Kristin Fields Chadwick

A heaviness filled this air yesterday as we turned on the Pro Football game. The news of Kobe Bryant and daughter’s death being told over and over again. My 38 year old body feeling the slam of the news. I look to my husband who looked up to this man, and he is somber. We both murmur over the thought of losing a father and your 13 year old. I do not have words, but I feel a glimpse of the utter sadness. My boys watch and talk about it as they come in and out of playing outside. Sawyer, my youngest, soaks it in. I think his sensitive nine year old mind and heart don’t know how to even conceive what has happened but it does. He doesn’t sleep well. Most of the night he lies with me in my bed. And then this morning he drags his feet to leave for school. It was now time to leave for school with his brothers and he starts to cry. Tears flowing down his sweet face and clinging to me as I hold and carry him to the car. My old way of parenting would have said, “Buddy- it’s just a case of the Monday’s. You have to go now.” Instead, Holy Spirit prompts me to give him an option to come back inside and just take a deep breath and go to school in 15 minutes. He shakes his head yes and walks with me inside to the couch and we sit. He cries. I hold him. After ten minutes, he takes a deep breath and says he is ready now.

If only I were to take my queue from my nine year old…it’s okay to feel the despair. The pain. It’s so hard to process. Even if we didn’t know them or any of the families on the helicopter, it is still so very sad. I will honor my nine year old today and sit in the emotion of grief today. It hurts when we lose someone we know or are close to. It is painful. I grieve for the losses of many today. I am so sorry. I pray for tears and for living into grief well for those close to the families who have lost more than imaginable.