A Better Day

December 13, 2012 by Kate Kelty 1 Comment

A better day is coming.

This is the whisper that came to me this morning- the one that interrupted my weeping moment-the one that supernaturally invited me to hope. His voice can do that. Slice through layer upon layer of hurt, humanness and opaque pain to ignite flames of hope and love in the darkest of places.

Christmas is approaching and it’s cold. All is glitter. The air is ripe with cinnamon, windows are awake with candlelight and store fronts are drenched in magic, but it’s cold.

One friend just suffered her third miscarriage. My knees hit the ground. [Read more...]

A Better Day

December 13, 2012 by Kate Kelty 1 Comment

A better day is coming.

Christmas is approaching and it’s cold. All is glitter. The air is ripe with cinnamon, windows are awake with candlelight and store fronts are drenched in magic, but it’s cold.

One friend just suffered her third miscarriage. My knees hit the ground.

Another friend is approaching one whole year without her son. I am aching, continually grieving with her.

My 86-year-old grandmother is frail, sad and lost. Nearly a year has passed since her husband of 66 years became dust and memories. I hug her never wanting to let go and yet also wanting to fold the thinness of her into a paper airplane, sending her as she wishes into the heavens, into a better day.

I am in urgent need of a hearth where hearts can go to get warm…

A better day is coming.

Is this the fire I long for? Are these words flickering, glowing and beckoning me to come? Does this sentence have the power to make souls toasty in spite of all matter of frozenness and death around them? If I stare into it deeply, will my eyes reflect the fire dance and be opened to wonder, mystery? Will the light remind my soul that light is what I was created for and light is where I am headed? Will pain begin to feel more like a part of a story and less like the ending?

If you are reading these words, perhaps your heart is cold. Perhaps you want to know hope. Not simply to know the word, but to go there, to really go there. To sit at the hearth, staring into flames of an unseen reality, flames of promise, getting lost in the light of truth and feeling warm…even if for a bit.

A better day is coming.

Immanuel brought this reality to earth with him- a tiny baby growing in a virgin, born in a stable, bringing with Him from heaven the answer to our pain. Not an answer from pain, but a way through and out of pain, a way into a better day, a forever answer that cuts through flesh and bone, harmonizing with the soul fabric of all who beat and breathe.

It was a rescue mission. The strangest and most miraculous the world has ever known. That snake, he bit Eve with his lies about God and the venom has seeped into every soul since, sin which blinds the eyes and severs the heart. A chasm between man and God was formed, distrust from child to her all-loving Father. A remedy was needed, an anecdote. God came down, spurred by crazy grief and crazy love for His children, dying of sin. God curled himself into a womb. He became baby. Boy. Man. Sacrifice. Savior. Remedy.

I spent years wrestling God for answers, the ones I thought having would bring peace and closure from the loss of my baby girl. The poisonous questions first uttered to Eve in Genesis have found their way through history and into the chapter of me. The snake offered new bait with the same old deception, and frail and grieving, I feasted.

“Did God really say He loved you? Did He really say He would take care of you? Is He really all he’s cracked up to be?” This mad questioning of God and needing to know why, Why, WHY… got me nowhere but more deeply embedded in the enemy’s plan to rob from me. Now it seems the better path is to get lost in the answers He has given. Answers like…

“I do not willingly or from my heart grieve or afflict my children” (Lamentations 3:33).

Answers like…

“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart because I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Answers like…

“The God of Hope will fill you with all joy and peace as you trust and believe in Him” (Romans 15:13).

And finally answers like…

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever” (Revelation 21:4).

I need Him- I need God’s saving. I yearn for what the baby came to bring. I crave what the man died to give. I need the promised power that surged in Jesus as He broke through grave clothes and out into the light of day. I need it because I am afraid, because I ache for my girl and I am in empathic agony for those around me. Because it’s been nearly eight years and my Christmas tree drenched in pink ornaments fully reminds me of the daughter that does not open gifts or sing carols or bake cookies with me. I do not see her eyes dazzle with wonder and delight at the twinkling of the tree lights…and yet, I know they dazzle. They are glory dancing- reflecting all that her little eyes behold in the kingdom of a Better Day.

A better day iscoming. The baby is coming…coming to die, coming to take away the sting of death and to beckon the weary of heart to be warm in the fire, the fire that whispers of the possibility of joy now and joy forevermore. A fire that rages and surges with power to live full of hope and strength in spite of painful realities. A fire that conjures up the deep truths that first brought you to grace and will bring you there still, the fire that dwells inside, the one that has a name, the one that calls you child.

My eyes have something to say…see the fire dancing?

Hope is here and in this moment, I am warm.

My Name Is?

November 7, 2012 by Kate Kelty 2 Comments

Love came to me this week just as I prayed it would. Even though I was waiting for it, it surprised me. The tablet of my heart is nearly full from all the writing Jesus did upon it this week. I am desperate to jot it all down here….for you, for me. There is one word however that stands out from the rest, one experiential name that has captivated me. It is my honor and privilege to inscribe it to you now.

Comforter. [Read more...]

My Name Is?

November 7, 2012 by Kate Kelty 2 Comments

Comforter.

God used my son John to bring this message to life for me.

He has always had an old soul. Nearly seven and he blows us all away with his vocabulary, his questions and his refined humor. John and I have always seemed to have a way with each other. My mom used to tell me that God made a copy of her heart and placed it in me. It appears the same could be said for John and his mama. Our spirits are similar and undoubtedly intertwined.

Earlier this week he came and stood before me, his joyful, mischievous eyes hinting for me to ask the question, “Johnny, what are you doing?” His reply, “Just you wait mama, you are gonna love this. I am making you a present. It might take me all day, but I’ll have it ready when you get home tonight. Don’t forget to ask me for it, okay?”

The day was long, in work and in spirit. The gnawing sense of incompleteness and vacancy I wrote about last week was ripe with insecurity and fear. A whisper came, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” I was busy, not in the mood to be occupied by anything else- I shushed it away. I made a mental note- read the 23^rd Psalm later. That evening I was helping John to straighten his room before bed. I picked up a piece of paper from his nightstand, caught my breath and then inquired, “Johnny, what is this?” He looked up, a bit deflated and said, “That’s your present mama. I forgot to finish it, but I guess that’s okay.”

I clutched the paper to my heart, careful not to crumple it and grabbed John into my arms and pressed a kiss, full of wonder and gratitude to his forehead.

“The Lord is my shepherd, He gives me everything”

That night I fell asleep within the blessed assurance that God was in fact pursuing me with more love. “The Lord is my shepherd, He gives me everything,” I chanted. I waited for a massive impact, some deep down change or enlightenment…it didn’t come. I fell asleep.

The next morning as I cleaned up all the messes I was simply too tired to get to the night before, I came across yet another piece of holy scribbling by John:

There was no Bible next to it, nothing to copy from, it stood alone. It reads,

“So the words that were spoken through Jeremiah the prophet were fulfilled. A voice is heard in Ramah, wailing and loud laments. It was Rachel weeping for her children and refusing all consolation because they were no more.” Matthew 2:17

I looked up at Chris, shocked, awed, and completely enlightened in that moment to all the ways God had been speaking to me. I processed, The Lord is my Shepherd…Rachel refusing to be comforted. Each of these words converged with the other and I found myself staring at one complete message from Jesus. I pray God gives me a fluid and clear way to decode it here:

The Cry

Who is Rachel? In essence, she is the first recorded mother of deep sorrow. She died moments after giving birth to her second son. In her agony and suffering she cried out just before giving up her last breath, “His name shall be Ben-Oni…son of my sorrow.” The initial account is recorded in Genesis and is referenced again by the prophet Jeremiah and again in the gospel of Matthew. In essence the writers, separated from Rachel by thousands of years, are communicating that she can still be heard weeping for her children. The image comes to me of Rachel’s corpse bearing down on a somber, low and hollow note of an ancient organ, a song that bellows throughout the generations, “I have nothing, my children are dead.”

Rachel weeps without a comforter. In fact, the verse proclaims that she will not, she refuses, to be comforted. Is there hope for Rachel? I remember two years into my grieving a day when I said to my sister, “I don’t feel like my name is just Kate anymore. It feels like my name has become- Kate, mother of a dead Anna.” Essentially, I could have said, “My name is Rachel, I have nothing.”

I have been asking myself a question all week. May I be so bold now as to ask it of you? Do you answer to Rachel? Is the last key your life played since the loss of your child (or any sort of loss) a lament, a hopeless note? In your mourning for your child, do you essentially cry out, “I have nothing?” Do you refuse to be comforted because you are so unsure of the one who declares Himself to be the Comforter?

The Comforter

Just a few months after we lost Anna my therapist encouraged me to read a book entitled, “Safe In The Shepherds Arms.” I bought the book. I got two pages in and felt so angry that I nearly hurled it across the room. How could the psalmists words be true? How could I join him and proclaim, “I have everything I need, I do not lack or want for anything,” when all I wanted was for heaven to open and for Anna to be dropped back into my arms. At the time, I was unable to push through my anger and confusion to discover the life boat that the psalm actually is for those drowning in the sea of sorrow.

The 23rd psalm proclaims the Shepherd to be our comforter, our guide, nurturer, restorer, refresher, protector and one who will pursue us with His love all the days of our life and for all eternity. The psalm is rich with promises of the everything Jesus can become to the suffering child of God. I well remember the days of meandering through the valley of death questioning and rejecting the Shepherd. But I also remember the day I got swaddled up in His comfort and I haven’t been the same since.

In the days between Christ’s resurrection and ascension He tells His disciples that He will pray to the Father and ask for the Comforter to come to abide with them forever. “I will not leave you comfortless” He said (John 14:15-18). The Greek word here for comforter is paraklete, which means advocate. Paraklete comes from the word parakletos which literally means to come to one’s side. So, the Comforter is the one who comes to our side, to advocate and to be with us.

The Comforter Responds To The Cry

It is excruciating, to live here in the world, simply excruciating at times. And there is and will continue to be weeping and wailing. But our hearts are able to be invaded by the Shepherd and He makes bold promises to those who mourn: promises of comfort, promises of a soul invasion of peace and nurture and love of the deepest sort for our moments of horrific, gut wrenching pain and sorrow.

Of all the scriptures God could have lifted out for me this week, He chose for my son to scribble down these two passages…why? Without a doubt I believe God is saying, “I hear their cries, I hear their weeping and their wailing and I ache for those who do not know my comfort- I long to be their Shepherd in the dark valley of death. I ache to bring my everything into their nothing.”

That everything includes the hope of redemption. The last chapter paints it like this:

“For the lamb on the throne will be their Shepherd. he will lead them to springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes…There will be no more death or mourning or or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev 7:17,21:4).

I am following the Shepherd. I have spent many years in the valley and I have spent many years basking in the glorious light of the mountain. I know more valley’s are ahead of me…death is inevitable, as is my own. I cannot begin to express in words the joy and anticipation I feel for the day I will finally see the One who I have been listening to, trusting in and receiving from in the dark. This will be the day when all of my questions are answered and the day when I will be comforted one final glorious time. The day when my tears will once and for all be wiped away and when I will finally see the look in His eyes, the one He always gave me, the one that the veil of earth prevented me from seeing. They will be eyes which reveal grief, tenderness, compassion, comfort and love. But perhaps I am most eager to see His look of joy when I embrace my Anna for the first living time…and never ever will I have to let go.

After Rachel named her child, Ben-Oni, “son of my sorrow,” she died. Do you know what the baby’s father did? He renamed him Benjamin, “son of my right hand.” In essence He renamed Him, the son I will come along side of, the son I will be comforter to. The Heavenly Father offers us the same name trade, from child of sorrow to child of my comfort.

This past week God answered my prayer for more love. He reminded me of who He was to me in my darkest hours, and who He has been to me every day since. He is my ever-present Shepherd and in Him I have everything I need. I pray this page flows hope to each of you weary in grief, desperate for more love and eager for the Shepherd who offers you His everything.

My name is Kate, child of comfort. What is your name?

Am I really home?

October 27, 2012 by Kate Kelty 4 Comments

I have been sitting here for a while staring at the screen, my hands hovering the keys, waiting. I feel it, but sometimes it takes a while for all that simmers inside to come scripting out. I hear this prayer rise…Make these, my words, a well oiled river, flowing the brokenness of me and the wholeness of you, up, out and over. The simmer becomes a boil. I process what the prayer means. It’s a pleading that the mess of me combined with the perfection of God will emerge, expand, and explode right past my heart and onto the page. The prayer gives birth to vocabulary…

When Elijah was just a few months old, we went to a church picnic to kick off the summer. I was wearing jeans and a white shirt, holding the baby, blanket bundled, in my arms. I sat down at a picnic table. Emily came and sat down next to me. Emily was also wearing jeans and a white shirt, holding her baby, just a month or so younger than mine in a blanket, sleeping in her arms. We both have long brown hair, probably both looked new-born-baby-tired and probably both smelled like breast milk and spit up. Ryan, one of Emily’s twin boys, saw his mama from a distance and made his way over. He stopped short of us, attention caught by something else, and then backed into his mom, resting his hand on her knee, his head on her chest. Emily and I looked at each other and smiled, wondering how long it would take for her son to realize it was me he was clutching and not his mama. A minute or so later, Ryan turned around with a smile, looked up into my eyes, and was suddenly reduced to panic. He looked to his left, found Emily, and before an instant had passed, he was safe in her arms.

Love…

I think I have been praying to know the love of God my whole life. It has never been easy for me. I could process here all the reasons why, but for now I’ll just leave it in a word…hard. It’s very strange to me now that the very thing that caused me to know God’s love, the very thing that ushered in the answer to a lifetime of prayers, was really the thing that brought me to the place of hating Him first.

We lost our baby girl.

The few friends, family and grieving souls that tumble their way here already know that hating God became my avenue to knowing Him. Death made me feel like I had a right to stomp before the throne to demand to hear a few things. Some days it was anger that compelled me. Other days it was hope, that maybe just maybe, the love I’d always longed for, would finally connect to me through this.

In three years of stomping and crawling to the throne, I never left empty hand. Each wound, need or question I brought to God, whether about Him or my grief, was always met with a bit of glorious truth, experiences with a present and risen Jesus. In time what I became convinced of was this: The God I had been seeking my whole life was not God at all. He was God-like. He was constructed with a whole bunch of truth, but so many lies had found their way into my perception and image of Him that that the God I was approaching was not purely “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6).

Just like Ryan had backed into the wrong mother, so I had backed into the wrong Father. It wasn’t until the little boy looked into my eyes that he realized he was in the wrong place and then ran home. Likewise, my grief, compelled by anger and want, caused me to look up and really stare at the Father I had been clutching since the age of seven. He looked like Jesus. He had a beard and authority and nail scars, but something was off and the tell tale sign was the fear I felt looking into His eyes. And then, just like Ryan, I ran home. When I turned away from “god” and began seeking the Jesus I met in my grief, something amazing happened. Love. It found its way into my heart, the deep recesses and nooks and crannies that had been 30 years parched and I began to feel loved. Grieving still, questions still, but suddenly alive with love.

I am coming up on eight years without Anna Rose Kelty. Eight years deep into grief and my own resurrection. And suddenly, there is an inkling of fear once again. Somehow a bit of untruth has sneaked in once more to my perception of God. Or rather, as I grow deeper in my faith, Jesus is dragging up old boxes from the basement of my heart to sort through. Things I need to get rid of to make room for more love.

As I write, I am beginning to look through the boxes with Jesus, my real Father, my Shepherd. I don’t want to hold onto anything that would keep me ensnared to not seeing Him as He truly is, thus preventing me from the love and trust I long to define me. I am not yet sure I have identified the culprit of this awkward fear, but here is what I do know, the following prayer from the apostle Paul has become the cry of my heart once again:

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know His love that surpasses knowledge, that you be filled to the measure to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18-19).

These living words nearly sing to me, a lullaby, hushing all the fright away. I need this “love that surpasses knowledge,” love that bypasses making sense. A love that is better and more satisfying than answers, a love that digs to the root of our problems, massaging things like, peace, strength, hope and joy into the wounds and fears that seed themselves in human soil.

So here I am once again, setting out for love to save me, change me, free me, rouse me, cause me, deliver me, soften me and ignite me. I imagine there will be stories to share as I head out on this adventure, the one that will undoubtedly take me off the map to where the width and length and height and depth of God’s love are waiting.

I’ll be writing those stories here because I kind of have to… have to write out all the Jesus and love my fingers can muster. If you find your heart weary and wanting like mine, then I invite you to come along with me. I invite you to ask for a flood instead of full enough levels of God’s love. I’m not okay with sometimes peace and sometimes joy. I’m looking for more and there’s only one place to find that.

So here’s to discovering the uncharted territories of God’s love, to being filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, and to looking into the eyes of our realFather, snuggling into home.

Am I really home?

October 27, 2012 by Kate Kelty 4 Comments

I Remember You

October 16, 2012 by Kate Kelty 2 Comments

I remember the first day I prayed for you. It was an ordinary day but I was suddenly awakened to the reality that one day you would in fact, be. And so I fell to my knees both smiling and weeping as I offered my first words to the Father for you.

I remember the day I learned that you were nestled inside of me, the day my womb was opened to be your home, the day my heart was opened to be your mother.

I remember the day we learned you were a girl. I pulled your daddy into a broom closet at the doctor’s office as we left the ultrasound room and cried. I thought your daddy wanted a boy. He smiled at me tenderly wiping my tears and then proclaimed the secret truth behind his giddy smile, “Sweets, do you know what this means? I get to have a daddy’s little girl!”

I remember the day the Lord whispered your name to me. It was an answer to the sweet phrase God had spoken to me weeks before when I heard, “Child of Worship.” Like a note arriving in the mail, this verse lept from the page “Anna the prophetess waited in the temple day and night, worshipping God…” Luke 2:36-37. It was a clear match and so you became, our Anna.

I remember your kicks, your rolls and your hiccups. I remember daydreaming about your soccer games and ballet recitals. I remember daydreaming about nursing you, comforting you and telling you all about Jesus.

I remember the last time I saw you alive. It was a lazy afternoon at the Pregnancy Center and nurse Kay invited me to what became my last visit with you. You were sleeping and then you opened your eyes and I gasped. I felt like we were staring right into each other’s eyes and souls. I traced your sweet frame on the monitor with my finger…I whispered all my love to you.

I remember the pain and the fear of the moment we learned you had slipped away, just three weeks before forever was supposed to begin. I remember and it takes my breath away. Even now as I write I feel afraid.

I remember Jeannie rushing in at the last moment to deliver you. I remember the tears streaming down her face. I remember her words when you arrived, “She’s beautiful.” And you were Anna Rose.

I remember the moment they placed you in my arms for what has become the most exhilarating and excruciating moment of my life. Meeting you and losing you all at once…there are no words.

I remember the look in your daddy’s eyes when you captivated him. I remember the smile he wore the entirety of your birthday- the one I haven’t seen him wear since. You awakened the daddy in Him- you awakened a new kind of love and pride in him.

I remember the way your lips felt against mine. I remember your cold little nose and your monkey brown hair. I remember every facet of your sweet feminine body- all five and a half pounds and every one of your 20 inches.

I remember every soul that bent down to kiss you hello and good-bye. I remember Uncle David gently applying his chap-stick to your crimson mouth and I remember Aunt Tris singing to you. I remember the pain and the love each one of your grandparents showered on you.

I remember the moment you left my arms. I remember sweet nurse Alice walking away. I also remember her coming back one last time with a remnant from you…your “coming home outfit.” I remember her gently telling us that she had placed you in a soft white gown to sleep for the night…

I remember every moment of hating God for taking you from me and I remember every moment that His supernatural presence and incomprehensible, perfect love rescued me.

I remember the day that peace became greater than pain and the day when Jesus became the hero and not the villain. I remember the day He whispered to me about the ways in which he would make beauty for ashes and the ways in which he would turn evil for good.

I remember the first day I began writing our story and I remember the last.

I remember the day nine months ago when I sang your lullabies to Pop on his death bed. I remember thanking him for giving me a lifetime of Jesus. I remember asking him to shower you with my love. I remember asking Him to tell you everything. I remember wondering if he could even hear me anymore. I remember how he raised his weak hand to my cheek and cupped my sopping wet face as if to say…”you can count on me and I love you too.”

I remember you sweet girl- every day of my life I remember you. Every truth and promise and every dream and vision are on the mantel of my heart and I cannot wait to scoop you up into my arms for the hug I have dreamed of all my life.

I am so glad it was you…the one who made me a mama and gave me Jesus.

Anna Rose Katherine, everyday of our lives, we remember you and cannot wait to see as you see.

All our love forever baby girl,

~mama

I Remember You

October 16, 2012 by Kate Kelty 2 Comments

I remember the day I learned that you were nestled inside of me, the day my womb was opened to be your home, the day my heart was opened to be your mother. [Read more...]