Let the loss of him remind you of the gift of him
A long time ago, we welcomed a son, a baby boy, into our home and our lives. We brought him to church on Palm Sunday and all our friends rejoiced and shouted, Alleluia, as if he was the Christ born into the vineyard on the wings of grace. It was as joyful a time as you can imagine. Our intention was to adopt him. His birth mother had too much on her and needed help. Would we take the baby? Yes, of course, we said with cautious expectation. Matthew, that was his name, was tiny and precious and beautiful. We immediately showered him with love. He was ours and we were his for about eight days. Then his birth mother changed her mind. On the one hand I don’t know why. We never learned any details about her or her story. On the other hand, having held him, I know exactly why she changed her mind. The social worker who placed him with us called to say that she was very sorry, but she would have to come pick him up on Friday. That was Good Friday. “Die to live” never pierced so deeply.
When the social worker came to pick him up she didn’t have the car seat properly buckled into her minivan. Can you help, she said sheepishly? Of course, I said, and I bent to the task. There’s probably never been a car seat so properly, (ferociously?), and tightly snugged into a car than Matthew’s was the day he left us. I pulled the straps so tight I bet that car seat is still in that poor woman’s van. It was a father’s move, that’s what it felt like to me anyway, to assure that his seat was safely secured. I stepped aside and Kristin buckled him in and kissed his little head. He smiled at us. We smiled back at him through a cascade of tears.
Six or seven years earlier right after Kristin’s father died, a kind nurse with an enormous, spirit-filled heart wrapped Kristin and I in her arms as we huddled in the middle of a cavernous hospital hallway late at night. We had been up at the hospital day after day to see her father in his last days, and I swear I had never laid eyes on this nurse. She walked right up to us, put her arms all the way around us and said, “Oh babies, I am so sorry. Oh my babies, I am so, so sorry.” Then she said, “Let the loss of him remind you of the gift of him.” I didn’t understand what she was saying at the time. It was all too shocking to be so young and have already lost both of Kristin’s parents. But reflecting back on that memory I can hear in the nurse’s voice the voice of Jesus calling to us in the darkness, “Let the loss of him remind you of the gift of him.” Was she an angel? Was she the Christ himself? Whatever the case, her voice came whispering back to me when Matthew left us, “Let the loss of him remind you of the gift of him.”
I like to think that we gave Matthew’s birth mother a gift. We gave her some space in which her heart could ache for her child to such a degree that she was forced to figure out how she could make life work differently. Maybe during those eight days she cried out to God. I don’t know what she was about or what she went through while he was with us. Likewise, I don’t know if Matthew knows or will ever know anything about us. I like to think he’ll always have our love and our care and the “Alleluia’s” of our friends invisibly and permanently pressed into his skin and buried in his heart. God gave him to us to love and hold lightly and then to let go of.
Everyone we love is on loan to us, everyone in our lives is sheer...gift. God loans us to each other to have and to hold and to one day let go of. I don’t think there’s a grand plan. These movements of people into and out of our lives are simply a part of the generous flow of life. There is no understanding any of it. There is only participating in the love affair of it all. We don’t own each other, we are on loan to each other to love and hold lightly and one day let go of.
Who have you lost? Who are you losing? Consider this: Let the loss of them remind you of the gift of them.