is sometimes extremely difficult.  Going to the grocery store, preparing meals, and routine conversations can become paralyzing in the moment.  Some days my heart feels like it is too big for my chest, squeezed by everything around it, and I want to scream into the normalcy that I am undone, writhing in the agony of living without Haddy’s brilliant blue eyes.  Some days it feels like my returning to work, to raising children, and to dishes and laundry is a betrayal of sorts.  I am not the same.  Yet, I am returning to his bedroom where his small frame snuggled next to mine over and over to put my girl’s clothes in their closet.  Do you know how badly I want to scream with all of the agony wrecking my heart, mind, and body?  I am scrubbing the same table that he goobered countless times with his messy toddler hands.  I am trying to understand the rhythm of this life without Haddy’s music, and I can’t yet feel this new rhythm or move in sync with the world.  I feel suspended, not quite knowing how to move, breathe, and be.  My breath catches, my heart quickens, and I need moments, so many moments, to sigh at the depth of the loss that I feel.  So, I sit in the permanence of this most difficult providence.  I sigh, remember, touch the ink now permanently etched onto my body and I rest in the One who took Haddy Home.  

Just the sight of Haddy's sweet face sends my heart reeling, but it now reminds me to rest in Jesus who will see me through.  My Jesus delights in the homecoming of every child of His because He robbed the grave, defeating sin, death, and hell, so that we might spend an eternity with Him.  That kind of 'permanent' is way better than any of us deserve.