When Jack died, I did not think I would ever stop hurting. I vividly remember the day he was born, the mixture of joy and pain we felt. No one could have prepared Jeff and I for what we were going to experience that day. We welcomed our son into the world then twenty minutes later held him while he took his last breath. The pain was excruciating and like no other. No one is ever prepared to lose their child. No matter how long you have your child, 20 minutes or 20 years, you never are prepared, and you sure don’t expect it.

The night Jack died, I sat restless in my hospital bed longing to hold my baby but having to cling to his blanket instead. When we got home, I did not want to walk into our home empty armed. Jack was supposed to be with us. The pain was too much to bear. The days following his funeral  all ran together for me. I was just existing. The truth is, if I had not had a 3-year-old to take care of at the time of Jack’s death, I probably would have never gotten out of the bed. Eventually though, I found myself in a place where the only way I was able to survive the loss of Jack, was with God’s help. I say eventually because when Jack first died, I was angry, mostly at God. But little by little and day by day, as I sought God, He began to heal my broken heart. My pain didn’t disappear over-night but as time passed, the pain became more bearable and God pieced my broken heart back together.

Now, the interesting thing about the healing journey is one day you’re doing okay, then all of a sudden something grabs your heart and you find yourself in a painful place. This happened to me six years after Jack’s death while I was cleaning out my closet. On the top shelf of my closet sat and still sits, a cardboard box. It’s Jack’s box, which contains the only physical items I have left of him. One small, white box filled with memories of his very short life. When I saw that box 13 years ago, I opened it up and went through it. As I looked through Jack’s memories, all that pain resurfaced. Out of that burst of pain, I penned the following poem I called, A Box Full of Pain:

Cleaning out my closet,
I came across your box.
I needed to look in it,
To see all the tangible things, I have left of you.
I read your obit in the paper,
And thought this is so wrong.
How can one so new and tiny,
Now be 6 years gone?
What are you doing?
Who do you look like?
Are you playing ball or riding on a bike?
Do you look like Garris?
Do you have blonde hair?
I know your eyes are blue,
That’s one thing our whole family shares.
I next looked in your memory box.
I held the clothes you wore
As I had held your fragile body in my arms
I remembered how beautiful you were and
How I wanted to keep you in this world.
I read the notes in your memory book
That my friends and family wrote,
Tears swelled up in my eyes
As I relived the pain,
On the day we buried you
It had appropriately rained.
See the sky was crying that day too,
We were all missing you.
I picked up the blankets that wrapped your small body
I lifted them to my face,
I covered my face and breathed them in,
In hopes that there would be, a hint of you woven in the threads
That only I could smell.
I saw 2 tulips wilted in the box,
Left over from that day
The day that I will never forget,
When I hoped to see,
Jesus walking by your funeral
And having Mercy on Me.
I looked at your tiny footprints
And I just ached inside,
I couldn’t stop the tears as they welled up in my eyes.
I love this box because it’s all I have of you,
But I hate this box too,
It’s a box of pain that reminds me,
Of the time I never got with you.

Oh, how my heart ached the day I wrote this poem. I missed my son and wished he had lived. But that wasn’t the plan for his life and six years later I found myself reliving the hurt. The good news is recently I went through Jack’s box and found myself able to view this box differently. Yes, I still wondered who he would look like, and what he would have done in life. And yes, there is still sadness and I miss him. But I am able to greet this box with a healed heart because I clung to God’s promise that he would heal it. Psalms 147:3 says “He will heal our broken hearts and bind up our wounds”. Over time God did that for me and he can do that for you. My prayer for those of you experiencing pain too hard to bear, is that you will lean into God’s promise to heal your heart. Crawl right up in His lap and let him dry your tears. Draw near to Him. Let Him comfort your soul. Give Him your broken heart and let him heal it with the healing balm that comes only from Him. He did it for me and I promise, you can trust Him to do this for you.