The Lovely Bones

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections – sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent – that happened after I was gone. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life” (Seabold, 2002, p. 320).

These lines from The Lovely Bones are a keen summation what I sometimes feel happening in my own life. Today, one and a half years after Rick died, I feel this tenuous structure that is forming. It’s weak and shaky most of the time – it’s uncertain, it’s fragile – but it’s forming none-the-less. The rebuilding of this structure is a complex activity.

Bones don’t always heal as they should. Without proper care, this new growth could take on depression, negativity, bitterness, rejection, or anger. Rather, the healing process somehow incorporates these attitudes into the new thing that forms. That is why tenderly caring for these lovely bones as they reform this new structure, this new life, is such an important undertaking.

Thank you for indulging me in this process of reshaping who I am in this world and who I am in Christ. Thank you for watching me, guiding me, and encouraging me along the way…for these are my lovely bones.

“Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit” (Job 10:10-12).