Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [5]
“Beauty Will Rise”
Words and music by Steven Curtis Chapman
In the bleak midwinter frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone
Christina Rossetti
The sky was a bright, springtime blue that day. We were planning a wedding and a graduation. We were happy.
It was May 21, 2008. It didn’t look like winter – yet.
We were the parents of six beautiful children, blessed beyond our dreams. Our twenty-three-year-old daughter, Emily, had become engaged four days earlier. Just the night before, we had bought her wedding dress. I had brought it home to show Emily’s three little sisters from China. Shaoey was eight, Stevey Joy was five, and Maria had just turned five a week earlier. They shrieked about the lacy white gown and all started talking at once about being flower girls at her wedding.
On this particular Wednesday afternoon, Emily was at work, and Steven and I had converted the dining room table into Wedding Central. We had phones, laptops, calendars, and notepads spread all over the table. Caleb, our eighteen-year-old, was to graduate high school in a few days; he was messing around with his guitar in our music room. Will, who was seventeen, had driven over to his school to try out for a play. The three little girls were running in and out of the house, playing together like a thousand other afternoons.
Maria ran up to me, breathless. “Mommy!” she said. “I can’t get Cinderella Barbie’s gloves on her! Can you do it for me?”
“Sure,” I said. Maria climbed up on my lap. She was sticky and sweet as usual. She sat for a second while I tried to scoot the tiny, elbow-length white gloves onto Cinderella Barbie’s rubbery little hands. It was hard; no wonder Maria hadn’t been able to do it.
Maria got impatient. There was fun to be had. She scooted off my lap and ran away giggling. As Steven and I continued to talk, I used my fingernails and tugged, eventually succeeding with the gloves.
“Hey, Maria!” I yelled. “I got Cinderella’s gloves on her!”
There was no answer, and I assumed that the girls had gone outside to their playground. They loved to climb on the monkey bars, swing, and pretend they were “the Chapman Sisters,” a famous musical group.
Steven took a call on his cell phone and walked out on our front porch to get better reception. He saw Will arriving home and watched as Will slowly turned his old Land Cruiser into the driveway, which winds past the house to the garage in back, near the playground. I was sitting at the table, writing a list.
Then everything changed forever.
I realized I was hearing odd sounds outside – not just the yelling of happy play but screams and commotion. I bolted into the kitchen to head outside just as Shaoey ran up the back steps and met me there.
“Mom!” she yelled. “Will’s hit Maria with the car!”
I flew outside. Will was near the garage, holding his little sister in his arms. There was a lot of blood, on both of them.
“Maria!” Will was crying. “Maria! Wake up!”
2
Not My Plan
Love of God is pure when joy and suffering
inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
Simone Weil
Obviously, I never planned to write this book.
No mom can come up with words to express the ripping pain of losing a child . . . and no words can do justice to the mysteries of God in the midst of tragedy.
When people ask how we are doing, the first thing I always say is, “I want Maria back. I want my son Will Franklin not to have this as a chapter in his story. I want my children to be healthy, my family secure. I don’t really care whose life has been touched or changed because of our loss!”
That is the heart of a mother who lost a daughter and is determined not to lose another child. I believe God can handle my heart, my questions, and my anger. It’s okay to want Maria back. It’s okay to be angry. The question is, what do I do with it all? What do I do with God? In the midst of such heartbreak, do I really believe that all things work together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose?
The answer to that question has come