Daniel Stone

Upon a mother’s chest,

stones are laid—

one for every child.

Her youth,

her time,

quietly taken into them.

Sometimes small.

Sometimes grown heavy.

Light one moment,

crushing the next—

stones pressing on her heart.

They say a stone, shaped long enough,

becomes jade.

They say even diamonds

began as stones.

So she wrestled with them.

Held on.

Believed.

She lives on,

breathing

with the stones still there.

She cannot leave them.

Holding them

changes nothing.

Afraid they might roll away,

she learned to steady her breath—

to breathe

carefully.

Even breathing

became an act of caution.

I did not become jade.

But I longed

for my children to be.

I believed

if I held them long enough,

embraced them deeply enough,

it would happen.

Yet the stones are still cold.

After all these years,

they should be warm.

But they are not.

Like the stone cut without hands in Scripture,

not fixed in one place,

moving as it is sent,

I pray

they will be used that way.

Not resting in my hands,

but carried by

God’s sovereign work.

I pray

they may live

as stones set in motion by Him.

*these are my own paintings*