The Number Game
It's interesting how numbers can bring forth emotions. I mean, numbers are typically straight forward. Logical. The natural way of things usually include larger numbers throughout life. Your age gets larger, the amount of vehicles become larger, and usually the number of children become greater. Rarely do these numbers go backwards.
The importance of our numbers is evident. There is an entire book of the bible entitled 'Numbers'. Moses writes, in excruciating detail, the census of all twelve tribes of Israel, not once, but twice. The story is about the almost 40 years the Israelites wandered the desert waiting on the promise land. It's incredible to me that the Lord shows us an example of taking count of our numbers during difficult times. The people in the story took count of each person during the hardest time of their lives.
I imagine the mothers and fathers counting their children during that time. I can see in my minds eye, them kneeling to pray for provision each day, counting the pieces of manna, and standing in awe of the exact count. I think about the hardships those parents faced.
When looking at numbers, one tends to look at them in a linear path. We stand at one end of the number line and look forward to greater numbers. Our family started out as one. Then came together to form a family of two then quickly became a family of three, then, four then a bit later a family of five. I loved our number. It felt round and whole. Complete. I secretly wished our numbers would get even bigger. Never once did I expect our numbers to get smaller.
That's the thing about numbers, though, we have no control over them. We like to pretend we do. There's a whole study dedicated to numbers. To fake the control we even add letters to numbers and create laws and theories to make sense of things we don't understand. Emotions should never play a role when thinking about numbers. The law of numbers should be so final there is no room for emotions. Until the number law is broken, then emotions are fair game.
Numbers play huge roles in our new lives as bereaved parents. They bring happiness and sadness. Emotions are greatly tied to numbers. A topic that I once thought so little, absolutely rules my thoughts. I am constantly recounting items from three back to two. I am forever re-calculating space needed from five back down to four. One of my special numbers will always be missing from my count. Our missing number stares me in the face every second of every day.
Life broke the rules. Numbers used to be constant, reliable, predictable. There is no making sense of something changing that was never meant to change. I am left now learning to depend on the change. As I wonder in my desert, I count my daily provision, just as the people during the exodus. I learn my new, smaller number and find peace in the fact that we will one day become a family of five once again. We will, one day, exit the desert we call life and enter the promise land. Whole and complete. Our perfect family of five once again.