Revisit the Scene

To this day my husband does not like to go back to the hospital where Caroline was born. 

The sights, sounds, and smells take him back to a very hard day.

That day, her birthday, changed us forever.

Chaos took the place of calm.  What should have been a glorious celebration turned into a day of shock, fear, and change.

In the process of her birth Shep almost lost both of us. 

So any normal person can understand his angst over going back there.

For me it is different.

I kind of like going back.  It provides a surreal even euphoric kind of therapy.  I can remember how it felt to walk in the hospital with butterflies dancing in my tummy.  Fear was mixed with determined joy over giving birth and becoming a mom.  The days and weeks and months that followed became a friend to me.  Time was the only thing that helped me get through the day. Time didn't judge or push.  It just stayed with me. It passed. 

No friend or family member could really understand what I was experiencing.  Honestly...I didn't either. 

I just knew that my life would never be the same.

The walls, sounds, and smells became my company.  Odd I am sure.  But they were stable and sure.  That hospital was the setting that God used to shape and mold me. 

Day after day I would sit in the NICU and learn.  The zombie state I was in began to wake up to the dreaded newness.  I learned to not fear the machines and the beeps.  I began to embrace a level of hard that I thought would never be possible.  Courage and strength were there even though I barely recognized what they looked like.

Going back there reminds me of a loss and a gain. 

All of it hard.  None of it wanted. 

But it is there just the same.

What I gained in those passing days was an awakening.

The loss of what I had expected birthed a sprout of hope.

Although Jesus had saved me I had never really needed his help for much else.

Now hope was essential to living.

The promise of His help was my only hope.

Almost 13 years later I sit here with some perspective.

God has been faithful each and every moment of every single day since.

Revisiting those days spark new appreciation for who I was before and who God is making me into now.

Today is also Good Friday. 

I hate thinking about this day.  But something in me needs to revisit it. 

I need to go there in my mind and picture the reality of that day.

God's Word gives us 4 gospels that depict the scene and the surroundings.

I imagine dust in the air.  Shouts of buyers and sellers in the street.  Quiet tears on the followers of Jesus as they stand a respectable distance away. Crucifixions were not uncommon.  But this one would be.

Creation knew that its creator was doing the unthinkable. He was becoming a servant to the very ones He delighted to create.  He was dying for what they had done.  Innocence and restrained power hung on a cross.  The nails held his flesh but unparalleled love held his heart. 

The words on the page don't seem to do it justice sometimes.

My Jesus suffered so.

He was mocked, spit upon, beaten in the head with a stick, and cursed.  He was flogged with a lead-tipped whip.  Long, sharp thorns were shoved into his skull.  He was naked and forced to carry my burden.  He willingly went to the place of death and laid down upon the wood.  He offered his hands and feet to be nailed down.

For me.

For you.

The scene is so brutal and gruesome.  The picture is so bleak and depressing.  Such a loss. 

Yet....such a gain.

Death bought my life. 

His death gives me hope.  Hope that I cling to now...2000 years later.

Revisit the scene. 

Appreciate the pain.

See the hope that was born from such loss. 

And remember....Sunday is coming!!


"Then Jesus shouted out again, and he gave up his spirit.  At that moment the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  The earth shook, rocks split apart, and tombs opened." Matthew 27:50