It’s been 11 years today.

The tears have slowed – from hourly there at the very beginning, to daily, to weekly, and now, mostly only sporadically – like when first hearing the news of our friends’ stillborn granddaughter, or when the bouquet of flowers shows up right on my doorstep, as they are sure to do every September 22, from a dear college roommate who knows that simply knowing he is remembered is the best medicine for my spirit.

Had he lived, our Silas, he would have likely started middle school this year – the big, brick one right down the street from our house. I often wonder if he would have looked like our other biological children, what his personality would have been like, who his friends might have been, what it would have felt like to kiss his cheek and run my fingers through his hair as I tucked him into bed at night. Find my gaze fixed on other boys “his age” sometimes, completely involuntarily, thoughts drifting, imagining my firstborn son with gangly arms and shaggy hair, slowly turning from boy to man.

And yet, always, I come back to the reality that he is not here, that the brokenness of this world has separated us for a time. I can’t change that. And I have come to realize, that I wouldn’t change that, even if I could. Because in giving me my Silas – in death swooping in and flimsily attempting to tear us one from another – He has shown me the utter weakness of our enemy, that though he thinks he can steal away what is most precious to us, his attempts are always in vain. For we who know Love and Life, the end is always and forever reunion and redemption and victory!

Do I still grieve over my baby boy? Yes, a resounding yes! Knowing Victory does not exempt us from the very real pain of loss, of separation, does not stop the tears from falling. Nor should it. For we know, each of us, deep down, that all has not yet been made right with the world, with us. And that knowledge should cause us to grieve deeply. And yet, we also know Hope. And we rest in what is yet to come.

And so my Silas, his life was not in vain. And even 11 years later, he and his story are alive and well, really – him in the New World and me left behind, writing these words, attempting to communicate what an honor it was and is to be this boy’s mama, remembering with delight the time we did have together here, and always, always being pointed back to Wholeness and Perfection and Peace. And believing – now more than ever – that He, in His tenderness and mercy, can miraculously spin our pain into riches.

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