The tenses of grief

September 3, 2007
12:18 AM

PAST

mourning what was...you look at pictures...the cute grin...the clear blue eyes..remembering how things were when he was here. The laughs...the screeches...the hugs...the kisses. The games you played....the books you read...the food he ate. The diaper changes...the runny noses...the toys strewn all over the floor.

PRESENT

mourning how things should be now if he were here...5 kids to get ready for church....5 kids playing together...saying come on boys....having a boys' room and a girls' room...where we would be going...what we would be doing...what he would be saying....what he would be wearing...what he would be eating...how many bananas I SHOULD be buying not the ones I am throwing away...would he be feeding himself..could he walk down the stairs yet...

FUTURE

How would he grow up...what would he have been like...who would he marry...how many kids...what would his profession be...I used to imagine what it would be like when my kids would be grown. Our prayers and hopes have always been that they would their love for Christ and obedience to Him would greatly excede our own. We trust God in his faithfulness to us. So I would see families in church with their grown or almost grown children and wonder what it would be like to have our sons standing tall and strong beside me and their dad worshipping with us and their sister...raising their own families to love the Lord...training their children far better than we are training ours...sharing their lives together with us and one another...so we mourn...we mourn that Knox will not be a part of that....However...as difficult and heartbreaking as this is over and over again..our FUTURE tense again has HOPE. That he is in all of our futures when we will all worship together again.

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