It’s that time of year…

  So it’s that time of year. Actually its the fifth season in Minnesota; its the mud season. We don’t even bother to clean the floors.  Why? One dog walking in… forget one dog, us walking in and that 3 x 5′ mat is useless. I forget mud season in the middle of June. I don’t remember it well in August. It’s just a faint memory in December but when March comes rolling around and the snow begins to melt, I remember. It’s that time of year. So it’s also that time of year in other things in life. March 1992: that time of year. They call it a silent sorority. It used to be more hushed but with our ways of counseling and dealing with issues, it’s becoming more and more of a topic people understand how to share and share as an encouragement not necessarily as a burden.

March 1992 we had a baby. March 1992 we held him while he died. It’s that time of year. It’s not like it was in 1993, and it is almost like a moment you kind of remember but so much time has passed and then again, I can go back in a heartbeat.

What did I learn in 1992? What did I learn about God, about myself, about life, about people, about the church, about coping skills of our world in general?  I learned that God was in that room with me and spoke to me in the elevator. No one else heard him, but I couldn’t miss the voice. I learned that how I process things is with music (no shock there) and sometimes just for myself was all I needed to sit and play. I learned that people don’t know what to say. They mean well but they say the dumbest things at the most inopportune times. One lady patted my belly (while still very pregnant) and said, “oh you can always have another baby”.  We knew he wouldn’t live if he was born alive, but when you are 8 months pregnant, being pregnant again isn’t the most comforting thought in your mind. I learned people didn’t know what to do so they avoided me. I didn’t have a plague, I was only pregnant with a crisis pregnancy. It was not contagious. There were a few that didn’t know what to do so they just hugged me. And it didn’t hurt them.  We both felt better. Sometimes when you don’t know what to say, don’t talk! Just love.

I learned the church isn’t prepared for what to do when people hurt. One leader was beyond loving. The rest just kind of pretended nothing happened and I went from 80 mph to standing still without a stop sign and that was normal. They moved on with life as if nothing happened.

I also learned that the people you find that walk the valleys you have walked, breath the same air. I since have had the honor of saying to a young mother who has buried her child, “I have been down the same road. Maybe not as far as you, and maybe not that fast, but I know the road.”   God is faithful; I have more faith now in the God that created a little baby just for my chance to hear God speak. I hold tighter to the hope of heaven. I hug someone who is walking on the ramp heading for that road knowing that God will give them the strength for the next step and when they reach their exit off that road, their faith in God will have multiplied so much they can’t explain it either.

And I will party. We still, 26 years later, have a birthday cake and a party. I still look at the picture of two very young people holding a tiny beautiful baby so delicate and yet so perfect except… The exceptions in life is what God uses to form our spiritual vases that the flowers he gives us will hold. I have been given some beautiful flowers.. The vase that was formed when we walked that valley, I wouldn’t trade for anything. It makes the other flowers in life more beautiful.

Yes, it’s that time of year… and I can smile and laugh and almost enjoy the calories of the cake because God let me have a piece of heaven….on earth for time.