My Children Will...

“I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.”

-Psalm 17:15

  

 As I mentioned in my post Therapy?, my personal counseling sessions began as a requirement for my Masters in Counseling program in Virginia Beach.  Well, the four session requirement turned into years.... Five years later, I walked through my wonderful counselor's door for my final face to face session before moving to Atlanta. 

In this wrap up session, my counselor pulled out some of the initial exercises I had completed.  One of these exercises was a “sentence completion” in which the beginnings of sentences were provided and you were asked to fill in the remainder of the sentence with the first thing that popped into your head.  (i.e.: 1. My family is ______.  2. I admire ______.  3. It angers me when _____.  4. The future seems ______.  etc.)  

As my counselor read my answers aloud from March 1, 2007, one sentence truly stood out and has remained with me.  A gift from above that has settled upon my heart.

The sentence was, “My children will ________.”  I had answered five years prior, before having any children:  “My children will know God.”

Wow.  Here I was, a week after the third anniversary of my first-born’s death, and I hear my innocent hope, a prayer really, that my unborn children would know God… above all else.  

A prayer that was answered.  Not how I would have ever dreamed or imagined, but still answered nonetheless.  In that moment, it sunk in deep, filling every inner crevice... My son Warren was, and is, face to face with the Lord, knowing Him more intimately than I can even fathom. 

Further confirmation came a few weeks after this final session and shortly after moving to Georgia.  We were visiting a local church, and we heard this verse in the sermon: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and know Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

Four years later, Warren continues to give us so many gifts.  And this is why we continue to talk about him.  This is why we must always sing his song. Not out of guilt, not solely out of pain, but out of love, and out of the hope his life presents.  

Warren's life reminds us that the true hope is in knowing God.  That our true home is an eternal one, face to face with our Lord.  That life is short and precious; we can either question it or embrace it and live freely (after all, it is for freedom that Christ set us free, Galatians 5:1).  As my former pastor recently shared, “Living this life apart from the eternal makes no sense.”  Warren helps us to link our eternal reality in heaven to a life full of purpose in the here and now.

 Proud Mommy and Daddy with Warren

Warren, we miss you and we love you.  But we do not grieve as those without hope (1 Thess. 4:13).  For there will come a day when never again will an infant only live but a few days (Isaiah 65:20), when dreams will come to fruition, and when all will surely be made new.  I am proud of you and grateful my son knows his God.

God continues to provide and show us signs of Warren’s life.  Just last year around the third anniversary, I found a few additional pictures of him on my computer that had been very dark and I was able to lighten them with Picasa.  This was a love gift from God to me, something He wanted to give me three years later.  I am smiling in this picture, and I am smiling today, on the 4^th anniversary of Warren’s glorification. (Warren on the left and John on the right.)

“Teach us to realize the brevity of life,
so that we may grow in wisdom. O Lord, come back to us!
 How long will you delay?
  Take pity on your servants!  Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love,
so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives.  Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery!
 Replace the evil years with good.  Let us, your servants, see you work again; 
let our children see your glory.  And may the Lord our God show us his approval
and make our efforts successful.”
    

-Psalm 90:12-17