We are in the middle of a tsunami right now.  For the last three months I have been swimming in a flood of details.  Since August we have had a baby, packed up our house, left our home and friends in the Middle East after nearly nine years, traveled back to the United States, lived as house guests with various family members, lived apart on two separate continents for a time, chosen a new house in France, and are navigating a system we don’t know when we don’t speak the language and don’t know the rules.  In the background of everything is the ebb and flow of grief, that never really leaves, but rather comes and goes into your life as it chooses.

One of the things we did since August was something I have been putting off for a year.  We picked out Henry’s tombstone.  We buried Henry over a year ago, but I just couldn’t bring myself to choose a tombstone.  I knew it needed to be done, but I couldn’t face it.  We finally chose one in October.  We will put the above picture on his tombstone.  It is a picture of Henry swinging in Iceland on June 21, 2016, on the longest day of the year in a place where the summer sun never really sets.  I think Henry is in a place like that now, where the light never ends, illuminated by a righteous and holy God.

I think part of my reluctance to pick out a tombstone was that if I still had to pick out Henry’s tombstone, I still had one last thing I had to do for him.  I liked having something that I still had to do in my role as Henry’s dad.  It sounds silly but it felt like one final connection.

It was painful writing his name out for the people at the memorial company.  Henry Graham White.  I remember choosing that name with my wife.  I was so proud of it.  He was the fourth generation of Graham.  My grandmother, born in 1924, is Mary Graham White.  My dad is John Graham White.  I am Joshua Graham White.  He was Henry Graham White.  We took a photo a few weeks before Henry died with all four of us – four generations of Grahams.

It feels strange to see his name written out for a tombstone.  It was a name I was supposed to see on a name tag on his first day of preschool.  It was a name I expected to see at kindergarten graduation and in the program for a Christmas play.  It was a name I was supposed to see on a college diploma and on the front of a fancy wedding invitation.  It was never supposed to be on a tombstone that I would see.

These past three months I feel like I have given away and been given so much.  I keep thinking of Joni Mitchell’s song “Both Sides Now.”

Tears and fears and feeling proud,
To say “I love you” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way

But now old friends they’re acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day.

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all

I’ve lost so much, and as time goes by I am reminded every day of what I’ve lost.

I’ve lost the illusion that death, loss, and pain are only for others, but will never find me.

I’ve lost the illusion of control over my life.

I’ve lost the illusion of security.

I’ve lost my sense of permanence.  Everything is temporary.

I’ve lost the family that I had.

I’ve lost my beautiful little boy.

But I’ve gained too.

I’ve gained the beauty of a broken heart and the gifts that it brings.

I’ve gained an understanding of what is really important.

I’ve gained new friendships.

I’ve gained a new family that has been forged in the fire.

I’ve gained the knowledge that our only security is in God.

I’ve gained a new life that I never had before.

I’ve gained a new baby.

I’ve fallen in love with life in a way that is impossible without loss.

I’ve gained a more eternal perspective.

It’s true, what Joni Mitchel says.  I really don’t know life at all.  But through Henry’s death there are two things that I do know, now more than ever:

1. There is a God.
2. God loves us more than we could ever comprehend.

I have experienced God’s love in a way like never before.  It is not a consolation.  Henry is still dead and I will never see him grow up or do any of the things I had hoped for.  But even with that loss, God has shown me his love.

A few weeks back back I was having a difficult time.  It happens when your child dies.  There are good times and bad times and you have to just let them come.  I was really missing Henry and feeling sorry for myself.

“God, I don’t want to have a good story.” I said.  “I don’t want to have a testimony.  I don’t want to be strong.  I don’t want to be an inspiration or a light to others.  I don’t care.  I just want my son back.  I don’t care about anyone else!”

As soon as the thought had left my mind, I could feel God’s answer.

“It’s a good thing for you I don’t have that attitude.”  And it hit me again.  God also lost his son.  He too has felt the pain of separation.  The difference is that God did it willingly as a gift for a humanity that was ungrateful and undeserving.  The Bible says that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  I only spent twenty months with Henry, but God had spent eternity with Jesus.  The Father and the Son had enjoyed unbroken connection since before time, and yet God willingly gave that up so that Christ, who did not deserve punishment, could take on the punishment for sinners who did deserve it.  God’s unfathomable and revolutionary love for us is demonstrated through Christ’s suffering and death.  Someone who would willingly sacrifice his son for others is someone who has a love that I cannot understand.

In October, I went hiking at the Cirque de Gavarnie in the Pyrenees Mountains.  It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies and bright sunshine.  The leaves on the trees were changing and the entire valley was carpeted in lush color.  While I was hiking I came across a stream that had been diverted into a drinking pipe pouring endlessly into a wooden trough.  I stopped and drank from the cool water.

As I drank, I couldn’t stop laughing and crying at the same time.  It occurred to me that God’s love is like that.  It quenches a thirst we never even knew we had.  It pours out with abandon without us even asking and it calls us to do the same for others.  A Father who can give away his son is a God who knows how to love.  A savior who can hang on a cross, despised by the very people he came to save, and pray “Father forgive them,” is a God who knows how to love.  A God who can turn an entire valley vibrant with color is a God who knows how to love.  And that’s the thing.  God doesn’t ask us to do anything that he has not already done.  We can suffer in joy, because he too has suffered.  We can love our enemies because he did too.  We can forgive because he has forgiven.

Job 26:14 says that the creation is but the outer fringe of God’s work, that we only hear a faint whisper of him.  I think that if we really understood God’s love, it would be too powerful for us, like staring directly into the sun.  I don’t think we could take it.  So God reveals himself and his love for us through whispers.  The gospel message is that in the end, everything will be all right.  We are not good enough and never will be.  God knows that and he loves us anyway.  That powerful love was revealed when he sent his son to die for humanity.  The same God who set the heavens and the earth in their place, loves us with a passionate and vibrant love.