We Will Come to You, Our Son, We Will Come to You

Second Samuel chapter 12, verse 23. This is what we hold onto. It’s all we have, yet – because of our faith – it’s all we need. Our faith tells us that this life is not all we have. We are here, on Earth, for but a time; four score and ten. It is a camping trip compared with what we have in an eternal home.

As we consider where we are at, two months hence our son’s shining transition to be with God, we know two realities simultaneously.

First, we are ever touched by God’s hand of grace – and blessed – whenever we think of Nathanael. Second, even as we grieve we ever want his memory to be special.

***

You were mine,
Yes, you were ours,
Vulnerable and kind,
Like the flowers.
Forgotten not,
Memories are good,
We love you a lot,
As only we could.
So we stand today,
Two months on,
Still with lots to say,
Even though you’re gone.
You won’t come to us,
That’s for sure,
Come we must,
So wait there at heaven’s door.

***

We are thankful, as we approach the six-month mark of this journey (having first learned of our son’s plight on July 2). God’s grace and much prayer and our faith have got us through.

Yet we still don’t have our son. All the hopes we had on July 1st, having no idea of the plight our boy was in, were to be dashed on that fateful Tuesday morning. We will never approach a ‘routine’ ultrasound scan in a routine way ever again.

But if we don’t have our son, we are left with the question “who does?”

Nathanael is in a far better place – a much safer place than we can provide – because he has gone to be with God. No matter how mature we are in the Christian faith that thought has to be a surreal one; a mystery.

We will continue to miss Nathanael, as we will continue to wonder what might have been.

But we cannot complain when we stare at his reality. He is where we will soon be. He is home. He has gone and he won’t come back.

He will not come to us; we will go to be with him.

And that, for us, is where it’s at. That is our reality that we can only accept.

To accept what cannot be changed is the passive half of wisdom.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.