When Life Takes Flight

It's in the news. A mother and two children. Two cars and a truck involved, a gut-wrenching scenario. It's where we used to live.

Call her up quickly and check she's ok, he says. 
Our hearts feel heavy, our stomachs knotty. 

She picks up.

- We just read about the accident... Are you ok?
- No

My heart sinks, I feel physically sick.

- The twins, both of them. They died.

11 years on this earth. 

Those who from one seed became two. Grew together in you, and made your womb swell with hopes and expectations. Those who you nursed through the long nights. Those you watched reach every milestone. 

Those whose hearts your heard racing on the Doppler, and whose beat you will hear no more.

Those whose cheeks you kissed, hearts you consoled - those bruises and cuts you could always fix with a kiss, a plaster...

Those you got mad with. Those who you laughed with and cried over. Those you held. Those who carried the hopes and exuberance of boyhood. Those who filled up the house and left a mess in their wake. 

Yesterday's clothes, left lying. Never to be filled again. 
Their beds, undone and empty. Never again to lie next to them, or feel their warmth through the sheets. 

Those everyday, tedious things that tired you out, those things we only realise are irreplaceable once they are no more.

Those two boys, who would carry on the family name. Their pictures hang, but their faces will never age. 

A loss unimaginable. A loss unthinkable. And yet it looks you square in the eye, unflinchingly.

A matter of minute details, all leading to this cacophony.

Those young bodies, your beautiful boys, lifeless. Those you pushed and laboured over. Watching them being lowered, the earth burying their sight; stones erected in their stead. 
Your daughter asking questions when you haven't found words for your own.

How could it be? To what greater good? Is there always purpose in pain?

The emptiness. 
The screaming silence. 
The well intentioned words of condolence. 
The hollow reality that nothing will shake. 



I pray a spark of hope beyond reason would meet you half way.

If there's anything He knows, it is the loss of His son. Watching him bruised beyond recognition. The aching pain of separation. But also the surpassing joy of resurrection; everything made new, never to be broken or marred again.

Even though the winds howl and the crashing waves are unrelenting, they know His voice. 
He speaks in your storm, and He mourns with you.
Against all odds - by God's immeasurable grace - I pray this doesn't break you beyond repair. That you three who are left behind can be built back up and be made whole...

I realise life is a delicate, precious gift to be so very much treasured. 
And then some.
Nothing less.