Walk WITH Jesus

By Jim Reynolds

Hidden

Seven months after she went to live with her other Daddy in heaven, I stood over my daughter's grave. It was Father's Day.  Words are ridiculously inadequate to describe the oddity of that moment… the incomprehensible idea that she really is dead. It's like hearing someone speak in a foreign language.  You know it makes sense to someone… somewhere… but to you, it remains a mystery.  To use an image from an old detective novel, it's like a pearl onion on a ice cream sundae; it just doesn't fit.

A few feet below the surface I was standing on is a box – a “jewelry box” as one small child described the casket from another funeral.  In that box are the remains of my five and a half month old daughter – the same baby girl whose upcoming birth had filled us with so much anticipation… whose health challenges sapped and yet also fueled our faith. The little one I called “Punkin Seed” because she was too small to be a “punkin.”  The baby whose diaper I changed and who's feeding tube I cleaned. She never once looked at me with any sense of recognition, but stole my heart just the same.  It's just strange.  She was so close in “space,” yet a gulf exists between us that I can not cross, not yet anyway.  It is just a few feet, but it might as well be a thousand miles… without the use of my legs… through broken glass.  Insurmountable.

I hope I don't sound morbid when I say I wanted to hold her again. Even if it was the stiff, embalmed, doll-like body I remember from her funeral, I wanted to hold her again.  Beyond that last sentence is an even greater desire to hold her again alive and whole.  Despite the reality of the separation, the vastness of the distance between our worlds, I am still full – so much love… so much longing… so much desire to have her back.  I would do anything to get her out of that death box and back into my world.

I stood there, above her, thinking exactly that for several minutes.  To have her back, I would sacrifice in a myriad of ways.  I would give up my life-savings.  I would toss my “career” and all my dreams.  To bring her out from under the ground, to life again, I would… (and I filled in the blank numerous times, numerous ways.)

Then, like turning a page, everything made some sense.  I will never understand all that happened. I don't know why my family had to experience such loss, but my thoughts at least seemed “familiar.”

Matthew 13:44-46 (My own understanding / translation)
The kingdom of heaven, God's way of doing and seeing things, is like a secret treasure, buried in a field. A Man came across it. To everyone else, it appeared worthless and useless. But to Him, this treasure was beyond precious. He saw past the mask of death – the mud caked surface and the decaying plants wrapping themselves around it. Beneath all that muck was something… someone… He wanted to carry into His world. So intense was the Man's desire, He decided He would do anything to gain the treasure. So, for the joy set before Him, He endured the loss of everything He had. He sacrificed all so that the whole field could be in His hands. This treasure, hidden under the ground, was that valuable.

Walk WITH Jesus,

Jim