EMPTINESS

EMPTINESS

“Lord, fill the void.  Emptiness expands, controls, overwhelms.  Fill the darkness with light; fill the cold with warmth; fill the aching hollow with your Spirit of peace and joy …”

Such was my prayer as I lay awake, sleepless in a borrowed bed, the lower bunk in two of my grandkids’ room.  In another room were their grieving parents.  Beside me was my restless wife, rehearsing the day’s stress-filled events.  And a single word, “emptiness”, keeps reverberating in my mind.  There is so much emptiness. 

“Stillborn” is a word I have read somewhere.  I have even done one SIDS funeral for some un-churched, near-strangers who needed a preacher.  But, yesterday, 08/23/16, this word took on deep, ominous, life-sucking meaning – my grandson had no heartbeat at his 8-month prenatal check-up.  Less than two weeks ago the ultrasound revealed a bouncing baby boy.  But, it seems he had turned one too many flips in the womb, rejoicing, celebrating, anticipating the life ahead of him.  His lifeline became too constricted to connect him to his life-giving mother.  My DNL asked the fretting nurse, “… you are not getting a heartbeat, are you?”  There would be a birth, but “nothing to look forward to …” (in the words of his disappointed, confused dad.)

Empty arms – “why didn’t I hold him, as my wife did in the delivery ward?!”

Empty baby bed – no need to be quiet to keep from waking the baby.

Empty hearts, aching with unfathomable despair and answerless questions.

Empty forms – no birth-certificate for a “stillborn”?!

Another empty form  – funeral home records with “baby-boy Cornelson” in the name blank, to which his dad insisted it be changed to “Nathanael Isaiah Cornelson”

An empty 1st-grade desk in a few years.

An empty short-stop position?!

An empty valedictory slot in 2034?! (I know, somebody else will fill some of these; but it will not be Nathanael)

An empty seat at the dining room table, in the fishing boat, in Sunday School cradle-roll class

An empty spot in some future Baptism Sunday … (a free ticket for this “guileless son of Israel”)

Empty numbers – no SAT score; no SS number; no GPA, no cell-phone number, no employee clock number  …

An empty atmosphere?! maybe it is just the claustrophobic bunk bed, but I lay here suffocating as I try to go to sleep …

We fill these first few empty days with cathartic chatter, with therapeutic toil, with distracting doodling, … whatever seems to help with the emptiness.

“Gracious Father, fill our hearts with hope, fill our days with visions of love, fill our minds with faith in joyful reunion with lost loved ones.”

Nathanael, we will meet again!  That is not an empty promise!

For now, "we will get through this …"