Preciousness of
moments, sweet cognisance of time,
Holding our angel
in my arms, imagine his spirit shine!
Contemplate grace
magnified, his little body at rest,
To know our Lord holds him, like my
hands are his body’s nest.
Lusciously perfect
in our minds, the very substance of our hearts,
The moment he was
conceived, our love affair had its best of starts,
Gorgeous little man
of ours, who swept us off our feet,
Now he is finally with us, and his
race is now run, complete.
Finest little
fingers, and toes that show God’s best work,
His ears, his eyes,
his tummy, perfection, not one sign of a quirk,
Muscliest little
thighs with potential beyond work it seems,
His calves will never burn, his long
feet will never realise dreams.
Blessing us only
for a few short months, heaven’s best for our display,
Hold him, kiss him,
and enjoy him, he’ll lay with us today,
His condition was
far too challenging, somehow far too good for Earth,
We find it as we hold him, his life
was always of a heavenly birth!
We covet the minute
tightly, and defend the hour with might,
His delicate little
body is ours, yet his spirit has taken flight,
Bodily comfort is
our foil just now, as we take in what can be,
Fleeting moments of sorrow just now,
soon he we’ll no longer see.
***
“It is well.” As those words to the song rang out
of the obstetrician’s phone in theatre, tears of eternity’s longing streamed
down our faces. It is well, because it is not.
Because we can’t fix it, only God in his grace can.
We longed to be with our little one –
both to become acquainted with his listless body and to know him as God alone
now does. What we longed for we received.
Our cherub, Nathanael Marcus, was delivered
lifeless, yet he was, in our estimation of things, the essence of God’s work: a
gift (Nathanael is Hebrew for ‘given of God’) and always destined an
eternal being (Marcus is Hebrew for ‘shining’; of eternal purity).
Washing the vernix caseosa from
Nathanael’s hair and skin proved a difficult task, but not one without its
purpose. As I gently caressed his skin with soap, God gave me the opportunity
of tactile stimulus and response. The longer I washed him, the more I held him,
the more I watched my ever-enduring wife – post-Caesarean Section – stroke his
head, the more I saw him as God does: a gift to us and the world, but destined
always an eternal being, as are we all.
We are so thankful for the
opportunity to be Nathanael’s parents. He will always be ours. For those who
love us, he will always be yours, too. Most of all, he is God’s now, and we
wait for him to finally greet us when we are called home.
© 2014 S. J. Wickham.
As I typed the words of the last
paragraph I had Nathanael cradled in my left arm.
No comments:
Post a Comment