Grief

These last 2 days have been a blur...tears, heartache, weeping, anger and then we had to tell the girls. They had their first ever dance recitals yesterday so we waited to tell them until after and when we began Wesli asked if Jivenson was very sick. No, he's not sick, not anymore. He went to heaven, his little body is free from the pain. Tears, questions...why? He was too young, he should have been older before he died, when he comes home will he still have died? Oh, and now he gets to be with Great Grandpa. Yes he does and there is the Hope. That's it. Inside of all the crushing emotion, there it is, in some moments just barely. The hope that death is not the end because Christ took away the hopelessness of death, it's sting is gone. We hold fast to the promise that God is in the business of redemption, He is making all things new. He healed this child that we loved so deeply, but not how we hoped, not how we wanted. And there's the anger...we can say that yes he's in a better place and that God just wanted him back but I don't want God to have him now WE WANT HIM! I don't want him in heaven, I WANT HIM HERE IN MY ARMS! And God can handle it...all the questions, anger and sadness.
We leave for Haiti tomorrow, the funeral will be on Wednesday. Being here so far away is surreal, we just imagined him in all these rooms, we "met" him right here in our kitchen on my computer screen. But there in Haiti, at the airport, at Hope House, that's where we held him for the first time, the last time.....