our family of five

When you meet someone, there are two and a half common questions you ask. “What do you do?” and “Married? Kids?” These are common questions which we ask because they’re “safe.” Questions which give us a quick, mile-high overview of where a person is in life. These most basic of questions are a daily strange moment for parent’s who have lost a child. Do we have 3 sons? 1? People tell us “you’ll always have 3 sons.” But we don’t. I’ve become comfortable in saying “we had 3 sons, and lost 2.” It invariably brings that instant sadness to the conversation, but loss and life are all in the same bag – I smile and the conversation moves forward.

Death is an awkward thing. It’s ugly and beautiful; it is relieving and straining. It makes us think so heavily about who we are and why we are. From my experience and the words of people I’ve spoken with who’ve felt this and had much more time to move through it, it seems the questions we ask after we’ve seen death are answered with journeys much more than facts. It opens my eyes to the world around me, but it makes me so sad with every beautiful new thing I find, realizing two of my sons will never see it.

Hi guys. 🙂 I haven’t posted since February. We’ve been intensely busy working on life, Charley,  church, Because of Ezra, and each other. Things are going well. I mean, from the high level explanation, yes, they’re going well. I mean, we’re all broken, we’re all hurting, we’re all needy and offbeat and different, but we’re good. Charley is great – he’s now completely off oxygen. None at all. His neck muscles are much better – he looks left all the time (never really did), even though he still looks to the right as his default stance. He’s working on his right eye. It goes lazy a lot, but time will fix it. He still eats from a tube, although he takes tiny bits by mouth now (we’re talking milliliters). Things are slow with Charley. It is frustating sometimes, but the kid is awesome, and will only get more so as he grows.

The foundation is moving along. We’ve got a great motorcycle ride coming up May 7th. Robyn and I have been meeting people all over the country involved in beating neuroblastoma (I refuse to capitalize that word), I’ve been playing music whenever I can, and Robyn and I talk often about our hurt, thoughts, and things we feel God is showing us. We spend a lot of time with various close friends chatting about life. Whoever your friends are – invest in them. Love them. These relationships are important in your life, I implore you to make them a priority.

I’ve started a book about Ezra’s story (and ours, I suppose). Well, I’ve created the Pages doc at least. 😉 I plan on filling it out… let’s see how that goes. Life is full of so many options still, which is nice. This is Easter week, and I wonder during these days how God felt when He lost His son. I wonder if He felt this empty space.

Thanks for reading.