The Black Crayon

It’s been eleven days. The flowers have wilted, the food has been eaten, the calls and emails and facebook messages have slowed to a trickle. My kitchen window is adorned with cards that say things like “At This Time of Loss” on the front, and the little cards that come with flower arrangements are also at eye level, reminding me that Crystal in Seattle and Cindy in Vermont and quite a few others are praying for us from afar. There are no more articles about my dad to share, links to news stories to email, and they’ll probably be removing the bench that had been set up by his grave pretty soon. Slowly but surely, we’re supposed to be getting back to real life.

The past eleven days have been a fog. I remember being in the hospital where I heard the news, I remember the funeral, going to where the accident happened, the kindness of people, the hugs…but did it all really happen? My memories are clouded with a thick layer of smog, only tiny moments standing out with any clarity. I wish I had some windshield wipers for my brain. “Um” has taken on a prominent role in my vocabulary as I search through my exhausted mind for simple words. I walked around for half an hour this morning with just one flip flop on and immediately forgot that I was looking for the other one. The only way that laundry and dishes have gotten done is because of my sweet mother-in-law who came down to help. My exhaustion is never-ending, regardless of how much sleep I get (and let’s be honest, even though my kind husband gets up in the morning with the little ones I’m still nursing Jude at night and I still have three tiny kids). I know that this is grief and that slowly it will lift, but it does not change the fact that I’m living it right now. Even my eyes are having a hard time focusing, like I should be wearing my glasses all of the time. My glasses, however, are terrible and don’t help me at all and I really need new ones (add it to the “when Chad gets a job” list that is constantly growing with our needs). I know that my glass-half-full, multitasking, on-top-of-things self will one day return, but I’m not there yet. I’m feeling buried with the stress of almost a year of joblessness, seeing so many things around the house that need to be fixed, replaced, updated. Wondering why God hasn’t provided a job for Chad yet, why he has had to spend so many, many hours searching and applying and coming up with nothing. And now this. A loss so painful and so sudden that I feel buried even deeper. I am trying to live and take care of my children and my house and myself and maintain any sort of relationship with my husband and my friends and my family while up to my neck in swirling water that threatens to pull me under, and sometimes I want to let it.

And I could blame God for all of this. But I will not.

Because I am not so wise that I can claim to understand how God works. All I know is the He is my very last and only hope. I will not curse the hand that is reaching out to help me because I think He came too late or not in the manner that I wanted. I just know a truth, and it is probably the very first truth that I learned about God:

Jesus loves me, this I know.

For the Bible tells me so.

That’s all I have. I occasionally think of an encouraging scripture, and people write great verses on their sympathy cards. But this line of a song is so firmly engrained in my heart that it’s the only thing I’m able to cling to or think of consistently throughout my days. He loves me. I can hardly even form a prayer right now; I’m just sitting in that huge, deep love. I know it’s there, I can feel it. The thing is, it does not take away the pain. It just accompanies the pain with hope.

Today Hazel was sitting at her little brown table drawing on a piece of paper with a black crayon. Even though the chairs and table are kid-sized, her feet don’t quite touch the floor and were daintily crossed at the ankles. She was wearing ballet shoes and a bright pink Dora princess dress which is so well-loved that the edges are starting to fray, and her hair which had yesterday been in a neat ponytail was beautifully messy. Hazel’s voice literally sounds like what an almost three year old real-life princess would sound like, so gentle and high-pitched, and she was describing her drawing to me. “It’s a circle, and Evangeline and Hazel at the swimming pool.” She described to me the different colors in her drawing, even though the only crayon she had used was black. Even though I made no move to leave she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t go away Momma.” I knew she needed me to sit there with her and listen, so I did. I think I needed it, too. She was fully herself in that beautiful toddler way that I so envy. The drawing was all scribbles but she kept talking about all of the things she was adding to the picture: her name, my name, a picture of a giraffe, she and Evangeline jumping into the pool. And then I realized how different I felt, like I was wearing the best glasses that not only clarified my vision but also my mind. Her eyelashes, her face, her voice: all of it was jumping out to me. I was in focus, she was in focus, and in that moment of clarity hope snuck into the dark swirling waters of my heart and nestled itself in. Her black crayon, the color we use to represent death and despair, was drawing the most beautiful picture to her. And I started to see it, too.