What We’ve Been Missing

May 14, 2017.Reading time 6 minutes.

I love this picture. Like many pictures these days, it was posed. We set it up to send to our children on the family text and trick them into thinking we bought a puppy at auction. The immediate response? “Yeah right. But it’s so cute!”

But when I looked at it later, I saw something else.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was pregnant!”

I can picture the scene as if it were yesterday. I brushed her off. We had three kids and she was nursing. No way! The next day she called me at the office to tell me to get a pregnancy test, which I procured along with a gallon of ice cream for comfort should the test prove positive. In the morning, she woke me up with the ice cream and a spoon and said, “eat up, big boy.” About seven months later, this happened. I love this picture.

We live our lives under the scrutiny of a lens. When the camera was invented in the 1800’s, who could have predicted what it would become? Pictures have become the dominant form of communication in our society. We have learned to pose, alter, project, share, and display at a staggering rate. We pretend to be “shiny, happy people laughing”. If we witness something unusual, we start filming in the hopes of capturing the next viral post. Celebrities are made and destroyed at the whim of a camera’s click.

In this world of captured moments, how do you hide sadness? When your soul cries from loss and pain, how do you turn away from the intrusive flash of the camera? If you’re a hurting mother, you don’t hide… you take the picture anyway. You continue to pose with your family even when every shutter click reminds you that the photograph will never again be complete.

I’ve watched with dread the approach of three Mother’s Days since Kylie died. While her remaining children certainly make sure their mother feels loved, there will always be the tug of loss at the little surprise missing from the photograph. And a day designed to celebrate motherhood only serves to magnify that quarter of her heart that is absent.

Grieving mothers are remarkable in their endurance. They have a keen ability to forge ahead in the most difficult of times. They cry in the dark to ensure their home doesn’t become a place of sadness in the light. They smile for pictures when every fiber of their being wants to run screaming from the camera. They don’t put on that smile for vanity or pride, but rather from selflessness… because a mother thinks of her children first.

I have seen this firsthand and marveled at my wife’s ability to compose herself since we lost Kylie. Even through immeasurable heartbreak, she has been able to offer a smile for life’s camera. I don’t know how. Losing that part of her heart didn’t come during anesthesia-laced surgery involving a neat incision and careful stitches. No, that quarter was ripped carelessly from her chest as she watched her baby breath her last. Still, she has smiled – beautiful, genuine smiles of happiness covering tears of pain.

And then, we took this picture and I remembered. I remembered that smile. There is something different about it. It’s been gone awhile and I’ve missed it. While we are forever missing Kylie, we are missing that portion of her in ourselves, as well – that smile… that unbridled joy.

Joy isn’t something that can be fabricated on a whim, it is an attitude of the heart that bubbles up from within. Kylie had such a well of joy that it sprang forth despite the pain of cancer. She was better at joying anyone I have ever known and likely ever will. I believe that although we don’t experience it as often, our joy is still there – trapped beneath stubborn layers of sorrow. Happiness happens, but real joy doesn’t seem to come as often as it used to. Why is that?

I don’t know. I am just excited to see that smile. And of course, it doesn’t mean her mother’s heart is mended – that can never be so. But maybe we are learning some joy tricks from the master. Joy in spite of…

I pray all hurting and grieving mothers find their fill of joy today.

The Extra Bunny

April 16, 2017.Reading time 7 minutes.

The Easter Bunny is one of those things my generation accepted without question. Seriously, what societal influencer developed the notion of a rabbit who travels the world hiding eggs filled with chocolate? When you really consider it, the concept sounds like something concocted in a smoke-filled van outside a Grateful Dead concert. Yet millions of kids wake up every Easter morning to find their stash of chocolate and run in search of colorful eggs.

There seems to be a new movement afoot where parents refuse to “lie” to their children with traditional holiday antics. That’s fine – your kid, your parenting choices. I rather liked seeing the excitement when my children were younger and I’m not sure what kind of parent I would have been without a ruse or two.

I remember filling and hiding the eggs – sleepy, happy girls finding them and then watching their dilemma over which chocolate ear to gnaw off first. I loved that stuff.

Our kids are older now. Two are home for the holiday and won’t wake up at the crack of dawn for anything – certainly not candy they can now afford for themselves. But my lovely wife is old-school. Last night, she retrieved the baskets and produced two huge bags of candy that she had hidden away. I laughed and went back to whatever I was doing… until I heard her crying.

It took a while for me to understand the problem. She finally stopped weeping enough to say,

“I bought four bunnies.”

I’ve been thinking about expectations a lot lately. We all have a certain menu of expectations that are created for various reasons – some we manufacture ourselves and some exist because of the age and culture in which we live.

For example, in the twenty-first century in western society, we expect to outlive our children. Modern medicine has achieved so much over the past century that we have an expectation. In 1900 the global mortality rate for children under 5 was an astounding 36.2%. People only hoped their children would live. By 1960 it had fallen to 19% and now it is down to 4.3%. Can you even imagine a time when 20% of children didn’t make it to their fifth birthday? Of course you can’t – because we have come to expect our children to live.

We buy four bunnies.

Two thousand years ago, the disciples bought four bunnies. Up until Jesus was arrested, they were confident that he was the promised Messiah – the one the Jews taught would come with a sword and end the Roman oppression. As they watched him die on the cross, I wonder how bitterly they wept over the extra bunny.

The Roman soldiers at the empty tomb bought four bunnies. They never expected a dead body to rise and evaporate under their watch. Roman law dictated that the punishment for their crime would be decimation – where the soldiers cast lots to see who was the loser. The “winners” would then be forced to beat the loser to death. Think they regretted their purchase of the extra bunny?

The extra bunny creates quite an issue because it represents the gap between what we believe should happen but does not. And who do we blame for broken expectations?

Expectations can be killers, destroying contentment and robbing perspective.

I never expected Kylie to die. It never dawned on me that it would happen. There was a huge gap between my expectation and my reality.

I also never expected that I would have little desire to go to church on Easter Sunday. That was always a given. But now, as I wrestle with God over unmet expectations, I find it hard to listen to songs and sermons extolling the empty grave when I’ve put my child in one. Oh, I still believe. But like so many others, I struggle.

I held my wife until the tears subsided and then surveyed the candy she had purchased. There were more than a couple of bags. She bought way too much. Our girls are healthy eaters and will have this candy well into the fall unless a large, rabid bear (possibly named daddy) raids the pantry. Surprisingly, as cheap as I am, I’m glad. Not because I’m happy for the midnight snack. I’m glad because her natural bent is to shun the cost and expect the best.

While expectations can be killers, their absence can lead to despair.

Expectations represent hope. While it might hurt at times, we need the extra bunny.

Kylie would have bought the extra bunny – ten times over! Right now, I can picture her hiding eggs in heaven for the younger children whose parents never expected them to be where they are. She’s watching with a knowing smile as they search for the last one that eludes them. Unlike me, she won’t allow them to struggle long. She will give away its hiding place quickly.

That’s because she’s got her mother’s heart – the kind that buys the extra bunny.

Don’t let your unmet expectations drag you down. Easter morning and the empty tomb provide a hope that can bridge the gap between your expectations and your reality.