We are still in a season of drought. Fire. Covid. And grief. When the quarantine began our family was recovering from what I thought was a bad flu. In hindsight, I realize it was Covid. It took me about two months to really recover my strength. Scott gave us about a week of hunkering down and then he opened our doors wide to any teenagers who wanted to come over. This scared and frustrated me. As a mom, I was trying to keep everyone safe. Especially my aging parents who also refused to stay away from us. I pleaded with Scott and fought with him over not following the quarantine rules. We usually don’t fight and it was shocking to suddenly be so at odds with my husband. Meanwhile, our house filled up with teenage boys. Playing basketball in the driveway. Working in the orchard. Hunting with my dad, who I worried about, and reading the Bible with us at night. Boys slept on air mattresses upstairs and on our couches. They gathered in the living room and did homework. One of these kids was Kyle.

We gathered in a candlelight vigil for Kyle last week. A recent high school graduate, Kyle was an amazing kid.

I really got to know Kyle during the quarantine. He stayed with us often. One day I looked up from cooking, our kitchen and living room are one big room, and thought, wow this looks like a classroom. Scott substitute teaches in the wintertime to help us get by. That paycheck suddenly stopped but we were feeding a lot of kids. It was stressful. I vividly remember when the Lord whispered to me, “Do not fear. I am with you.”

After that, the worst of my fear subsided. Scott and I stopped fighting and I embraced our barracks life. I fully dressed in the morning before leaving the bedroom because outside our bedroom door I never knew who would be sleeping in the living room. Kids came and went. We no longer locked our doors so boys could come in the night if they wanted or needed to. I began to say I cooked for an army. Really I didn’t because our boys learned to cook. Wild game to feed their friends. They hunted a lot and brought home plenty of meat. I learned something really valuable during this season of our lives. I could live in fear or I could choose faith and freely love people. We gave Kyle his own bed upstairs and began to think of him as one of our boys. Now Kyle is gone but we got to really love him. Don’t let fear stop you from loving people.

That’s Kyle in the white hat in our kitchen reading the Bible with us right around the time Benjamin died. We were holding onto the Bible, a house in mourning, and yet Kyle stayed. I prayed all the time. Kyle was under my nose. Under my prayers. I watched Kyle’s heart soften towards God. Saw his eyes begin to sparkle when we read the Word. About a month before the car accident that took his life, Kyle tattooed on his arm: Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His steadfast love endures forever, Psalm 107:1. I can’t tell you how tightly I am holding onto this verse right now.

Here is our son John on Kyle’s shoulders celebrating a win. I wish I could bottle this moment and pour it out again. All the joy of watching happy boys. Please pray for John. His first tattoo is in remembrance of Kyle. It’s Saint Michael, the archangel. Kyle was going to get this tattoo next.

We need an angel’s touch to strengthen us. My heart is so thirsty. Like the California mountains.

Closing up our cabin is always sad. This year I’m just grateful we still have a cabin to close. The National Forest has been shut to the public because of fires and just opened back up a few days ago. We made a quick trip to winterize our cabins and board them up on Sunday. Nobody was there. We didn’t see a soul anywhere. The campgrounds are empty. The lake almost dry.

Last year as we locked up the cabin, I was deeply grieving over baby Benjamin. This year Kyle is gone. I climbed on the tire swing just because it looked so lonely in the meadow. I laughed because Scott said, “you’re going to break it. It’s built for kids. Don’t get stuck in that hole.”

How deep is this hole of suffering? The drought still here. Fires keep burning. More Covid. More death. And yet, during the night, a rainstorm. In the morning all the birds were singing. Celebrating in the pines like I have never heard before. Nature so joyful because of the rain. At Kyle’s candlelight vigil it rained. Right in the middle of it. The first rain in a long long time. I turned my tear-drenched face up to the dark night and let the rain mingle with my tears.

And after the rain at our cabin, I stood in the woods and wept. Feeling hope and sorrow at the same time. I should end this post here but have more to say. The rest of this is going to make some of you uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable writing it. Death cuts through the bullsh*t. It makes you face your feelings. Or bury them. Or drink them away. This is probably not good, but I am processing my feelings here with you.

When I was 39 years old, I found out I was pregnant. After five kids you’d think Scott and I would know how this happens but this pregnancy struck us like lightning. How did this happen? I cried my eyes out. I wanted a writing career, not another baby. Then at 20 weeks on the ultrasound, they found a lot of cysts in the baby’s brain. They told us maybe Down syndrome or something worse. They told us we still had time to terminate the pregnancy. We couldn’t. We believed life wasn’t ours to give or take. In my weakest moments, I just wanted to stop this pregnancy. So much for a writing career. I would be taking care of a disabled child for the rest of my life. If the baby even lived. I gave it to God and walked on in deep sadness. To our surprise, our baby Garry James arrived healthy and beautiful the month after my 40th birthday on January 13th. Our grandson Benjamin would arrive on January 14th twelve years later. I’ll tie these two stories together in a minute.

Before grandbabies arrived, our mid-life child, Garry James became an absolute joy to us. By seven years old, I knew he was smarter than me. No joke. This kid is brilliant. Had we aborted the pregnancy, the world would have missed out on Garry James. People say, well, you got the best outcome. Many people don’t get this outcome. That’s why abortions are needed for medical emergencies like this. Fast forward to 2020. Our daughter Lacy’s baby Benjamin was diagnosed with severe problems in the womb. Lacy and Jake were given the same choice as they gave us. Terminate the pregnancy. They chose not to. It was a gut-wrenching ordeal. Lacy was super sick the entire pregnancy. She retained fluid and couldn’t gain weight and that just got worse. Her life was in danger. Near the end, I begged her to induce, have the baby early, “You’re my child I told her. I want you to live.” “If I induce early Benjamin will die. He’s not strong enough to make it through induction. He’s not ready. He will die. I just want to hold him when he’s alive,” said Lacy. Then she sobbed. We both sobbed. I held my fragile little pregnant daughter in my arms and wondered if she would die trying to carry this baby to term.

Are you uncomfortable with death yet? I am. I’m balling writing this. Most of you probably know about Benjamin if you’ve been reading my blog. But for those of you who don’t, here is the rest of the story.

“He looked into my eyes before he died,” Lacy told me that night in the hospital as she held him in her arms. His little body wrapped in a blanket in his going home outfit. He looked so cute. But he was gone. And then a miracle happened. “Do you want to donate his organs?” they asked Lacy and Jake. “We do,” they said. And for more than an hour the organ donor guy interviewed Lacy as she held Benjamin deceased in her arms. In the end the organ guy said, “I have never been able to get these pieces of a baby before. Thank you.” I wasn’t there but the conversation went something like that. He probably said organs, not pieces. Words matter.

Benjamin’s heart valves went to two babies. Those babies live because Benjamin died in Lacy’s arms instead of dying in an abortion. I’ve sat in two abortion clinics in college. Helped friends get abortions. I used to believe it was a person’s choice. That life and death was our choice. I was so young. So full of myself. I thought I knew so much back then. Now I know so little. I have no idea how this rainbow got in the picture I took of Scott closing up the cabin.

I’m sure some of you can explain it. You’ll use science. Or your camera knowledge. You will understand how this rainbow happened and you will feel safer. Because you know. I don’t know how long this season of sorrow will last.

We have now stood weeping at the graveside of three kids in the last five years. I just read one in 500 people have died of covid. This has not been our human choice. By now, all your defense mechanisms are kicking in. Your mind is swirling with no, no, no. You don’t like reading this. I don’t like writing this. Maybe you are going to remove yourself from my newsletter list. Before you go, I just want to tell you I love you. I really do. I don’t care that you and I disagree on abortion. Or covid. Or who should be president. I really truly don’t care. My husband and I disagree on plenty of things but it doesn’t stop our love. I can disagree with you and still love you. I hope you still love me if you disagree with everything I’ve said here.

Every morning I take Garry James from the high school back to Brittan Elementary because he’s taking high school math while still in junior high. Every morning I thank God we didn’t abort Garry James. This is not a post about abortion. This is a post about life and death. We are not in control. And that is very hard. If it was up to me, Anna would still be here. Kyle would still be here. I would have knit baby Benjamin together perfectly instead of making a broken baby that only lived for one minute. But I am not God.