Well Mason, here’s the thing, birthdays are for celebrating.
And we had some great birthday celebrations with you. And in honor of you. Every year we still enjoy your favorite. Pizza. We are thankful for the sweet gift of you.
But today, the day of your death? Yeah, nothing celebratory about this day for us.
Too many memories of that terrible day. And too much heaviness on all the days since.
I never wanted this reality. Who does, right? I miss you so much it still hurts.
Your death is just a big black day on my calendar. It marks the moment light dimmed a little on this earth.
Nine years. How has it been that long? I’ve lived with grief longer than I lived with you and that just makes everything feel quite imbalanced and exhausting.
So here we are facing another day that marks the last time I held you tight as waves of shock threatened to drown me.
I wish September 28th never came each year.
And then, I think about how completely different this day is for you. How this is the day you embarked on your eternity journey. And really, I just cannot even fathom how incredibly wonderful your existence is.
I have so many questions about Heaven. Do you celebrate Eternity Days there like we celebrate birthdays here? Except they are one hundred million times more exciting?
There must be Eternity Days every single day. And you’ve celebrated with likes of King David and Daniel. With Bonhoeffer and Spurgeon. Great people who have inspired and shaped my faith. And you get to eat cupcakes and have water balloon fights and nerf wars with them. I mean, the celebrations in Heaven…
What is the food like? Just yesterday we picked apples from the trees in our yard and made applesauce and Grady asked again about the time you poured your own applesauce and emptied half the cinnamon container in your bowl and I walked in and wondered if you were eating mud.
These sweet memories come back to me and I smile and then wonder what kind of silliness you are up to today. How each day keeps getting better. How the light of hope shines so brightly for you. You don’t experience things like longing and weariness. Sadness and pain.
Here, we are still experiencing a whole lot of those things. And it’s all wrong. It’s all backwards.
This morning, in the quiet early hours I’m trying to think of all you are seeing. All you are breathing in. When helping Griffin write his paper yesterday I was encouraging him to describe the setting of the battle with all the 5 senses. And it makes me think of you.
Mason, what does it smell like in Heaven? My guess is freshly baked cookies, rain, and the ocean. And the absence of stale air, bad breath and stinky fish. But my senses are so limited here.
You know, I can’t picture places I’ve never been. Or places described in a way I can’t relate to. I think most of us are that way. And its because of this that we don’t even try to picture Heaven. We just dismiss it as ethereal and weird and probably boring since we can’t relate. It’s a shame really. The Enemy has succeeded in taking away our longing for something perfect and magnificent and magical and replaced it with complacency and an unsettling discontent for all this world offers.
Considering God created this world in 6 days (and I’ve had some pretty amazing glimpses of what he has accomplished here), I can’t begin to fathom what he’s been doing for so many centuries. Tell me, Mason, do you ever get to watch him at work? “And here I’ll put a waterfall. And over there an ocean. And how about flowers…? Let’s create some new colors that will blow your mom’s mind when she gets here.”
He told us he’d be working on Heaven since he left this earth a couple thousand years ago. I can’t wait to see what he’s done with the place.
That is, I guess, the gift in sending part of my heart to Heaven before I can go myself. I begin to imagine. And grasp on to every single description I can find in the Bible. Every indication of all the perfection that awaits. I imagine and hope and dream, and even then I get to tell myself, “It’ll be even better.”
So today I’m thinking, why wouldn’t there be Eternity Parties? I mean, how exciting. But instead of birthdays that eventually become a countdown to aging and death, you are always counting up. With hope and joy. Forever and ever. And it just keeps getting better.
And then I think that maybe Andrew and Peter are at your party. The brothers that inspired your middle name. Do they tell the story of how Andrew went and grabbed his brother and brought him to Jesus? And do you tell the story about how your parents prayed that over you when they named you? That you, Mason Andrew, would bring people to Jesus?
And then do you rejoice over all the people who have heard about Jesus and been rescued from darkness because of your little life? Do you talk about Mason’s Place and all the girls who have been pulled out of hopelessness? Do you look at how so many of us live with more intentionality for eternity after facing the sudden loss of you? Do you list the names of people who have taken the time to tell me, “It’s your story that introduced me to Jesus?”
I know this life is so temporary, but on days like this the darkness can feel suffocating. So today, I’m imagining your laughter at your Eternity Party. I’m clinging to the hope that I will see you again. I’m painting a picture in my heart of how eternity will look different because of your life and legacy.
Mason, this world is full of way too much pain. But knowing I will see your little face again helps ease some of it.
So today, sweet boy, celebrate big.
