Faith Hope Love

Flora creates piles of these everyday at daycare.

Pictures of Le Bud, her baby brother.

She, clearly, already loves him.

And has no doubt that he is going to love her.

“This is my baby brother, thinking about me and him.”

Sometimes she just calls him “the baby.”

“This is the dog rolling the ball to the baby.” Hence the arrows. “The baby is happy to be getting the ball.” Hence the heart, I guess.

Interesting that we have a dog, I think.

These pictures make my heart swell, unbearably. To have such tangible evidence of her excitement, of her willingness to love — I can’t encompass in words how it amazes me.

I try to grasp it and hold it, hold it in my own swelling heart, without reservation, without hesitation.

I’m not always 100% successful.

Sometimes this tangible evidence of her love and excitement freak me right the hell out.

In Stephen King’s book Duma Key, one of the characters says (more than once), “God punishes us for what we can’t imagine.”

I know, Philosophy from Stephen King. My existential phenomenological psychologist husband is all *facepalm* right now.

But I don’t want to imagine breaking my daughter’s heart. Or, rather, imagine her heart breaking. If I put my mind to it, I can imagine it — although how I would explain something so terrible to a heart so open while my own heart is crushed and cracked and bleeding is, frankly, stunningly difficult to picture. All I can imagine is tears. And questions. Ones I couldn’t answer. I still don’t have answers from Gabriel’s death.

I want her carefree assurance that all will be well. I want to have no doubts —zero, nada — that the baby will be here and play with the dog and love his big sisters.

So, better not to think the worst. Better to believe in and have faith in a merciful God, like I do, almost all the rest of the time. Like, 98.9% of the time. I believe everything is going to be fine. I see myself saying, “Two girls and a boy” when someone asks about my children. (My head appends that slightly differently, but strangers in Target do not need to know that.)

Better to block off the darkness and turn to the light.