CDPunt(igam) Writes

When she was a young girl, she had a dream. That dream was beautiful, and she shared it with Jesus. She’d wanted to be a mother. She talked to God about it all the time, shared her love of children with everyone she met. Everyone agreed that she’d be a great mother. She held on tight to that dream. The years went by and she found that the dream was more and more difficult to hold on to. She found her husband late in her journey. When they started trying to have babies, she only ever found a single line on the tests. And then the doctor told her it wasn’t possible. Things inside her just wouldn’t. The dream felt like a burden, a weight that held her down. It hurt to live life. She turned to Jesus again. Asking him why he hadn’t made it happen. Why he’d let her have this dream just to have it taken away when it was finally a real possibility? He was with her when she wept, crying hot tears alongside her in her pain. He cried out to her heart, and a stone was rolled away. That desire for motherhood opened up in a new way. It blossomed and grew. The desire that she’d lived with all those years felt narrow and tight. But this new idea was open and full of possibility. She gave herself permission to breathe it in and let it fill her in her sorrow. Possibility blossomed where disappointment had been sewn.

This story is based on John 11: 32-44

When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

NIV: New International Version