Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

The Time Is Soon

Ethan’s Dad: Eight years. It has been eight years since we last saw Ethan — experienced him — alive. Eight years since I heard his cry: he would wail, scream, go on for quite a while, but also sigh. Eight years since I felt his breath. It could be halting and shaky, but it also could be very gentle. Eight years since I fed him those bottles of milk and formula. That was always difficult for me. I felt that I could never get him to drink enough. It was not for lack of effort — he tried very hard — but there was almost always some left. The best part of that was when he was finished and was tired. When he slept peacefully, he was like an angel. Eight years since I saw those eyes open: those dreamy, contemplative eyes that always gave the impression he was thinking about something interesting. I wish I knew those thoughts. Eight years since feeling his warmth. He liked to be held close. It was his love language because he could not yet really speak.

It has been eight years, but the time is relative — it both flies and crawls. It flies because in one sense it feels like an instant since that moment of loss happened; that time is frozen in our hearts. It crawls in the sense that each day without him aches, and we long to see him again. But the reality is that we live in this present time, each next moment, without him. God asks us to go on because our journeys in these earthen vessels are not finished. We have not spiritually matured to the point of being ready to see Him, which means we are not able to see him yet either. No matter how much we may wish it, we cannot change this reality.

It makes me think about the difference between how God experiences time versus how we do. Several of the stories I read to our kids revolve around altering time. Characters are able to jump back and forth — unwind, rewind, or see what is coming ahead. Of course, that is all fiction. God has made us to traverse time in one direction, always moving forward. But God does not experience time that way.

I recently finished reading C.S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader to our smaller kids. In it, there is a scene in which one of the main characters, Lucy Pevensie, interacts with Aslan the lion, who is (for those who may not know) an allegorical stand-in for Jesus in the Chronicles of Narnia series. At the end of the scene, Aslan tells Lucy that he must leave her, and he says:

“Do not look so sad. We shall meet soon again.”
“Please, Aslan,” said Lucy, “what do you call soon?”
“I call all times soon,” said Aslan.

That exchange is a not so veiled reference to Jesus’ words in Revelation 22:12-13 in which He says: “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”

“Soon” takes on an enlarged meaning because of what Jesus says about Himself being before and after all other things. In Revelation 1:8, Jesus similarly says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” In the same chapter, verses 17-18, He says, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” Just before Jesus ascends into heaven at the end of His first coming, He gives the disciples the command to go tell everyone about Him, and He adds: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:20.
In the Old Testament, when God speaks to Moses from the burning bush, Moses asks God:

“Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
“God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.'” Exodus 3: 13-14

Unlike us, who experience time as one forward horizon, God is present everywhere, all at once. This is why He knows the future and can speak with certainty about it, and why He can speak to anyone at any time. Lest you think that God has it easy because He is not immersed in time as we are, think for a second about what it means to see everything and to be everywhere. Could you or I handle the immensity of that? I know that I sometimes feel an almost overwhelming sense of dread when I read the news about all the calamities that happen around the world every day. It is too much for us to digest. Even though we only experience remote harms second-hand, the sheer number of them burdens us. Think about if you were there for each and every catastrophe — for all-time, throughout history. In that light, the fact that we live in time and have no choice but to move on to the next moment is a blessing because we do not continually or infinitely live through any moment all the time.

But God also chose to willingly experience time as we do when Jesus was incarnated. In that earthly life, you could practically hear Jesus’ heart breaking when he lamented over Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” Matthew 23:37. When Jesus came to Lazarus’s tomb, He openly wept — twice. John 11:35 & 38. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus tells His disciples: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” He then prays earnestly: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet, not as I will, but as you will.” Matthew 26:38,39. Jesus then goes to the Cross and experiences an agonizing and excruciating death that includes separation from God the Father. In all of those moments, Jesus knew the future, but He experienced time as it unfolded, just as we do, and so He felt as we do.

Likewise, when Jesus healed those in need, He made them well for their remaining time on earth; He did not rewind time such that those people never experienced the pain, harm, and loss they had known up until that time. He renewed and redeemed those individuals, as much on the inside as the outside, but they still carried with them what they had lived in their brokenness before they had met Him.

Why am I getting into all of this about time — for God and for us? Because in these past eight years there have been countless times that I have wished I could go back, or I have wished I could have known what was going to happen, so that somehow, some way, Ethan would still be with us. I particularly do this on each March 10th.

But we all do this for certain points in our lives, don’t we? Our fascination with time travel boils down to wanting to fix things, to make right what has gone wrong. We do not want to retrace our steps, but rather to redirect them. But we are not made that way or for that purpose.

In that same exchange between Aslan and Lucy in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a little before the part I quoted above, Lucy asks Aslan if she has messed something up to the point that it can never be the same again, and whether it would have been different if she had not made the mistake. Aslan answers:

“Child, did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?”

There is no “what if?” because there is no going back. For us, there is this moment, and the next, and the one after that. And what happens matters, for this earthly life and the heavenly one. This is why Jesus said, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me,” which paradoxically connects directly with His command “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth …, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” Matthew 25:40; 6:19-20.

I cannot undo our loss of Ethan. I cannot unwind the pain and misery and missed opportunities of all we do not get to experience with Ethan for the rest of our days here. But because each moment in time matters — as do the losses that accumulate with each day that passes — Ethan’s presence here for even that brief two-month time eight years ago also matters. He matters and he cannot be erased because Ethan is a child of God. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” 1 John 3:1

Yes, the knowledge that God is always present both hurts and helps. It hurts because it means He was there in that moment, and yet He did not stop it. He had the power to halt it or to unwind it, yet, for reasons we cannot know, He did not. But it also helps because it means God was there from the start.

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
“If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
“If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,’
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
“For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
“My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
“Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.”
Psalm 139:7-16

God created Ethan. He created him with a purpose and a destiny. Part of that purpose was to be with us, even as exceedingly short as it was, and for us to love him and him to love us. We do not know what our lives would have been like if he had stayed with us, and we are not meant to know. But we are told where Ethan is and where, one day, we will be.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go, I will come back and take you to be with me that you may also be where I am.” John 14:1-3

So, when, exactly, is that? “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.'” Revelation 22:20. Yes, to Jesus all times are “soon.” It is not so with us, but we are meant to live as if that is the case — as if time is both present and imminent — happening soon. With the help of the Spirit, we are to become like Him as much as it is possible in our present, earthly, time-bound existence because then, one day, we will be like Him. “What we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when [Jesus] appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as he is.” 1 John 3:2. And we will see our Ethan too, at which point soon will be now. “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” Revelation 22:20.

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Three Years

Ethan’s Dad: What does three years mean? It means never getting to see Ethan run around with a foam light saber and talk about using “the forest” (the Force). There will never be any catching him as he tries to run out of the kitchen to avoid having his mouth and hands wiped off. We will not be playing hide and seek where he thinks he’s being sneaky but he is really hiding in plain sight. I won’t be jumping on the trampoline with him while his brothers and sister fall down laughing because the bounces are too high for them to keep up. We do not hear his cry when he wakes up from a nightmare or a bad cough and get up to come console him. There are no walks in the sunshine where we end up having to carry him. There is no constant companion by N’s side, dressed in identical clothes, copying each other as they drive toy cars around the playroom.

This is what irretrievable loss means. It occurs every day, for three years and counting, as we walk on without our little caboose. Our lives are more “normal” now because the more you keep living beyond the day of loss, the more you develop rhythms of life that consist of a family with just four children. It isn’t that you forget — Never That — but that it becomes achingly familiar to go about the activities of life in his absence. I suppose it is that way with all loss.

Except that, in this case, N always provides a physical reminder of what we are missing with Ethan not here. Through no fault of his own, every joy we experience with N comes with a catch, a prick of that wound which will not altogether heal this side of heaven. Of course N is his own person, but they are twins, so there is a very real sense in which they are always bound together. Overall, it is a tremendous blessing that N serves as both a comfort for, and a reminder of, losing Ethan, but it is a blessing forever touched with sadness.

But then there is also the aspect of Ethan’s uniqueness, and this is the part that is perhaps the hardest of all. It is the reality that because Ethan died so young, there are so many traits we never had the privilege of discovering about him that make him different than his twin and everyone else. Would his eyes have stayed that deep blue? (I like to think so). Would he have been stubborn or easy-going? Would he have been the rambunctious sort or a quiet thinker? Would he have been interested in a variety of foods (like his mom) or extremely picky (like his dad)? Would he have loved art or science or history or math or sports? The list seems endless, and with it so does the depth of the loss. Like all parents, we thought that we would have decades to watch Ethan grow (along with his siblings), not two months, and then suddenly there was . . . nothing. So yes, it has been three years, but what comes to mind is a few thousand little things that will not happen, that will never be revealed here, because he is gone.

There is a perspective in this world that would compare all of the foregoing as being akin to crying over spilled milk. This view tells us that life is about results, it is about what you accomplish or produce, that what matters is what “moves the needle” to make people take action, and that you should only invest your life in what you can control. Some call this view “realism.” The premise of realism is a material one, and if you accept that premise — what is real is what you see — this view is entirely correct: Not one moment thinking about Ethan, not all the tears shed for his loss, no matter how many words are written to help express the rending of our hearts . . . none of it will change the reality that Ethan is gone; none of it will bring him back to us. By the realist’s standard then, none of these expressions matter. Why should we grieve at all if everything is transient and immediate material effects are all we value?

But the Bible — and I think our hearts -– tell us that ultimate reality is marked by the things that are unchanging, unseen, and not even done by us. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says “God has made everything beautiful in its time; He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what He has done from beginning to end.” Yes, there is beauty in this world, but our hearts tell us there is more, that there are things which are enduring and defy concrete understanding. Second Corinthians 4:18 tells us that we should “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Revelation 21:4 relates that there will come a time when “there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for these former things have passed away.” First Corinthians 13:8 proclaims that “where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away,” but that “Love never fails.”

Our grief, our longing, and our continued remembrance of Ethan does not change the material reality of his absence, but it matters because it reflects our steadfast love for him. That love is real and enduring. It expresses God’s truth that Ethan is a gift to our family, he is unique, and he is eternal. Two months was far too short; these last three years have felt far too long; and this melancholy ache will be with us for the remainder of our time on this earth. But our love, and more importantly, God’s love, transcends all of that, so that we do not “grieve without hope” because “Jesus died and was raised to life again, and when Jesus returns, God will bring back with Him the believers who have died.” 1 Thessalonians 4:14. Thus, the years after his loss may continue to mount, but we will still grieve — albeit sometimes in different ways than we did at first — because we will always love him and know that God loves him, and that Love will one day “turn our weeping into dancing, remove our sadness and cover us with joy.” Psalm 30:11 (as rendered by Ellie Holcomb in The Broken Beautiful).

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Happy Birthday, Ethan

Happy 3rd Birthday, our precious Little Caboose. We can’t put a present at the end of your bed for you to open this morning. We can’t sing Happy Birthday to you and watch your smile. We won’t be wondering where to go for dinner because you and your twin brother picked different places.  We can’t see you try to blow out candles on a cake with Noah and then watch you stuff your face with it. We can’t watch you tear wrapping paper off of presents and then hear you giggle with glee when you see what is inside. We won’t be able to take you with us when we go off to Disney World next week to celebrate as we have done when each of our children has turned 3.

All we can do is continue to love you, remember you, and long for the day when we finally will get to celebrate with you. “For we know in whom we believe, and that He is able to keep you, our Ethan, who we have committed to Him, until the day Jesus returns.” (2 Timothy 1:12).

The day you were born was filled with trauma, and the too few days after that we had with you were hard on you and your little heart. But never, ever doubt, son, that each and every one of those days was a gift we will treasure forever. We miss you terribly every single day, dear Ethan, but especially so on this day which marks our introduction to your contemplative blue eyes and irresistibly adorable face.  We love you always and forever.  Celebrate a little with the Lord today, but be ready for the ultimate party filled with tears and cheers on that day we will be there to hug and hold you again.

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Who is Ethan?

His Dad: His mom already wrote a wonderful post about him, but I also want to share some about who Ethan is to me. (I use the present tense because we strongly believe he is still alive; he just is not with us right now). One of the many tragedies of this loss is that there are so many ways in which we do not know Ethan because he was with us for such a short period of time. The first couple of months of an infant’s life consist mostly of eating, sleeping, and growing. Many personal characteristics do not begin to reveal themselves until several months down the road.

So, knowing Ethan involves mining bits and pieces from the very beginning because it is as much about what he means to us as who he got to show himself to be. Thus, I go back to that summer morning when my wife sat me down with tears in her eyes and told me she was pregnant. The tears were there because we had not yet decided whether we wanted to have a fourth child and so it was a shock for her to be pregnant. But even if we had not definitely decided, God obviously thought we needed more children in our family, and life ultimately is His domain, not ours. So my wife made an appointment with her obstetrician to confirm the pregnancy.

We went into that appointment expecting the same drill we had experienced 3 times before: seeing a tiny blob on a gray screen and wondering afterwards whether it is a boy or a girl. Except, this time it was anything but conventional. This time the ultrasound technician said “There are two sacs there.” And my wife responded, “You mean, like an echo or something?” And the technician said, “No, honey, as in two babies.” At that moment, both my wife and I apparently had priceless shocked looks on our faces because the technician told several people about it later. We did not really know what to say. I felt a little lost for a second, and then my next thought (which I did not articulate) was “We are going to need a bigger house.”

The next little bit was spent adjusting to the idea that we were going to have twins. After the initial shock, there was unbridled joy, tempered with a little trepidation about whether we could handle two at once. Were we ready? Of course not. Were we going to give everything to try to be ready? Absolutely.

Shortly thereafter, we made the decision that we needed to get a bigger house, and we needed to try to move before the babies were born. We also concluded that, if at all possible, the new place needed to be in the same neighborhood because we liked our church and our first child was just starting kindergarten at the local public school, which we also liked.

This was no small decision given the logistics it entailed. I will not get into all the hassles we endured in getting our house ready to sell while trying to get ready for the twins. What needs to be understood is that it was not easy, but that it ended up working out better than we could have imagined.  Moreover, looking for the right new house actually ended up being fairly easy, but only because somehow that particular house stayed on the market long enough for us to have a chance to get it. So, in both the selling and buying it seemed God had His hands under us throughout our situation.

Looking back on it now, I realize that was the last “easy” part of our lives. After that came the birth of the twins. My wife has vaguely alluded to the circumstances involved in that event. I will not add much more here because I do not want it to distract from the main purpose of this post. I will just say that they were born in the back of a moving ambulance, and Ethan was born breech. And yet he was okay.

What I think that says — and events yet to come would confirm this to me — is that Ethan is a very strong person. Yes, he seemed very fragile in appearance, but he has an inner strength nonetheless. He wanted to live, and God wanted Him to live too.

My wife also has already mentioned that Ethan struggled from the beginning to rest comfortably and to gain weight. We did not find out for a month why that was, but we knew something was amiss. Ethan would sweat sometimes. He would let out high-pitched screams. He often would get upset around 9:00 at night and need to be carried around for a long while to be calmed. To me, it seemed like he was in pain. Once his heart defect was diagnosed, the cardiologist assured us he was not really hurting, but I honestly could not square that information with what I saw.

We had to give Ethan supplemental bottles after every feeding. That was my task, and as difficult as it was — because he really did not eat much of them and he choked on them a lot — I would not trade those memories for anything. I see now that those feedings and the times I spent walking him around while patting him hard on his back as he screamed were my real “Dad time” with him because they were my chances to pour love into him. He could not understand it when I would tell him it would be okay and that I loved him, but surely he knew it all the same from those actions.

As my wife said, in his quiet moments Ethan was contemplative. His blue eyes could look right through you, just like his mom’s. After a little while he was so small compared to his twin brother, but you could never forget he was there. Holding him when he was quiet was a dream — so precious, so cute. You tried to remember that during the other times when it seemed as if he would never be quiet again.  He was the better sleeper of the two once he got to sleep — very peaceful.  And he did love being with his brother.  We like to say that Noah looked out for Ethan from the start because he prepared the way at birth by going first, and Noah’s name means “comfort,” which I think is how Ethan felt around Noah.

Those are the actual memories.  And then there are the imaginings.  We instinctively imagined more about what Ethan would be like than Noah because Noah was already growing before our eyes.  We kept wondering whether Ethan would be more like Noah after his heart surgery.  Would he become a big baby?  Would he stop being quiet and introspective and become super-active?  Would he be a late walker? Would he have more health problems? The answers to these and so many other questions painfully elude us.

What I do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that although the length of his earthly life was a wisp compared to most others, he etched a deep and permanent mark in our hearts. I will admit that sometimes I worry that the passing years will erase the precious details of him from my mind because we had so little time with him, and then he will be completely lost to me.  But after a while an adamant assurance overtakes those fears.

No, I will always remember his strength.  I will always remember his peace.  I will always remember that he taught me about the true patience love requires. Ethan was not an echo; he is our little boy with a big heart.  That heart had a large hole in it, but it was nothing compared to the hole his absence has left in ours.

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Meet Our Ethan

His Mom: Before we get into posting about grief and loss and the bigger picture, we want to introduce you to the little boy we refer to as “our little caboose,” Ethan Walter Jones. He is our fifth child. He has a twin brother, but he was the second to be born. Known as Baby B for several weeks, he was the baby up underneath my ribcage, closest to my heart. He spent pretty much the entire pregnancy in a transverse position, so his head was on the left side and his little bottom made a lump on the upper right side of my belly. There are a few extra stretch marks right there, where I patted his little heinie before I even met him. The twins’ birth story is complicated, and I don’t want that to be the focus of this post. Suffice it to say, he was born vaginally in a breech position with no pain medication. This was a little rough on both of us (understatement). My first glimpse of him scared me – he was a little blue and quiet. He spent about half a day in the NICU before being released to my room, with regular blood sugar checks for 24 hours. He was 3 oz bigger than his brother, and his hair was a fuzzy, reddish blonde. His head seemed small to me but the doctors assured me it measured fine. He liked being swaddled, and both boys preferred sleeping together in one bassinet.

He had difficulty nursing at times, and because of the low blood sugar levels, he received supplemental bottles to start. The supplements continued after he did not gain his birth weight back appropriately. Eventually, we found out that his feeding and weight gain concerns were due to a heart defect. At his one-month-old checkup, our pediatrician heard a heart murmur and got us into the cardiologist the next day. I held his tiny arms while they did an EKG and an ECHO and cradled him close as he was given a diagnosis of ventral septal defect. Again, we might write more about this later, but it was only one part of his story. His feedings would tire him quickly – both nursing and taking a bottle left him sleepy and dribbling milk down the sides of his mouth. He required a bib with every bottle, but he never did have any real acid reflux symptoms. He also never had baby acne – the only Jones child that can say their skin was clear at 6 weeks of age.

Ethan loved swinging in the old creaky baby swing we got for $25 at a consignment sale the week before our oldest was born. He wanted to be swaddled and didn’t wiggle out like his brother. His eyes were deep blue – the color where you can bet they will stay blue. He was a fussy baby – spending so much energy eating tired him out quickly and we suspect there may have been something else bothering him. His cry was higher pitched and easily identifiable to me. We spent a lot of time bouncing, walking, shushing, and rocking. He liked to be firmly patted on the back. I would swaddle, pat, and rock while singing his favorite song, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” but his daddy would pat his back as Ethan was laid over his shoulder while walking around. His older siblings would bring him “the sleep sheep” when he cried – one of those stuffed animals that was supposed to help soothe babies to sleep. His oldest brother swore that Ethan loved the sleep sheep much, much more than his brother.

During the infrequent periods where he would be quiet and alert, he would stare at your face with those deep blue eyes, looking like he was studying every detail of your face. I said that his brother had an inquisitive look but that Ethan was studious. Both observant but with different tones, if that makes sense. They each loved to look at the blinds in their room, just behind the changing table. I guess the contrast made them visually appealing. I would kiss his tiny feet while changing his clothes. He also had a sweet little button nose perfect for kissing. One of his ears bent over a little at the top. His right eye didn’t close quite all the way sometimes when he slept. He loved his fuzzy pajamas that said Little Brother on them. He did not love bath time.

I loved holding them together. I would say to myself, this is the best feeling in the world – to be covered up with babies. It seems crazy, but they really seemed to enjoy being together as well. Of course, 2 months is too young to have your first social smile. One of my deepest yearnings is to see him smile one day. I called him my Big E, which was kind of silly because he was a tiny little peanut. So tiny he fell off the growth charts, but that was supposed to change after the open heart surgery to correct the VSD. He was just growing out of NB diapers and clothing as March approached.

There is so much more I wish I could tell you – those precious moments and memories we cherish with our other children that we never experienced with Ethan. I could go on for pages listing the questions that cross my mind daily – like would he have eventually grown to love his bath? I wonder every night as his brother toddles up the stairs saying “Bah! Bah!” with such excitement. But those are some of the memories from his two months on earth with us, and we hope you feel like you know Ethan a little better as you read about him in the posts that follow.