I had posts scheduled for this week, but my heart still feels too heavy.
Tears rolled down my cheeks this morning while I tickled Everett’s warm body on the floor. Ever since Friday, I can’t stop noticing his warmth. His breath, his circulating blood, his blinking eyes and overwhelming signs of life. This morning I pinched his toes and he giggled loudly while I envisioned parents all over the world dropping their kids off at school. I’m sure they hugged them extra tight and whispered three solid “I love you’s” before driving away from a place that they once considered safe. Even though Everett is too young to understand what I say, I whispered more than three “I love you’s” this morning.
I’m taking a week of silence from this blog. I need time to rest and time to pray and time to be sad for these parents and children. For Charlotte and Olivia and Dylan and Jesse. For all the others who were hurt and robbed of life too soon. I invite you to join me in quiet, in rest. In prayer for peace and prayer for comfort. In solitude and sadness and eventually in hope.
These beautiful writers are saying everything I have felt, and more:
In which we need pragmatists and prophets by Sarah Bessey
Grieving Together by Rachel Held Evans
Vigil by Momastery
Other reads for this time:
“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”
- 2 Corinthians 4:16-18