I wrote this on May 23, 2023, as a gift to myself on a day when I needed to spend some time healing. For a while, I was unsure about whether or not I ever wanted to share it. But after riding a roller coaster of grief for several months, I realized this may be a gift to others as well. It won't stop the roller coaster, but it might at least help some people to feel like they aren't riding it alone.

CARRIAGE

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I know so much more than I used to.

I used to only see darkness, but I could feel light. Now I only know and feel light.

I am light.

With my new knowledge, I can articulate the thoughts I used to have, before I could speak. So I would like to tell you my story.

- - -

I was nothing. Then suddenly, I was something.

My existence began in a carriage, slowly, and gently moving through the dark. It was peaceful. I loved it. I was filled with it.

My heart beat like a soft, delayed echo of the larger and louder beat of another. It was coming from somewhere inside the carriage. This giant heart must have been another passenger that I couldn’t see.

I began to hear things projected into my mind from the other passenger.

“I’m so glad you’re here. I love you so much and I can’t wait to meet you.”

I said the words back. And my whole being was now made of love, just from those words.

“You’ll be so sweet at Christmastime. I’ll start making you special clothes right now.”

I didn’t know what Christmastime or clothes were, but I could sense the joy bursting from each word, and it filled me to overflowing with joy too.

Now I knew joy and love and peace. What an incredible life. I never could have invented such things, let alone my own existence. This thought filled me with something new, which I now know was gratitude, and I am still filled with it today. It may seem strange that I could be filled with four different things at once, but at this point in my life, I was 100% peace, 100% love, 100% joy, and 100% gratitude.

As time passed, and the heart continued to speak, I was filled with other new things like kindness, faithfulness, and gentleness.

One day, a new voice spoke. He spoke right into my mind. He said, “it’s time to come home now.” 

I said, “what do you mean? This is my home. Please don’t make me leave! I love my carriage. I will miss it so much!”

Even though I was reluctant. I did trust this voice. I was given the understanding that He knew what time was. In fact, He controlled it. He knew that it was time for me to leave this world. That was not the hard part for me. I had just come from nothing, which seemed kind of like traveling from a different world, so the actual travel did not scare me. The thing causing my reluctance was the love and faithfulness I felt for my carriage. I knew that I would be leaving it behind, and its lovely heart, which had taught me everything about how wonderful life is. So every part of my being screamed the wrongness of this.

He said, “you know that if you trust me, life will still be wonderful, for you and for her. You know that even though your carriage taught you how wonderful life is, I am the one that gave it to you. And you know that since your carriage knows these things too, you will get to be with her again one day.”

He put His two hands together, side by side, and held them out in front of me, like a warm and inviting platform. I knew that it was time for me to step into this new carriage.

As I began to move, the lovely passenger heart cried out, “No! Not yet! I haven’t taught beauty yet!”

He said to the heart, “alright, you are still the carriage of the soul for a little while yet. I love you, and I know this is all very painful. I will give you the gift of beauty like you have never seen.”

- - -

And with those words I could see. I could see out into a room. There were two women looking at me. One said to the other, “I’m not seeing a heartbeat this time. I’m so very sorry. I will go and get the doctor.” The other began to cry, as she was gently handed a box of tissues. It was my carriage. Although, now that I could see her, I saw the face that had reflected in my mind every time I heard the passenger heart speaking. This was not just my carriage. This was my mother.

I came through the screen, out into the room. My mother couldn’t seem to see me. I tried to press through her chest, back to her heart. I needed to be near her heart. But the other voice said, “just stay close, and watch. I want you to see something.”

The next several hours were a blur. My mother moved around from one room to another and spoke to many women, who seemed to have known her for a long time. I watched all of the different women holding back so many tears and speaking in a sort of code about me. At first I wondered why they did not cry and why they did not speak more clearly about what was happening, but then I could see that they were being kind. They did not wish to make my mother more sad than she was. They were sad too, but they held in their tears and words as, what they believed to be, a kindness to my mother, and I was grateful to see her surrounded by these women who cared so deeply for her.

Then she was in a small room with a new woman. They had only just met a week earlier. This woman did not seem to have control over the movement of the right side of her face.

She said, “I’m so sorry about your baby.” And as she did, we watched her hold a tear just inside her left eye, while another one drew a perfect line down her right cheek. She did not brush it away. I believe she did not know it was there.

I looked to my mother’s eyes as they followed this tear. And as she watched it, I saw her soul... This part is hard to explain because it doesn’t really translate properly. But I suppose I could say that I saw her soul begin to dance to this new song of beauty. Her mind was torn between such grief and such wonder, that the only thing her soul could do, was to dance. Just for a moment.

My mother is an artist. It is her job to observe, capture, and to make beauty on a daily basis. But she had never seen beauty like this. She was struck by this newness of life on a day when the actual word “life” had suddenly become a dark inverted pulse in her mind.

My mother’s soul completed its dance. And then she looked right at me and said, “this is what beauty is, my child; the full and unbridled release of care from one person to another.”

- - -

That other voice said, “it’s time now.”

“No!” I protested, “let me stay for just a little longer!”

“Alright,” He replied, “you may see one more thing. But then it will be time to go.”

- - -

It was the night of the same day. Now I was looking into a dark room. There was a nightlight, so I could make out three people in the room. One was my mother. The other two were small girls. They were all asleep.

The smallest girl woke up and began to cry. My mother woke up to comfort her. The small girl said that she wanted my mother to carry her to the bathroom because she was cold and it was dark.

Here is another part of this story that will not translate well. There are things that happen around the mind and the soul. Things that I can now see with my eyes from this world, but things that cannot be seen in the first world. At least, not unless you pay very very close attention. So I will do my best to describe what I saw.

As soon as the little girl said the word “carry” there was a burst of six bright orange bubbles that appeared glowing atop my mother’s head. I squinted at them. They each contained many layers filled with gratitude for this moment, and the word “carry” was multiplying and swirling inside of each one. One of the bubbles was cycling and recycling the memory of a phone call my mother had once received. The voice on the other line had said, “I’m so sorry but it sounds like you have most likely had a miscarriage, but still go to your appointment on Monday and you can find out for certain when they do the ultrasound.” As I looked deeper into that bubble, I could see that this little girl was that miscarriage. That Monday ultrasound had shown a heart beating. The same heart that was still beating in this little girl.

Another bubble swirled with the memory of a room where a doctor had said to my mother, “it looks like the baby has implanted in a bad spot, and it will most likely lead to an ectopic pregnancy. If it keeps moving in this direction, towards the fallopian tube, we will need to remove the baby, or it will kill you.” As I looked deeper into this bubble, I could see that the other girl was this almost-ectopic-pregnancy. A week after that doctor’s words, to the surprise of the entire high-risk-pregnancy ward staff, this little sleeping girl had miraculously jumped to a different spot, far away from said fallopian tube.

I was now given the knowledge that these bubbles appeared here often, but usually they were just one layer. They didn’t usually show the depths and memories. Usually when my mother was awakened in the night to carry this little girl to the bathroom, the bubbles were a dark brown, and they were filled with only frustration or bitterness.

Now in these bubbles, I could see my mother becoming aware that the frustration and bitterness were not present this evening. As this awareness increased, eight new bubbles appeared. These were blue. As I looked into each of them, I saw her face looking back at me as she just said the words, “thank you” with one straight tear line down her right cheek.

She picked up the small child. As she did, the arthritis in her lower back spiked streaks of pain through her sides. And as the pain streaked, streams of blue bubbles ran along the pain and joined the others, all filled with only thankfulness and gratitude.

The small girl kicked my mother’s stomach as she got situated. As she did, her foot hit the infected insertion point where my mother had plugged her insulin pump into her skin the day before. I saw my mother’s eye flinch with pain, and in that flinch, twenty-five more blue bubbles streamed out of her eye. She was so thankful for the pain. She clearly loved this little girl as much as she loved me. And she clearly loved carrying her as much as she loved carrying me.

I was glad to see that my short story in that world had not ruined my mother. In fact, it had only expanded her ability to love.

- - -

I said to the voice, “okay I will come with you now, but please, can you do something for me? I tried to tell her once, but I don’t know if she heard me. Can you please tell my mother that I love her so much, I can’t wait to see her again, and I’m so thankful she carried me?”

And He did. And He does. If you listen to the silence. You can hear Him telling you. He’ll tell you anytime you need to hear it. And if you listen closely, every single time, He adds that He loves you and He is thankful too.

- - -

Now that I know so much more than I used to, I can see that people, who stay in that world much longer than I did, tend to use the word “miscarriage” when they describe a life like mine. But from my perspective, it was only ever the most loving carriage. There was nothing “amiss” about it. Mine was possibly the most beautiful life to have ever lived in that world. The sadness I felt has since faded from the joy in my faith that one day my carriage will be here too. She will join me and make special clothes at Christmastime for me with unbridled care. And they will shine with the beauty of the sun, because of the love that will charge through them. And we will live forever.

I will live forever because of my carriage.

And because of The One who created her... and me.

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