A night vigil and my babies...

For Easter this year, I decided the house could manage itself well enough for me to take part in vigil.  This meant getting up in the middle of the night and heading off to church for an hour.  I've wanted to do it for years, but it always seemed like nights would fall apart or Easter would be too hard without that sleep.  There always seemed to be bit of mystery surrounding the night vigil hours, as if one couldn't help but have some fantastic vision or visitation with nothing but dark and a candle and a lonely church, especially my church, which I know to be filled with love.

So I did it.

I'm not sure you could say I had a vision or anything so luminous.  In fact, I brought along books and snacks and all manner of paraphernalia, being at the last minute quite uncertain what I would do or how I would stay awake.  Someone had mentioned that they like to read, so I brought three carefully chosen books (Henry Van Dyke stories and poems, which coincidentally I had gotten from the library and which turned out to be over a hundred years old - it seemed appropriate).  But when I got there, the man before me was simply sitting in the dark, and as he passed he held my hand warmly for just a moment and whispered "Happy Easter.  Peace be with you."  And that was it.  He left, and it was just me and the candle.

For a bit I sat, but that wasn't quite right.  I suppose I was too unquiet yet, too concerned with doing still.  But I felt reluctant to turn on any lights in that warm dark.  So instead I turned on my phone and played my hymn playlist.  OK, so it was a little technological, but somehow it felt right singing hymns out loud, loudly even, by myself in the dark.  It felt good, all that air flowing in and out of my lungs, filling the far corners and wrapping around the little light.  I started with amazing grace, and my playlist obliged for a long time by only playing old hymns, nothing pop or new.  I sang until I was empty and the space was full of sound and I could finally hear myself and God again.

Eventually though something funky came on, and at that moment I simply turned it off, and let it all be.  Quiet, warm, dark, light.

I sometimes wonder if in these quiet times the voice I hear is simply my subconscious, telling me what it knows I need to hear, or whether it really is God.  It feels like God, but who really knows for sure?  In any case, as usual once I shut up, I heard Him speaking.  This time, He told me about my children, and it is this that brings me here to record it.

First, Emma.  Emma's was part words, part images.  What I more or less heard was that I should continue to build her up, to build underneath her a pyre, to give her the foundation that would become a might conflagration, in which he would sweep her up and away to a place where I would go but could not follow.  The image in my mind was stacking wood boards under her until there was a roaring fire, and her swirling up like sparks, and away as many lights into the dark.

Elisabeth, simply, would be my star.

Alex would curl (or perhaps burrow) herself into my breast, which would be good and bad.

This I heard, and then nothing else.

I don't know what it all means, but I feel like something is working in Emma.  The questions she asks, the things she does and says.  I almost wanted to ask Pastor Todd today to pray for me to do the right things by her, or to ask for a team to help me raise her.  I feel as if there really is something big coming for her, and my job is to prepare her.  Surprisingly, I even feel as if I am doing it right so far.  What doe that mean?

Today, I started reading Kisses from Katie, a book I picked up by chance a few weeks ago.  I'm only a few chapters in, but it makes me wonder, will this be my Emma in ten years?  It could be my Emma in ten years?

It could.