We’ve had unseasonably warm weather here in Texas (again.) I noticed several of my flowers sprouting and pushing up through the ground. I asked my gardening friend and neighbor if my daffodils would return in the spring if they poked their heads out now. She responded that they only come up once. If they come up at the wrong time and freeze they won’t bloom this season.
Flowers that sprout but don’t bloom are reminiscent of these last two years.
The end of this year and Christmas brings us to the due date of our last loss- Lane. He was going to be a Christmas baby and I thought our little miracle.
But it’s been nine months of a different kind of birth, hard fruit borne of prayer and suffering, silence and sharing.
I wasn’t sure where my heart would be at this end of year. Today is his due date- December 23, 2025. And while my arms don’t hold him- my heart always will. He is whole with Jesus. Lane had an anomaly that wouldn’t have allowed him to survive much past birth. And while he is not an angel, little Lane was created for far greater purposes- he is part of eternal plans that I can’t yet know.
This month I have contemplated on his name and the names of our others- Our first little Sparrow, who flew away, our second- Orion was always meant for the heavens. I too sought to fly away from the heaviness of those losses and press ahead. Then Lane. That loss was bewildering. Lane grounded me. He was named after the road God has asked us to travel, or rather put us on. I have slowly come to settle into this lane, this reality that loss doesn’t always hold a beautiful ending or a bow on it like a Christmas present should.
Sometimes the paths God places us on-go on and on.
There is no divide in the sea, or bend in the river. They are more than seasons- they become the spaces that shape us, change us, recreate us. We learn how to live with the loss and not so much inside of it.
A sweet friend shared a podcast about God’s delays. It was so timely. Two questions were posed regarding delays- do I trust God? And do I feel He owes me anything? Two very hard questions. The answer is yes and no. But it feels like the answer is also no and yes.
The God who flung stars across an expanse that we can’t even begin to describe, the same One who gave oceans depth that have no measurable bottom, who gave each creature the ability to produce after its own kind, granted us blue skies, and bursting daffodils, that is the same One holds everything together by the WORD OF HIS POWER.
And God asks it again. “Will you trust me to hold this with you?”
He can hold my yes and no, and no and yes because He understands the human heart. And he’ll keep asking the same gentle question. Because trusting God allows us to enter a deeper relationship not known through other paths.
It’s not a blind trust.
Jesus walked this road of suffering. He had no home, no family, no material possessions, he wasn’t liked, he was betrayed, rejected by his own people, called names, blasphemed, spat upon, and God his very Father turned his back on him on the Cross and poured out a wrath you and I will never have to face.
We don’t have to face our worst enemy- death and beyond, if we trust him.
He is a God acquainted with grief says Isaiah 53:3. (One of my favorite passages.) He has suffered with us since the Fall. He has longed for us to have our rightful place alongside him. He has fought battle after battle for our wayward hearts, and was slain on a cross after coming by way of a muddy manger. He paid the price for our sin.
God owes us nothing. And yet He gave us everything- salvation, renewal, hope, forgiveness, and redemption.
You’ll find that most every single person in the Bible has a story of suffering and waiting. But there’s a difference between theirs and ours- many of them never saw the full picture of God’s redemptive plan. Many died in their faith not knowing the fullness of what was to come.
Abraham never saw his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, he only received the promise of what was to come. But you better believe his faith is sight now!
When we don’t have faith or trust, we can lean on our brothers and sisters around us and those gone before us.
And most of all- we have Jesus. We can see the fullness of God’s redemption. God coming for us in the face of Jesus. What didn’t make sense to God’s people in the Old Testament now we see clearly.
And you better believe what we can’t see now, we will see fully one day.
God is long suffering with us. And He holds all the answers, the reasons, the eternal sight. He holds everything- my heart, my sorrow, my babies, my waiting, my questions and confusion, and my timid trust.
This Christmas if your heart is empty, feeling the loss of someone dear, void because of rejection or loneliness, utterly weary in this too long season of delay and no answers- hold onto this. This pain and this suffering is not purposeless. It is meaningful to God. It is telling a story. And most of all- God wants you to be in his story. One that stretches far beyond and after ours. One that is beautiful. And promises Daffodils blooming in December.
My family surprised us at our Christmas gathering. They purchased a stone in memory of our children at the Tyler Children’s Park. It means the world for others to remember with us and walk this path alongside.
This road, this Lane has my heart looking up, and not so tethered to the things of this world. Holding onto trust even when I don’t feel it. Remembering what God has done for me and remembering this:
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”
Romans 8:31-32
The daffodils coming up that I mentioned in the beginning of this blog are ones my son and I transplanted last spring from the back of our property. They didn’t bloom in their true season either. But I am believing they will bloom in God’s season.
One day trust will give way to something greater. Trust will no longer be required in heaven, because we will know as we are fully known.
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.”
I Corinthians 13:12
All my love and prayers are with you! If I can pray for you specifically, please let me know.
Merry Christmas and happy Holy days in our Lord!
Movement in a Mercurial World 