cancer missed this birthday

“Amara are you crying?”

“No, you are not”

I shifted under the Comforter in bed. Sniffling.

“What is it?”

“Why are you crying now when you are almost drifting off to sleep?

I sat upright as the strains of a song filtered into my room from the hallway.

‘God You’re So Good’ A Duet by Passion, Kristian Stanfil & Melodie Malone.

That song always gets me. However this night was different. I have been a mesh of emotions for the last week. And it culminated today when I was writing that letter to him.

You see, tomorrow is my son’s birthday. The threshold of his teen years. A new phase of life entirely. This morning before he went to school, I did what mothers across generations have always done. Laid hands on him and prayed out the old year. Reminding God of how grateful I am. And thanking him for the helpers, teachers and guides he has positioned on this boy’s path for this new season of his life.

Then in the afternoon, I wrote him a letter. It is not even that I will give him the letter. I left it inside a journal he barely uses. And left a caveat that I do not know when he would find or read it.

Writing that letter though, unlocked a surge of positive emotions. As I regaled him with stories from way back, a fresh realisation of how blessed we have been floated all around me.

This night again, I paid him a visit where we played and laughed on his bed.

Then laying in bed, I hear the words of this song weave through the air. And I can relate to every lyric.

His Goodness is why I am here, alive for another birthday. If God had dropped the ball, who knows whose house my son would be in this night? Maybe I would have been like that woman of whom my mother always recounted her story. The one people find her ghost wandering around. Yet each time it was that one question she asked anyone – “did you see my children? have they eaten?”

Both of us have lived the experience of God’s faithfulness in all shades. From the day I found out I was pregnant, I have not lacked for anything. God has set up a community around us so much so that even in a strange land, dealing with cancer, he remains our portion in this land of the Living.