But to know Beauty? How? How in the valley?

For a time after Silas came, it wasn’t something I tried to find – I was too drained to try much of anything, except to try and wake up in the morning and take a shower and get dressed and eat and find sleep, somehow. And to try and do those same things again the next day, and the day after that.

No, Beauty didn’t come from a striving, from a seeking, from anything at all within or because of myself. It was always a gift, from the very beginning – an absolutely unexpected gift. And it came in many forms after we gave our Silas back, but mostly, for me, it came in words.

Only six weeks before we laid our son in the ground, we had moved from Nebraska to Iowa, so Nathan could begin work on his Master’s degree. So when the words had been spoken over the grave, and the suitcases packed, and my body began to return to it’s new state of normal, we made the drive east on Interstate 80, to our new home that felt a lot less like home than the home we’d just left. Because what is home, but the people, the community, the knowing and the being known? And what people did we know in Iowa? Not a soul.

Though Nathan was as busy as ever reading books and writing papers and practicing his trombone and teaching undergraduate students and attending rehearsals, I had very little with which to occupy myself. Loneliness crept in and along with it, self-pity, in addition to the immense grief that still followed me everywhere.

My womb had been empty for less than a week when I decided, on a whim, to go to a small group gathering one evening, some folks that we’d met briefly when we’d visited their church one Sunday, a few weeks back, when our baby still lived and moved, before the valley.

It was in an area of town I’d never been before, a basement apartment. Sitting there in front of the place in our old green Subaru, preparing as best I could for my introverted self to enter a room full of strangers, I felt a gentle nudge. Opened the car door, walked down the stairs, heard voices, knocked. And the door opened.

A handful of couples, men and women, welcomed me in. Wanted to know me, asked me to tell about myself. I got my name out and then the very next tear-laden words, “And I just buried my firstborn son.” And their faces, those looks that told me they shared in my sorrow, that told me they cared so very deeply. The first words spoken, a man named Marc. “Can we pray for you?” Yes. And these brothers and sisters who were utter and complete strangers a moment before, circled up around me and laid their hands on me. I don’t remember the exact words that night, but those words, his words – His words – spilled like warm Light over me.

And more words came, in Scripture and in song, from the book of Job – “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord” and “Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?” And I thought back to an entry in my journal I’d written that last spring, in my own hand, mulling: Why has my life been this easy, when there is so much pain and suffering in the world? Why have I always been well-loved and well-fed, when so many others are starving for food – physical, emotional, spiritual? And why this distance, this gap, between nations, between classes, between those of us who Know and those who don’t? Is this really what you intend, Christ?

And His answer back: This, my gift to you. That, though you walk in the valley, I will raise your eyes to the Mountain Peaks. That, though you walk in darkness, I will be your Light. That, as you willingly accept good from My hand, you will be given the power to accept trouble from My hand as well, and all without bitterness.  And.  And…now, you know. You know the suffering of the widow, the orphan, the imprisoned, the abused, the sick, the hungry, the lost, the addicted, the grieving, the lonely, the forgotten. Because I have included you among them. You are one of them. And you can love them now, like you never could before. This, my gift, child. This, the reason for the life of your son.

And I wept.

And His promise to me from the prophet Isaiah came then: “But now thus says the Lord, He who created you, O Jacob, He who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flames shall not consume you.”

To know Beauty then? To be redeemed, to be His, never to be swept away by the waters, never to be burned by the flames. Because once you know these truths deep down to your very soul, in your innermost of innermost places.

You.

Are.

FREE.

No pain, no loss, no sorrow, NOTHING can steal the Beauty away. Not now. Not ever.

And isn’t that what all of us really want? To live a life of unending Beauty?

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