Dear August 25th

I don’t know how to put into words what I feel for you. There is a bitterness in your existence for me, yet I know I have at last come to forgive you. Like Job cursing the day of his birth I too cursed you praying you “would be in darkness, nor let God above care for you, nor let light shine on you” (Job 3:4). I was weak with my own pain, I wanted the darkness to seize you and yet it had somehow found it’s way inside of me. What good could come of this? What peace is there for the soul torn apart? What use is there in tears that fall silently in the night? My pain was great yet there was something greater still at work.

It took five long years of dreading your calendar day before at last a fog lifted and I came to realize I don’t hate you anymore. You can exist again. You can have peace because I finally have mine.

Six years ago I woke up and opened my eyes and I did not hate you, but that did not last long. It was shortly after waking up that I realized the little heart beating inside my belly had ceased. The agonizing denial lasted only a few days until the doctors confirmed what my body had already told me, Joshua was dead. Without ceremony he was gone almost as if he had never been there in the first place. But my heart knew as it broke in ways I couldn’t define or put into words. An emptiness I had never known swallowed me up from the inside out. I sat in sorrow by myself and consumed anger towards you until, without me noticing anger in turn consumed me.

I, who pride myself in my wordsmithing, could not find a way to express the anguish inside of me, nor to reflect on or do honor to the short lived life that had been inside of me. Even now, when I feel more joy and less sorrow for the life that was, have a hard time expressing what lies in my heart. I want to share what I feel even though the words aren’t graceful because I know there are others who have experienced the pain of loss who need to know, that if they can find a way to let it; sorrow can turn into joy. That is the greatest lesson I learned from that dark day, and the days to follow, that sorrow and joy - like the greatest of dancers - meet together as tears that gracefully give and take across the dance floor of your cheeks.

You are Forgiven,