In Honor of Our Son

February 26

Today I get to experience again what it’s like to be empty-armed on the birthday of one of my children. Today our son would be nine years old. This is his third birthday we are apart.

It’s hard for me to see little boys his age. I prefer to turn away and steer clear of them. I dread these significant days. The pain is deep beyond words and the aloneness in it is murderous. These are my true feelings, raw, unedited, unrefined; the reality I live in.

Yet I am sometimes called upon to bring encouragement to others. How can I mix the reality of pain and sorrow with the reality of Hope? My son is a big part of that answer. In honor of him on this day, I share with you an important story. Let it be known, I am not sharing a “memory” with you. No, it’s much more than that. It is a message.

One day while riding in the “all-the-way-van” (so called because our Chevy custom van was much bigger than our Ford Aerostar minivan; so you have to say it with your arms spread out wide because it was all the way big), Mycol and I heard our son in the backseat, whispering,

“Jesus, come in my heart.”
“Jesus, come in my heart.”
“Jesus, come in my heart.”

I vividly remember us both turning around to see him lying on his back, eyes closed, feet propped up comfortably against the window, praying with all the pure desire of a four-year-old. When he was finished with his prayer he sat up, turned to little sister, said, “Jessie, you know what you have to do?” and explained, “You have ask Jesus to come into your heart.”

Austin Chad, our little evangelist, through his brief time on this earth, has left me with an unprecedented, unmatchable love between mother and son. But that’s not all he’s given me. Among the precious gifts from my precious little boy, is the one he gave to be shared with all: his love for God and his pure faith in mercy and grace through Jesus Christ.

And that is something from which I draw daily. And when I am asked to speak to encourage others, what I am thinking is, “Dear God, this hurts me to my core. Please use their lives, my words, my life, to make an eternal difference for someone.”

Our precious son, our only son, who could recite for you these verses, has a message for the world:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

How can I mix the reality of pain and sorrow with the reality of Hope? Because God so loved the world – so loves my son – that through Him, my son and God’s son are together: A Hope offered freely to us all.