There is a fountain

Today is my birthday - 56 years on this earth - and I can't say I've accomplished half as much as our son did in his 24 years. Does that mean we raised him well? People tell us that is so. I was thinking about election - a tricky subject, but it has a twist in our lives. Theoretically, our son might never have been born - my wife's mother had some issues that could have made it difficult or unlikely that my wife would be born, or even lived. My own father struggled mightily with homosexuality for many years - and it seems likely that if it had happened all again today, he might not have even tried to make a marriage of appearances and have two boys. Odd, yes? A digression, but I have to wonder - So does that mean that it is better to follow the plan laid out for men and women, even if it is a struggle, or would it have been better for him to follow his inclinations? I am glad for his 'struggle' - otherwise I wouldn't be here - and of course neither would our son. And I'm grateful for the kind of health care that my wife and her mother received that made it possible for her to be alive and be our son's mother. But in the end, it all seemed to hang on such a slim balance - it would be preposterous to call it 'chance' so we are left with that uncomfortable concept of election.

Psalm 139 says:

15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Hard to argue with that one - our very existence is contingent upon God's will and is part of His foreknowledge. So now our line is cut off - our only son, inheritor of our genes - buried forever in the grave. Unless of course, we have an Abraham and Sarah moment - not out of the question, but I think rather unlikely.

After I wrote a note to the prayer list at church letting folks know it was ok to talk about this, and that we appreciated visits some folks stopped by, which was very nice; I also said that they didn't need to fix us, or show us the 'face' (the pity face) but to laugh with us, let us cry, and just be with us - basically trying to give folks permission to not feel awkward about a subject that we are culturally not very good at. But one encounter at church stuck in my mind - I can't say why it was so poignant, but God's mysterious grace is always suprising. A friend who is a doctor, and who herself has a lovely child with Down's syndrome, gave me a big hugh and smiled and said she was so glad to see me. It was more than the words, or the hug, or the smile - there was just true and deep grace there that I couldn't explain. We'd been having a pretty bad week - lots of hurting sadness - and this just reached in and grabbed me. Not to diminish in any way the joy we had from the other friends who visited later in the day, but it had a later effect.

As I was trying to go to sleep, I thought a lot about our son, and how we found him in the hospital bed - his face calm as if in sleep, but his hands and feet already cool to the touch. For reasons I can't explain, I began thinking about children - in this case children with disabilities - like Down's Syndrome - and suddenly in my reverie between sleep and wakefulness I was in a garden, the center of which contained a fountain. It was beautifully simply - rocks and flowers in cascading levels out to a small pond like area. Not grand, or big , but rather natural, yet it was profoundly beautiful. In this 'awake dream' these children were moving on the grass and through the flowers and water to the center of the fountain. I don't know why, but I knew that these particular children were those whose mental expression and growth on earth did not reach a level for which others could easily understand or recognize their inner souls and beauty. I was aware of having to suspend my own intellect and enter into their joy in a deeper and more non-verbal, non-'thoughtful' way - to just be in that beautiful place if I was to be in fellowship with them.

I'm doing a poor job of explaining this but it gave me the most profound sense of peace about our son - although he was not disabled in that way, he certainly had a profound struggle for many years up until his death. It was more that it gave me a sense of God's care and love - and how it transcended all of our cognitive constructs - our definitions and labels - our shoulds, and woulds, and musts. Why this image was so profound I have no idea - though I was concious of those whose young ones often do not live as long because of their condition - we have one dear friend whose son also died of heart failure - after a life living with Down's Syndrome. I don't know how to even get words around this - only that I know that our son is in a place with other souls who are profoundly happy and at peace - and for whom our own vaunted intellect is transcended by so much as to make us seem like the ones who are disabled.

I can't explain these often bizarre flashes of grace - but I am grateful for them in so many ways. The sermon the past couple of weeks have been about Peter stepping out of the boat to come to Jesus on the water. What an intellectually stupid thing to do - and yet, there you have it recorded for all time. What does it mean to step outside of our intellect for a moment and see the transcendent call of Jesus to come to Him.

Matthew 14

28 "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."
29 "Come," he said.

Another one of those pithy, short verses - 'Come' - what do you do with that except step out of the boat?

So there we were in the 'wake dream', before the fountain and it was true joy and bliss and I was comforted for our loss. And I have no idea what it means except that God is good, and true, and merciful and there are just things we can't comprehend right now. But we still grieve the loss - we can't bring him back, but we will join him some day - and there is a fountain......

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.