Dust to Dust

"All go to one place.  All are from the dust, and to dust all return." Ecclesiastes 3:20

This morning my heart is heavy as I think back to the morning of 5 months ago - March 28.  That morning I got dressed to go to a cemetery.  I put on my dress and aquamarine shoes, new items that I bought for Chase's Celebration service.  Aquamarine is his birthstone, and what I now like to call his lifestone.  I combed through my new haircut.  I put a little makeup on, even though I knew I'd cry through it in the next few hours.  Someone told me I looked nice.  I didn't care.

I sat on the bed in a partial fog - knowing that this would be the second hardest, the second worst, day of life.  

We had a short graveside service.  The pastors shared awesome truths.  Adam compared life to waiting in line at an amusement park.  He said that Chase got to skip the line.  Chase was experiencing the joy that we all longed for in our hearts.  Matt explained 2 Corinthians 4:8.  Though we are afflicted in every way, God lets His children be perplexed.  We get to be confused and ask questions, but, PRAISE GOD, we are never driven to despair.  We have HOPE!

John and Jen played "Never Once" by Matt Redman.  I cried through the whole song.  This was the song Chase was born to.  It has become sweet bookends to his life here.

But apart from the sweetness, there was a harsh sting.  A terrible horror.  There is something wrong with seeing the beginning and end of someone's life.  There is something wrong with being so intimately aware of one person's journey from dust to dust.

I pushed him out at birth.  I got to experience Chase coming from dust - from my body.  And on March 28, though we didn't witness a burial, I knew my baby was going back to dust.

I don't think I realized it at the time, but a close friend told me later that after the service was over, when Ted and I were dismissed to go back to the limo, she saw me look up and smile.

This quote I found later by Robert L. Dabney I think explains why.

"As I stand by the little grave, and think of the poor ruined clay within, that was a few days ago so beautiful, my heart bleeds.  But as I ask 'Where is the soul whose beams gave that clay all its beauty and preciousness?' I triumph."

This is the constant tension I live in.

I have a bleeding heart.  Death makes me have a bleeding heart.  There's something wrong with it.  It was not a part of God's original, good creation.  Death came as a result of sin.

I have a triumphant heart.  I have confidence that Chase is safe in the arms of God.  I triumph because I know I will see him again, and join him in celebrating our God.  I am hopeful because I know that one day sin and death will be no more.