Surrender © 2012, Maria Elkins, All Rights Reserved, Used with Permission.
~For Amalya Nathaniel Conkel
And his parents, Bethany and Eric
We rejoiced when we heard you were coming,
Little One,
And we laughed as we each made the claim
That we’d hold you the most,
And we reveled in how great a blessing
God would make you to be.
Then we all settled into our waiting.
We knew the day when we’d finally meet you
Would surely arrive.
And we let minutes slip by into weeks…
But then came the pain.
For God knit you together
In your mother’s womb,
But He didn’t knit you for this world,
So we knew when you joined us
You wouldn’t stay long
Before God’s call brought you home.
We placed our grief and our hearts alongside you,
Little One,
And we laid them together with you
In our Father’s arms,
And we chose to embrace every moment
He let you remain.
Then we set about bringing you with us
To experience each joy in life
We could think to share,
And we made each a small celebration
Of our time here with you.
For God knit you together
In your mother’s womb,
But He didn’t knit you for this world,
So we knew when you joined us
You wouldn’t stay long
Before God’s call brought you home.
And when God knit you together
In your mother’s womb
Not a stitch of His work went awry,
But He followed a plan
That was higher than ours,
So we’ll love you all the way home.
We rejoice that our God sent you to us,
Little One,
And we marvel at all that He’s doing
Through your brief dash of life,
And we revel in how great a blessing
God has made you to be.
Notes:
Shortly into my sister’s first pregnancy, she and my brother-in-law found out that their baby had a developmental defect that would not allow him to survive long, if at all, after birth. This song was my tribute to them, their son, and they many ways in which sought to love both their child and God through these extremely difficult circumstances. The quilt at the top was one my mother made, also in honor of Amalya. If you would like to know more about their story, you can visit the quilt’s homepage on my mother’s website, or you can explore some of the ways my sister now seeks to support families suffering similar losses through her non-profit organization Purposeful Gift and her upcoming book, A Momma’s Heart.
(I can’t post this without adding my many thanks to those who helped in making the recording: to Susan Strong for a lovely job on the vocals, to Laura Leighninger for making an an amazing keyboard arrangement out of the tune I’d written, and to Mark Ash for his time and work on recording and sound editing. I played the violin line for the background.)