The Stump

It's a brisk fall morning here in Maryland. The leaves have started to turn, and evidence of fall is all around. As I wrote the date on the board in my classroom yesterday, I had a hard time with the fact that another October has arrived. All of these things, and many more, are so tightly bound to Isaac. It is a strange thing to be able to marvel at the beauty of fall, and at the same time, feel the weeping rise up within you.

As is often the case, I received a timely email from a friend yesterday... another mom who knows the pain of losing a child. In fact, she has lost two: twin boys in March of 2008. She has been a tremendous encouragement to me over the past couple of years, and this email was no different. Having been sitting in a Starbucks reading Jerry Sittser's book A Grace Disguised, she wanted to pass along an excerpt that she found particularly comforting.

"But is it possible to live this way? Is it possible to feel sorrow for the rest of our lives and yet to find joy at the same time? Is it possible to enter the darkness and still to live an ordinary, productive life? Loss requires that we live in a delicate tension....

The sorrow I feel has not disappeared but it has been integrated into my life as a painful part of a healthy whole. Initially my loss was so overwhelming to me that it was the dominant emotion - sometimes the only emotion - I had. I felt like I was staring at the stump of a huge tree that had just been cut down in my backyard. That stump, which sat all alone, kept reminding me of the beloved tree that I had lost. I could think of nothing but that tree. Every time I looked out the window, all I could see was that stump. Eventually, however, I decided to do something about it. I landscaped my backyard reclaiming it once again as my own. I decided to keep the stump there, since it was both too big and too precious to remove. Instead of getting rid of it, I worked around it. I planted shrubs, tress, flowers and grass. I laid out a brick pathway and built two benches. Then I watched everything grow. Now, three years later, the stump remains still reminding me of the beloved tree I lost. But the stump is surrounded by a beautiful garden of blooming flowers and growing trees and lush grass. Likewise, the sorrow I feel remains but I have tried to create a landscape around the loss so that what was once ugly is now an integral part of a large, lovely whole."

I've spoken before about how much I loved this book. I not only love his authenticity, but his writing is so metaphoric. He is able to so beautifully articulate things I seldom have the ability to explain. But this explains it so well; and I am confident that others of you reading who have lost a child, or have experienced a significant loss of another loved one, can relate.

Almost two years later, the sorrow of losing Isaac is still there... and it is still great. As I watch all that Ellie is doing and find so much joy in her presence, my heart weeps for the little boy who I didn't get to share similar moments with. I find myself starting to tell Ellie, "We're all here with you!" only to be painfully reminded that that statement is false; her big brother is missing.

While the sorrow may be a painful part of our lives that will always be, God continues to faithfully show us how to integrate it into a healthy whole. I think about His provision with two golf tournaments, with the establishment of the Isaac Delisle Foundation, and with the playground that is soon to be built at our church in memory of Isaac... and I can see that each of these things are part of the garden of beauty that he is creating around the stump of sorrow.