Dearest Enemy: read between the lines

Just a few things to make you aware of:
1.)  We love being a part of the dialogue at Christmas Change. Basically, it’s a call to focus on the more important things during a season that can easily get highjacked.
2.)  Along those same lines, you can join with us at 99 Balloons as we seek to “raise the stature of special needs children locally & globally” by seeing how you can help by getting creative this year with your Christmas Cards.  Go to disCARD Christmas for more information.  In over 3 years of action, we are just now beginning to raise funds & would love for you to join with us.
3.)  We would love for you to leave a comment & tell us what you love to support with your time, money or prayers.  We always love to hear about & spread the news about great stuff going on.
4.)  Last great thing to make you aware of is that Idea Camp is coming in February to Northwest Arkansas to gather folks together to discuss the plight of the orphan.  We are honored to be involved & to be a voice for the numerous special needs orphans across the globe.

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A good friend of mine who taught last night at our little attempt at being church reminded us all on Orphan Sunday that, “things are not as they were supposed to be.”  Unbeknownst to Mike, a few conversations on this very reality had been going on inside our little ranch home in Fayetteville.  It’s kind of a recurring theme for us, but even more so in the preceding days, those precious ones where we cry and laugh and talk about how small Eliot was compared to Anders.

On the four-year marker of that beautifully tragic day that we last held him, Ginny scrawled out detailed notes outlining each kid’s routine for my mom and we headed out to remember together.  Over burgers at the very place we had tried to eat four years ago, Ginny spoke of how she hated that it had been so long, and she wondered what details she had forgotten- mourning the things that might have escaped unnoticed.  I listened and stumbled at rambling attempts to say that we can’t think that way, a feeble discussion indeed, as I knew she was right but felt it my duty to hide such a notion.  We continued on about how his friends all change, but he does not and this is where the grieving lives:

What would he look like now?
Would he have smiled?  Babbled?
Yes or no makes no difference with these hypotheticals; either is fine, we just wish to have experienced it regardless.

We returned to our house on Palmer that day somewhat refreshed for receiving some much-needed time just to look back, to wonder, to cry; and yet we walked in the door heavy with anguish, stinging from confronting the loss that commonly lingers on the fringes with daily routines and the wild rush of busyness.

In a moment I did not see coming and could never have scripted, there resided an instance of exuberant joy in our home.  The mommy-hungry rascals climbed up on my wife who embraced and obliged with a repeated poem as she bobbled each on separate knees in flailing fashion to mimic a horse ride.

And they roared with laughter.
For quite some time.
And so did we.

I was hiding tears, as all other participants were oblivious to the moment I was having- too busy riding the horse.  But, just for a second, I glimpsed it.  And I knew it was reality the moment I tasted it.

I flipped death the bird, and it felt good.

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory? 
   Where, O death, is your sting?”
I Corinthians 15