Samuel is Seven

Dear Samuel,

You will be turning seven in about ten days! I can’t believe you are getting so grown up. When you were born I was overwhelmed by how much I loved you, instantly, when you had nothing to give in return. I learned so much about love in those early weeks with you. In the end I learned that the way I love you creates in me a helplessness because I am imperfect. I don’t always make the right decisions. I don’t always choose selflessness. Sometimes I am distracted and completely miss what you are trying to tell me. Sometimes I brush aside your needs because I’ve needed you to be stronger than you ought to have been. I’ve needed you to carry me when you never even knew you could. And all of these things make me feel helpless to convey how very much I love you and have loved you from the start. But I will always, always, try to help you understand how very much you are loved. Always. And I am grateful that you are loved and sustained and carried by One greater than I could ever be. 

You are smart and silly. You have a precision about you that is wholly original and yet must be inherited from your father. I find things in your desk lined up in rows and labeled...rocks that you are studying and small scraps of paper with secret messages. There are ways you stack your books that bring you comfort and order. Yet, I have to remind you three times to remember to put your shoes on. These precious things remind me of your Dad in heaven. He used to spend hours reorganizing his books. After he died I went through his box of keepsakes and found his varied collections and scraps of papers. He saved things I never knew he saved and treasured small bits of things too.

I wish you could have known him, really known him. I know that you will learn all about him, but that is different from understanding the feel of someone. I wish you might be able to walk into a store or hear about a book and think, “Dad would love that.” You’ll never know him that well. You won’t know all the millions of tiny ways that you are just like him and the millions of other ways that you are so different. You won’t be able to look at his hands and see your own turning into his as you age. You won’t be able to notice how your lips get chapped in the same exact places, like a little line running down the middle of your bottom lip. 

And this, son, is what breaks my heart continually. In a very real way you will always be fatherless. There is simply no way I can ever mend that brokenness. There are things that soothe and bring healing. There are people who have come into our lives who love you and protect you. You are not alone. Yet, I can’t fix it. 

You have a new Dad. You have embraced him and brought him into your heart in ways that amaze me and make me proud. In so many ways I can rest for you now because you are fathered and you have settled into being a son again. There is beauty from ashes. There is strength instead of fear. And still sometimes I watch you falter. You don’t have a mirror that reflects back who you are and could be. Your mirror is gone. Now you have the grace and love of someone different, which is a blessing beyond what I imagined. One day you will understand the sacrifices he has made to be that person for you. You will understand the way that he loves you and loves me and you will admire him for all the times he has chosen to embrace what wasn’t our choice and didn’t have to be his. You will respect him for choosing us and all that comes with us, day after day, moment to moment. But for many years you won’t see these things. You will see your own grief and loss. You will come to understand that you live with a sadness that many people don’t grasp. And then one day your perspective will shift and you will be grateful in the midst of these things. 

On Easter Sunday you will be getting baptised, by your new Grandaddy. My Father was baptised by Grandaddy’s Father. How incredible and strange how things come full circle. I know that you are ready to make this symbolic step in your growing faith in Jesus. I have seen the ways that you seek the Lord and the way that your heart is turned toward truth. I pray that somehow these precious seeds inside of you will be protected so that you can continue to grow and become a man of integrity.  

Finally, my sweet son, I want you to understand that I am and will be just fine. You have been consistently so worried for me. You have been my little warrior. You have protected me in ways that have been so important for you. Yet, sometimes that tendency in you makes me ache with sadness. I want you to be free, to explore, to be joyfully irresponsible at times. I want you, in brief, to be just a boy. It won’t be long before you won’t have the opportunity to embrace your childhood. And all of this brings me back to my state of helplessly loving you, watching you grow, and simply being so privileged that, for a while, you were mine.

Always,

Mom