He Would Be Fourteen

Fourteen.  I’m curled up in my favorite chair this Saturday morning. I’m imagining our house with a fourteen year old boy. Our first born.

I do the math again to make sure it’s correct. Yep, an April 2001 due date, he would be 14 this month.

Some days my remembrance of his short life is strong. In those moments I feel as though I am the mom of a teenager and all that goes along with it. He flashes through my mind at all the different stages of boyhood. There is weightiness, a purpose in my remembering.

I remember the joy of us discovering we were pregnant. I remember a life that opened us up to dreams and plans. I remember the love of two people overflowing into parenthood. I remember the panic of realizing how much life was about to change in this first year of marriage. I remember beauty and hope that overrode it all.

I remember the month of his birth and in doing so, I honor his life.

His life mattered. This little one created in the image of God. I think it’s important to tell you that his life mattered not because x, y and z happened as a result of it. It doesn’t have substance because I can point to ‘this must be part of the purpose of his life being short’. He matters because he was made by a God who says he matters. A God who knit him together and gave him significance.

I don’t know why his life was short. Nothing we could tell of the impact of his short life would answer the why. While I am grateful and even humbled by that impact, it alone is inadequate to answer the why. It would never be enough. But you can point me to a God who is enough.

My God who has held me tight for 14 years. Whose tears mingle with my own. Who tells me there will be a world where “Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years.”

He has never answered my questions with a formula, but with a relationship. And He redeems. Oh how he weaves in redemption. In those broken places.  In those places where it was too much to bear. In those places of loss and dreams taken. The depth and beauty of redemption revealed to those who walk these paths is breathtaking.

I invite you today to remember with me. To remember a boy who would turn 14. To remember your own shattered dreams. To honor them all by recognizing their importance. To let them point towards the longing in your soul for things that are “good and true and noble.” May your heart be stirred by your own remembering.

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