Fitting Under His Chin

The Strong Soft and I sit on the back steps watching chickens peck and dog roll and scratch.  Holding on to each other and letting our hearts show.  Letting them air out a bit, as we try to unpack the emotion stuffed into the numbing to get through.  Our tears mute the rumble of that unstoppable train.  We know it's coming, and we here the clickety clack of  wheels on the track.  "He's leaving.  He's leaving.  He's leaving.".  We sit and cry.  "How on earth do you plan a party?  When all that you have given your life to is about to walk?  Away?  How do you celebrate this grief?"

It's a consuming time.  Everyone is functioning at such a strange pace.  I, always, with the thought of his dark head tucked under my chin, diapered bottom-wearing onsie resting on my once slim hip.  Then I turn to see, him, and all this great manhood wrapped up in the tall and handsome of, "Let me go, Mom.". 

I think of the valentine that he gave to me this year.  It said, "I still fit.", and I knew that it meant he still fit under my chin.  Remembering it, I am ruined.  Undone.  Crying great drops of missing him already.  Great drops of memories standing in a line, each one needing to be picked up.  Looked at.  Held.  And I miss my little gravel-voiced boy calling me Mama, and I miss him letting me cradle his warm head under my chin, and I miss holding him in my lap, reading him book after book.  I miss his SilentDeep soul.  Even then.  Watching.  Studying.  Seeing more, and being more than I would ever know.  And I knew it then!   That he was not mine.  That he was meant for more and not more for me.

I fit my head under the Lord's chin.  Rest on His great saving love.  Rest knowing that He has a plan, and that He has known it all along.   I just let the tears roll.  He doesn't mind all this sentimental adjusting to His great plans for freedom.  For Joshua.  And for his mama trying to let go.

As many freedom journal entries as it takes, I guess,

Bernadette