How Big.

Want to know how I really feel?

I miss him.

I miss his tiny cry and his little face and the body that used to fit into this onesie. I miss his fingers - his bent little pinkies. His toes. His squeaks as he nursed.

Friday night I cried myself to sleep. I laid his blue monkey hat next to me in bed where his head has rested next to me last. and I patted the comforter where his bottom always was. That would always relax him - then we could go back to sleep, and do it all over again when he got hungry ... in 3 hours. Held a teddy bear given to us for his funeral and cried and cried. Oh, how I miss my baby boy.

There is an anthill on the surface of his grave. And I watch, wondering how cold it is underneith. And oh, how I want to dig!! Did I wrap him warmly enough? He has a book and a webkinz just in case. And then I laugh for obvious reasons....a webkinz? and he wouldn't be reading a board book about heaven - he's THERE. And I close my eyes every time I go see him and ask God to take us. Come back for us, Lord. Come back soon. What should i do with this anthill in the meantime? How dare they - that's where my son is. He doesn't like bugs, either. If only I could just hold him for another day. Feel him wiggle, feel him warm, with no embalming fluid smell. Like mass-produced plastic. Ugh. But his beautiful little hand was perfect all the way from birth through burial. That didn't change a bit.

At the cemetery, there is a gravestone that has a worn look to it. Son of ______ Born and Died August 27, 1890. A lamb carved into the top. No flowers. And I look back at my son's stone with 4 boquets around it, pull a pretty arrangement from the ground, and place it next to this baby's stone. And I stand there and think - near 100 years ago, his mother stood in this very spot - asking God "why?". Why my baby? Crying over her son, and pouring her heart out - just as I was that day. And now, I bet she's with him again. And his stone sits unvisited, just as Andy's will be in 100 years. And just as I will be with him again.

I am going to be honest. I am haunted. Haunted by thoughts of Andy's death, finding him that morning when I opened my eyes. Pale and blue and cool when I touched him - wondering what on earth had just happened. Holding him so tightly - knowing I had never been so out of "situational control" in my whole life. He was perfectly fine 4 hours ago. CPR, Ambulance, Investigators, Questions, Funeral Arrangements, Burial, Gravestone Design. Something I never dreamed about when I went back to sleep after nursing that morning.

I don't quite know if I should be writing all this tonight, but I am just going to. If I don't hear my children for a few hours in the night, my heart sinks, and I stand at their door terrified to go into the room, and seeing flashes of what I might find. I walk in and stare at their bodies laying there until I see movement. Sometimes I will shake them a little just to see them respond. Hold a finger under their nose to feel their warm breath. And I wonder when I will stop.

I see potential dangers in a whole new light. There are movies that people see flash pictures of the future - that kind of thing. That is exactly how it happens. A close up shot of the danger, then them finding that danger, accident, dying, pain, arrangements, burial, and finding heaven ...unintentionally. Only it's not predicting anything - or helping - it's haunting. Although Andy died in his sleep, I see my other kids in accidents as well as sleeping. Or in pain - and I am unaware. I feel unaware of this life we live. and out of control. And every day I have to make a choice to submit and watch what He can do. Because if I didn't have that every morning when I walk into the girls' room, I wouldn't have anything.

I expected that God knew how He fit into the box I made for Him. Turns out, I don't think it was His favorite place to be. And He shouts - I AM THE BEGINNING AND THE END. But I LOVE you. Come and get to know me better. That coffee you are drinking - I created that. Those raspberries you are going to pick today - I made those. And me, I can rationalize that I will see Andy again, and I understand God's faithfulness and LOVE...but my little brain just can't get around this idea.....who is He? He gives and takes away ... but my heart will choose to say .... Lord, BLESSED BE YOUR NAME. In these storms of this crazy world - I want to cling to you, because that is the absolute only thing that I am sure about anymore. He is the only thing I am sure of.

No, I don't know how or why He works, but He is there, and always will be. And He LOVES piddly little me. Enough to tell me that I need to DISCOVER Him again. And that is where I am.