Here is another short excerpt from my book Never Ceasing: God’s Faithfulness in Grief

I start preparing for a trip to the hospital. I put our healthcare ministry card in my purse and also an extra set of keys to Hans’s car in case he has left for the hospital already and has his keys on him. I change my skirt, but I do not put on my winter boots because that would mean I really believe Hans is hurt badly enough to go to the hospital and I do not want to be an alarmist or overreact. But I want to be ready to go, just in case. So, there I sit in the green chair again, waiting for someone to walk back from the highway and tell me what is going on.

And then my eye falls on the December newsletter from Slavic Gospel Association, lying there on the end table, right next to our nativity scene with the figurines still set up: Joseph and Mary and her baby boy. On the cover of the newsletter, I read these words:

“Lord, if you want me to lay my son on the altar, I will.”

I go to our bedroom, quietly closing the door behind me. And by the bedside, this bed my husband and I built with our own hands, where Hans’s daddy read him stories, the bed underneath which our children made forts and where I now store Hans’s things, next to this bed I pray and calmly lay our son on the altar. I do not like doing it. I cannot say my heart is in it. But I do it. I am not a cheerful giver, but neither do I give him up grudgingly. I feel a sense of foreboding, but there is no struggle. I believe this is what I need to do. It is the only thing to do. The altar is the safest place for Hans to be.

From Never Ceasing: God’s Faithfulness in Grief by Kim Nolywaika