One Saturday morning my grandson went to stay with friends until his mother returned from what was supposed to be a quick trip to the emergency room. Tara was in the latter stages of pregnancy and something wasn't right. She never came home, and neither did he. When Spencer left that morning he left behind the life he knew, all of his belongings and a bob-tailed cat named Cleo.
For a year after Tara died, I grieved and prayed for his safety. I ached for his return to my embrace. God worked a miracle. Spencer came to live with us, and at last I had hope for healing.
We painted a bedroom and declared it his. We filled the space with books and games, trying to replace the ones that were lost. I hung his mother’s cross from the corner of his bulletin board to remind him of her love and her faith. No matter what I did, Spencer's heart wasn't with us.
He spent hours in his room playing his mother's guitar. He never spoke of what had transpired until one day he asked, "What happened to Cleo?" It broke my heart to not know the answer, but I did know what needed to be done.
The kitten marched into our lives with a swagger and frisky confidence. He was a tiny, tuft of terrifying-in-his-own-mind orange fur. His scrawny body and over-sized head gave no hint of the twenty-pound beauty he would become. In his self-assured kitten heart, he was already there.
For a year after Tara died, I grieved and prayed for his safety. I ached for his return to my embrace. God worked a miracle. Spencer came to live with us, and at last I had hope for healing.
We painted a bedroom and declared it his. We filled the space with books and games, trying to replace the ones that were lost. I hung his mother’s cross from the corner of his bulletin board to remind him of her love and her faith. No matter what I did, Spencer's heart wasn't with us.
He spent hours in his room playing his mother's guitar. He never spoke of what had transpired until one day he asked, "What happened to Cleo?" It broke my heart to not know the answer, but I did know what needed to be done.
The kitten marched into our lives with a swagger and frisky confidence. He was a tiny, tuft of terrifying-in-his-own-mind orange fur. His scrawny body and over-sized head gave no hint of the twenty-pound beauty he would become. In his self-assured kitten heart, he was already there.
All bluff and fluff, he pounced on fuzzy balls that rolled across the floor. He stalked a stuffed mouse that Spencer pulled from a string. He leapt from a frozen crouch to a death-defying three feet in the air to capture imaginary birds on the end of plastic sticks. His tenacity and hunting skills would have brought pride to a mother lion’s heart. Affectionately named Mack O’Hara Cox, a nod to our family’s Irish roots, the Maine Coon kitten brought new life to the house.
And Spencer came home.
And Spencer came home.
Mack--the healing cat--came into our lives and replaced tears with laughter and brought with him a love big enough to fill the hole in a boy’s broken heart.
Reflections:
Healing takes many forms--from physical cure to emotional recovery. When have I known healing? How did it begin?
Have I found healing in unexpected places? Where were they?
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