Choosing to SEE

by Mary Beth Chapman

  “SEE”

  Words and music by Steven Curtis Chapman

  Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

  1 Corinthians 13:12

  There were many, many people whispering and milling around in the narthex . . . and many more who had found their way into the sanctuary to pray.

  I felt like a ghost, watching a moment that I didn’t belong in, and yet somehow I was one of the main characters. I floated from person to person.

  “I’m so sorry!” some would say. Others would just give me a giant hug. Still others knelt on the floor weeping and praying. I felt deep gratitude that so many people had come to offer their support and love, to be sad and broken with us. I didn’t know if Steven and I were supposed to be taking care of them or if we should just sit and let them come to us.

  At some point adrenaline kicked in. I went into the sanctuary and was able to thank people for coming. I vaguely remember seeing friends staring at me, stunned, as if they couldn’t conceive what we were going through. It scared me. I realized that we were at the very beginning of what was going to be a long, long journey.

  Finally, I stood up in the front of the sanctuary and said, “It’s all true! It’s all true! The gospel is true. If we believe anything about our faith, we have to believe that we know where Maria is right now and that God didn’t make a mistake. He didn’t turn His head, He was in complete control. Maria’s days here were numbered. We don’t like it, but He will give us the strength and the hope to walk this journey.”

  Did I really believe that in this moment? Or was I on autopilot and the right “Christianese” terms just popped out of my mouth?

  Meanwhile, Steven was dealing with the authorities and their questions for Will. Since the police didn’t get their statement earlier at our house, they wanted to talk with him outside at the church, where it was a bit more quiet.

  The good news is that the officer was not the same person who had tried to stop Steven in our driveway. This police officer was kind with Will, understood his anguish, asked him if they could pray together, and then gently asked him to tell what had happened and draw it out on graph paper.

  My friend Karen became the mother hen for all of us. She could see our energy fading as we tried to encourage everyone who had come out to encourage us. She and her husband Reggie pulled us out of the crowd and drove us to their home.

  Caleb, Julia, Emily, Tanner, Will, Ruthy, Melissa, Danny, Geoff and Jan, Karen’s son Dave, who is a great friend of Will’s, and Brandon, another friend, all headed out to the Andersons’ as well. We just huddled together in the living room, some on chairs and sofas, some on the floor, no one really saying anything. Eventually I may have dozed a little from time to time, and when I did I would have these thoughts, or mini-dreams, that the whole thing was just a bad, bad nightmare.

  But it wasn’t.

  The next morning I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t even take a shower. We just sort of got ourselves together and went to the funeral home and cemetery where little Erin Mullican was buried . . . it seemed like a good spot for Maria’s shell.

  We had a million details to handle, and our friends were there to help us think. It was unbelievable, in the space of one day, to go from planning a wedding and a graduation to planning a funeral for our five-year-old.

  The funeral director was a gentle man. He led us through the maze of decisions we needed to make. Somehow, together, we created an obituary and made plans for the private family ceremony that would be held at the funeral home.

  “We don’t have as many children’s deaths,” the funeral director explained, “so we only have two caskets here to choose from. Or of course we have catalogs if you would like to order something. It can be here by tomorrow.”

  Steven and I didn’t feel the need to look at casket catalogs. We walked down a hallway that seemed about five thousand feet long. The man opened a door and there were two little caskets, one white, the other gray.

  I started backing up, just as I did in the hospital when they told me Maria was gone. I fell to my knees. “I don’t care!” I wept. “The white is fine. Whichever is more girly!”

  I needed to breathe. I needed to get out of that room. Caskets that small should not exist.

  It was like a bad movie with no end.

  We decided to bury her in the dress she would have worn as a flower girl in Emily’s wedding. It was traditional Chinese silk covered in embroidered butterflies . . . beautiful, perfect.

  “She needs lots of roses,” I told the director when he asked about flower arrangements. “I can’t stand carnations; they smell like the flower of death. I don’t like baby’s breath, and please, no yellow!”

  Even in my grief, I was pretty particular.

  Then we went to the cemetery, where the kind funeral director took us around in a golf cart so we could look at burial plots. Surreal.

  We got out of the cart at a plot with a little tree beside it. My friend Terri Coley bent down in the grass. “Look!” she said. “There’s a lady bug!” She carefully picked up the little spotted creature.

  Maria loved lady bugs. “This is fine,” I said. The funeral director asked if we wanted to think about plots for ourselves.

  “Why not?” I said. “We’ll take three plots, and Steven and I will be buried here beside her.”

  I turned and walked away. Done.

  Later our friends took us – except Shaoey and Stevey Joy – back to our house for the first time since the accident. It was more difficult than I can describe to pull into the driveway. None of us wanted to go in the back door, which was our normal routine. The memories of the accident were too fresh in our minds.

  We parked in the front spots that visitors use and went in our little-used front door. Quietly. Pausing every few steps.

  I needed God to show up, because I thought I could never live in that house again. I went upstairs, my legs feeling like thousand-pound weights were attached to them. I walked into Stevey Joy’s room – which up till yesterday she had shared with Maria. I fell down on the floor and started sobbing. I grabbed some clothes for Stevey Joy. Then I thought carefully and selected the things of Maria’s that we would display at her memorial service.

  I climbed up into her bunk bed, laid my head on her pillow, and took in deep breaths of my little snuggle bunny who had loved her bed. I lay there and sobbed and sobbed, never wanting to leave.

  But I somehow made myself get up. I went to Shaoey’s room to get clothes for her.

  Then I rifled through my own closet, pulled out random clothes, and threw them all in a bag.

  We walked into the family room and made a big circle. The house was so still. We prayed. We asked that God would honor our pain and surprise us with joy that could only come from Him.

  Steven and Caleb had been praying like crazy since the night before, something like, “God, we know you’re in this, but we’re so confused and hurt. You’ve got to show us something tangible so we can know Maria’s with You! Please, we need to see you in this, please let us see!”

  Steven was slowly making the rounds of the house, retracing some of Maria’s steps from the day of the accident. He walked into our dining room. Next to the bay window Stevey Joy and Maria had two little art tables where they had spent tons of happy hours creating things. They loved coloring and gluing and taping and glittering just about anything they could get their sticky little fingers on.

  Steven looked down at Maria’s table. There was a piece of notebook paper there. Maria had drawn a six-petaled flower with a green stem and two leaves. Only one of the petals was colored in. Blue. Maria’s favorite color. The center of the flower was orange.

  Steven saw something bleeding through from the other side of the paper. He turned it over. Maria had colored an orange butterfly, and written a word she’d never, ever put down on paper before.

  Maria could write her name and little thing
s such as “I love you,” but she hadn’t started writing other words yet. Since Stevey Joy was a little older and a year ahead of Maria in preschool, she had a list of words to learn. Steven’s best guess is that Maria must have copied one of the words off the list.

  And the word she wrote was SEE.

  SEE.

  Staring at Maria’s artwork, Steven had tears spilling down his face. It was like Maria was speaking to him from heaven, from the very realm of eternity, saying “SEE? Can you SEE? Everything is going to be all right. I am here with Jesus. I am fine. Heaven is real, the gospel is true, you just have to SEE!”

  Several days later, when we were getting ready to leave Karen’s house, I drew Maria’s artwork on a white board there. As I drew the flower, I realized it had six petals. Like I had six children. And only one of the petals was colored in. Like only one of my children was safe at home in heaven with Jesus. And the petal that was safe was blue – Maria’s favorite color.

  Some people might see little things like this as coincidences, no big deal. But to us, these small signs were like a little trail of bread crumbs on a shadowed path, showing us the way to walk.

  I could only see a few feet in front of me. If I could see any farther than that, the journey ahead would be too scary. But He was showing me all that I needed, just a few steps at a time . . . giving me little glimmers of grace . . . if I would choose to SEE them.

  “Jesus Will Meet You There”

  Words and music by

  Steven Curtis Chapman

  When you think you’ve hit the bottom

  And the bottom gives way

  And you fall into a darkness

  No words can explain

  You don’t know how you’ll make it out alive

  Jesus will meet you there

  He knows the way to wherever you are

  He knows the way to the depths of your heart

  He knows the way ’cause He’s already been where you’re going

  Jesus will meet you there

  When you realize the dreams you’ve had

  For your child won’t come true

  Jesus will meet you there . . .

  25

  Jesus Will Meet You There

  Every act of evil extracts a tear from God, every plunge into anguish extracts a sob from God.

  Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

  We were physically and emotionally exhausted. The sad had settled into every part of us as we headed back across town to the Andersons’. We all had worries and concerns about Will. I had lost one child, and I just kept crying out to God, “Please don’t let me lose Will too!”

  Will had such a special connection with all three of his little sisters, and he had been Maria’s constant playmate. He called her “little dude” and would always take time out to play. He’d let her climb all over him. He’d swing her high in the air and tickle her until drool flowed freely from her mouth because she was laughing so hard.

  Now that his little chubby buddy was gone, Will was in a deep, dark place. Wearing Maria’s favorite pink blanket around his neck, he’d walk down to the Andersons’ dock and sit there for hours, or he’d stay in the basement and not come up.

  Someone was with him at all times. We felt like we were all fighting in a spiritual battle for Will . . . like the Enemy had come calling for him and we were praying him back from the edge of despair, in a conflict for his very soul.

  On Thursday night, Steven and I went downstairs to check on the younger crew. We found Tanner and Emily, Caleb and Julia, Ruthy, David, and Brandon all circled around Will. Will was weeping, clutching Maria’s blanket. The others were praying fervently over him, interceding on Will’s behalf and begging God to help Will, to heal him, to prevent the Accuser from whispering lies of guilt into Will’s heart.

  Then Emily and Tanner slipped away, and when they came back they had gotten a basin of water and some soft towels. While the rest of us surrounded Will, they knelt and washed his feet, praying that the Enemy would not get a foothold in his soul, praying that God would give Will peace and rest.

  Steven and I looked at each other with tears flowing down our cheeks: we could not believe the profound sadness and the deep beauty of that moment.

  Darkness fell on our second night without Maria, and just as the night before, the young people stayed close together in the basement family room on couches, blow-up mattresses, or the floor. Karen, concerned about my lack of sleep, made Steven and me go get in their daughter Ashley’s bed. She thought we might have a better chance of getting an uninterrupted night’s sleep in a real bed.

  This real bed was the same one in which Maria would sometimes spend the night with Karen. On her last visit, she had absolutely loved a big stuffed yellow flower that Karen had for her to play with. It had a bright butterfly on it, and Karen had wrapped it around the bedside lamp so it would be the first thing Maria would see when she woke up in the morning.

  Eventually, exhausted by grief, Steven fell asleep. But I was fitful and could not rest. I stared at the yellow flower that Maria had loved . . . and every time I closed my eyes I would see the accident, with all its trauma, in my mind. Or I would see sweet Maria’s face . . . I couldn’t believe she was gone, so quickly. I was in such pain and anguish . . . and I was scared beyond belief. I don’t know exactly what the fear was, but I felt very alone, and I was so worried about my children.

  Whenever I thought of Stevey Joy, she was the continual reminder that her almost-twin, her best friend and constant companion, was gone. They did everything together; they had even dressed alike. And in a split second, Stevey Joy was alone, her whole sense of security ripped away. She was so young, she couldn’t understand what was going on in her world and how much everything had changed. I was so old . . . and I couldn’t even understand it.

  Then there was Shaoey . . . so responsible for her age and carrying the terrible pictures in her head of having seen the whole accident, a burden no child should ever have to bear. She was so smart, so logical by nature . . . and she could not make any sense of this. She wanted to be with me all the time, and she was becoming more and more angry.

  And Will . . . so caring, so tenacious, so strong, so broken. Clinging, just barely, to what he knew to be true, that God was with him even in this. Such a hard concept for anyone to grasp, let alone a seventeen-year-old boy and Maria’s best buddy.

  I thought of Emily, trying to be the helpful firstborn child and clinging to Tanner with all her might . . . of Caleb, the prayer warrior, who kept a constant watch on Will. He was trying to be a strong man, and he leaned on Julia for encouragement.

  I felt completely numb and non-functioning, yet at the same time I was going through the motions and making the decisions that had to be made. But even in my pain I could see that my children’s pain was worse. More than anything, as a mom I wanted to fix all this for my kids. To make it all go away. To turn back the hands of time.

  And of course I couldn’t.

  Hours went by. I finally crept out of bed and tiptoed downstairs to Karen’s room.

  “Karen!” I whispered. She was dozing and so was Reggie. She woke up right away.

  “I can’t sleep!” I said. “Can you come and sleep with me?”

  My wonderful friend understood my loneliness and panic. She got out of bed, and we headed up the stairs to our bedroom. I crawled into the bed, squishing Steven over against the wall on his side. I was in the middle and then Karen got in next to me, clinging to the outer edge of the mattress.

  “Okay, Karen,” I said, “now you can tell everyone you slept with Steven Curtis Chapman!”

  We actually had a few seconds of giggles.

  Steven woke up. “What are you doing?” he asked groggily.

  “I can’t sleep, and you’re asleep,” I whispered. “So I need Karen here so she can recite Scripture to me and I can go to sleep!”

  My sleepy husband smiled, rolled over toward me, and fell back to sleep, totally understanding.


  26

  Sown in Tears

  I don’t even want to breathe right now All I want to do is close my eyes And I don’t want to open them again Till I’m standing on the other side I don’t even want to be right now I don’t want to think another thought And I don’t want to feel this pain I feel But right now pain is all I’ve got

  “I Will Trust You”

  Words and music by

  Steven Curtis Chapman

  Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

  Psalm 126:5

  We had a public visitation at our church on Friday afternoon. Thousands of people came. The support from our community, and the expressions of love and sadness that came from across the country and around the world, were unbelievable to us.

  As Steven and I greeted the people who were able to come to the church, a lot of them didn’t know what to say. The thing that helped us most was when people would just hug us and say, “There are no words.”

  Some people did their best to hold it together, but as soon as they made it through the long line and to us, they fell apart.

  Others would innocently try to connect our sorrow with some event in their own lives. They were simply trying to relate the best they could. But when people would say that they knew how we felt because they’d lost their dad or their mom or their grandmother, I felt numb. I know that grief is grief, and pain is pain . . . still, in the natural order of this life we do tend to lose our parents and grandparents first. Burying a five-year-old isn’t in the usual order of things.

  I remembered when I was a young teenager and my middle-aged aunt died. It was so sad to see my grandmother so upset. When I had walked into her house, she put her hands on my thirteen-year-old shoulders. “It’s not right for any mother to have to bury her child,” she had sobbed to me. It wasn’t right . . . and my grandmother’s child was forty-three years old.

  Now here I stood, greeting people while trying to reconcile the fact that my five-year-old daughter was lying in a casket not three feet from me. God, where were You? Where are You? my brain whirled. I don’t get it.