Newtown

Could it be that the snow this morning might mean that even sins as scarlet as this new Adam’s may be made white? How can twenty small names, so sacred and so beloved, be scattered so easily, so quickly to the breathy wind? And six. And two. I have spent two days heartbroken and hurting in a world of holiness.

I have held my children close, have read with them and snuggled with them and have picked up scattered shards of light that I had left lying around, unnoticed until these two days. The way Ellie washes up to my ankles and then my knees like a rising tide. Oliver’s voice, telling me stories and singing me songs in his bed because I am too tired to tell them to him. Lydia’s rampant imagination. Her secrets and her crushes and her conspiracies. She is becoming a woman. Ellie’s habit of looking up when the family or the congregation has broken into song, a knowing look on her face, evidence that she came from a world of music.

Last night as I thought of those parents and all those children and the angels who were not fast enough, not strong enough, not here enough, I put my hand to Emerson’s chest as he lay next to me in bed. He is five, and his heart flutters and then thumps steadily as a five-year-old heart should. He bounces and shouts, and his exuberance is impossible to contain, and I love him. And I ache. And I pray. And I hope. “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”