Finding home.

{image via flickr}

Last night, I baked a cake in a disposable pan that will be taken to the church this afternoon where family and friends, and more family and more friends will gather to celebrate the little life of a little angel boy named Gabriel who went to heaven last week.

My contribution feels so trivial and small, compared to the feelings inside my heart (which is breaking).

Over the course of the last week, I think I understand a little more of what 'bearing one another's burdens' means. I have felt like this sorrow has been mine to bear, too. I've watched and listened to others; mothers, who have channelled their love and their prayers and directed them to the same place my love and prayers have gone to, as if there was something that has tied us all together. Something deep and pure in its own right. Something I've only felt since I've become a mother. This week, I've come to think that such related emotion is a gift; a gift for uniting, and a gift for helping heal. And because I've since looked into Amy's eyes, I think it's really working.

Because she is somehow at peace.

And I've been spending my nights wondering how.

On Saturday, I looked up to an entire night sky full of stars; a dark, grand sky that enveloped me and made me feel impossibly small. I went around and around again, trying to understand and untangle my emotions. And while I was sorting and untangling, I tried to put words to the very feeling I kept coming back to, and once I did, it suddenly became simple. There is something deep within that seems to makes us all long for permanence: a home that never changes, with loved ones that never leave. I think that that part of us reflects our eternal make up. It's who we are. And this is only our 'home' away from our real home, where we truly belong. Understanding this puts all else into clearer perspective.

The scriptures teach us that fear is the opposite of faith. And I have seen it use my energy and focus to the point that I feel as though I know very little, if anything at all. Jared often reminds me that loss of (almost) everything is inevitable in this life. The thought of it makes me cry. And when I have thought of Amy, (as I  almost constantly have this week), I lose myself in imagining how her heart must ache with loneliness and sorrow and the certain finality of change.

As I have imagined myself in her place, I would almost certainly feel alone and overcome. Not because I would stop knowing that families are forever, but because 'forever' would seem impossibly farther than I could endure.

And I've been thinking about the word 'endure', which means to hold out against; to sustain without yielding; to bear without resistance; with patience; to tolerate; to allow; to continue to exist; to support adverse force or influence of any kind; to suffer without yielding; to suffer patiently;

to gain continued or lasting merit or greatness.

There is sweetness and power there. And I think that sweetness and power comes from believing with a full heart that that's what we're here for; to endure. And for some, it's a really long road. A road we're really all on. It's just sometimes I forget that we're not alone. If all else is lost around us, there is one who will remain constant and that's Heavenly Father. Our Heavenly Father. And He knows each one of us so intimately. He understands us, and He understands our hearts because they are full of the very emotions He created. When we feel happiness, He instills feelings of love and gratitude, and when we feel sorrow, He so graciously extends an unmistakable sense of comfort.

Comfort that is real. And so miraculously visible for those of us watching.

On July 12th, the little heart of the perfectly healthy 18 month-old Gabe simply stopped beating. On the night they let him go, Amy so sweetly assured everyone that her baby had gone home to his Heavenly Father.

(Which is what He must have wanted.)

And that is exactly where he went.

'Gabriel' means 'standing in the presence of God.'