Jordan woke up feverish from his Thanksgiving nap yesterday. I laid in bed last night, snuggling in the dark as his fever crept closer to 103 and he slept on my chest with our almost-fully-cooked second babe moving around within and I thought about that night six years ago. The one when my arms were empty and my heart was ripping in two and I was begging God to please finally just take Shawna because her cancer pain was just too intense.
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The next morning, the day after Thanksgiving, was my #mercylikemorning, page-37, praying-my-best-friend-into-heaven moment. The one that found me on the floor, hair dripping wet, running alongside her and she ran home and into glory.
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It was only this morning as I contemplated the day and this new kind of November homecoming that I saw the connection. Even now, all these years later, God is still smoothing down the stray pieces of frayed hope. Because her page-34 birthday verse in Job talks about coming home to heaven “as a sheaf of grain ripens in its season.” And my going-home-to-Oregon in this new-November Psalm? It also talks about sheaves – carrying them with you as you return rejoicing (that post is coming soon).
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Funny enough, the root of the Hebrew word for “sheaves” means “to bind … to be solitary, for a solitary person is silent as he has no companion with whom to talk.” I knew all about that. We had been away for 33 days when we finally returned home again. I had been in bed for 17 hours when I scratched pen onto prayer-journal-paper. “I gave myself a month,” I quoted the words on page 38 of my book, “to ugly cry and grieve with jagged edges and adjust to the new normal … of not looking around the room to catch the eye of someone laughing with me at a mutual inside joke that is now only funny to me.”
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But the other small redeeming detail I realized this morning? That the day we returned home six years ago? It’s the same exact calendar day of this babe’s due date.
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Oh, the greatness of His glory. #fromjanesblog