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| photo by Jean Ann Williams |
“For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He
will not leave you.”
—Deuteronomy 4:31
Less than a month
later, I didn’t want to think of Easter.
After Easter church
services, all I wanted was to fall into bed and sleep. All I needed was to
forget the first celebration after Joshua’s death. Our extended family expected
us at the home of a relative, but my heart couldn’t imagine visiting at a time
like this.
I lay on the bed
and sobbed. I missed my Joshua, who became a Christian at age fifteen on
Easter. For me, it was a happy memory of that day that I couldn’t bear to
remember.
An hour later,
though, my husband and I were on our way. Tears slipped down my cheeks the
entire half-hour trip. When I walked into the house, I was still sobbing. The
men greeted my husband, and they left with him to talk outdoors.
I felt the
women’s eyes on me. What on earth am I doing here? They won’t know what to do
with me anymore than I do. So wounded by my loss, I sat in my chair and cried.
Soon, my niece,
Candice, knelt at my feet and kept her hand on my knee. She stared up at me,
not speaking. Her eyes filled, and her tears fell in compassion.
Seeing her
sorrow, I knew for sure me being there was spoiling their Easter. I felt bad,
causing Joshua’s cousin to cry. I shouldn’t be here.
Candice’s mom
bent over and whispered, “Whatever you want to do, we’ll do it. If you want to
go for a ride, we’ll go for a ride. If you want to sit here, we’ll sit here.”
She wrapped her arms around me then, and she quivered with her own sorrow over
the loss of her nephew, Joshua.
When my tears
stopped, I heaved a sigh and she let me go.
The other women
in the room took turns embracing me and gave a few words of encouragement.
Mercy came that hour in the form of women I loved.
Lord, You propelled me into the year of
firsts without my son, and showed me a community of women I could trust and who,
so it seemed, needed to grieve with me. In Jesus’s holy name. Amen.
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