It is the custom of the Coffey house to gather just before bedtime for a period of scripture reading and prayer. The stories we share would be familiar to most—Noah and his flood, Moses and his staff, Jesus and his cross. Each are read and discussed and questioned at length. Nothing gets left out.
If this description of our religious home life conjures an image of four people huddled together in reverent silence, I’ll ask you to erase that picture from your mind. It is not like that. Very often one or both of the children will interrupt with sounds of various bodily functions. Or they will offer their own commentary about it not all being Eve’s fault or that sitting in a whale’s belly would stink or that Moses would have done much better if he would’ve had a lightsaber.
It is lite fare to be sure, a mix of holy and silly that ends with a firm foundation in the ways of God. My kids know what they believe, and they can defend it. These days, they must.
It is afterward, when the Bible is closed and hands are joined, that all silliness ends. We close our eyes and pray. Thanks comes first—for the good day and the sunshine and the mountains, for an absence of homework and an abundance of macaroni and cheese. Only after the thanks can the asking come. It’s always been like that with the kids. It’s as if children are born knowing how to pray and then slowly forget as they get older.
Chief among their asking every night for the past year has been healing for Ms. Pierce, a teacher at their school suffering through cancer. There have been days when her mention was brief—“God please help Ms. Pierce”—and days when it was much longer. Yet neither of my kids have wavered in their conviction. The faith of children overshadows the smallness of their bodies, like the oak in the acorn. They never doubted that God would make her cancer go away, even if everyone else did. Because God is bigger than sickness. Bigger than even the sunshine and the mountains. To them, miracles are a given and the hand of the Almighty rests upon us all.
Every night, they prayed.
Tonight, they did not.
There is silence in our home as I write this; the only sound is that of my pen sliding across a pad of paper. But if I listen closely I can still hear the quiet sobs of my daughter, who has for the last two hours refused to surrender her despair to sleep.
Ms. Pierce has passed on.
Hers was a quiet death, one that provided peace after a year of pain. For her family, this day is almost a release, the dropping of a burden too heavy for them to bear any longer. There are times when God delivers us from our mortal pains, and times when He delivers us through them. Ms. Pierce went through, and that was God’s holy and mysterious will.
But those words will not comfort my children. They are too young to understand such things. And as I sit here in the fringes of lamplight surrounded by this dark night, I cannot help but think that there are times—many times—when I believe I’m too young to understand them, too.
To my children, Ms. Pierce’s death means the miracle did not happen. That either God did not hear them or He did not care to listen. That they did not pray hard enough or believe hard enough or that they were bad in some way. I’ve talked with them, told them that wasn’t true. It isn’t working yet. There is wisdom that comes from the going and wisdom that comes from those who have gone, but much of our truth sprouts from the former.
I’m sure God seems distant to them now. It’s a terrifying feeling, one that feeds a pain they’ve been blessed to have not felt before. They will mourn as we all must mourn. They will struggle with doubt and the value of their prayers. They will wonder of God’s love.
And they, too, will find that He is indeed never distant. That He is in fact closer to them now than they’ve ever known. Each heart must be broken against the hardness of this world, broken and pieced together and then broken again, that His light may shine through the cracks and illumine the world.
They will know that one day.
But it will not be today.
