He has my voice, too...

That Sunday was the first time I'd set foot inside a church in many months. I'd come with Grandma, and I had my baby daughter with me - at three months old, this was her first time to be in church. We got to the service a little late and they had already started the singing, so I reached gently for a songbook and held it before me as if it were the most sacred object on earth. I opened to the song - it was "On Zion's Glorious Summit," one we used to sing often long ago, and one I'd definitely sung sitting next to him - and I couldn't even make it through the first verse. I got so choked up, and tears started pouring down my cheeks... all I could see was his face and him there on the bench beside me, hearing his tenor and my soprano weaving in and out of each other and into the same tune... and then suddenly there was just this hole, this terrible emptiness as I blinked my eyes and saw that he wasn't there - I hurt so bad, and I just cried...

I looked over at my little one and saw her sweet face, her eyes dancing... She was my child, and she was at church with me - but her father was not the boy I had met there and found my way so close to God with only a few years before. It hadn't been that long ago!! And I cried... I couldn't sing anymore... he had my voice, as well as my heart. I couldn't sing another note without curling up inside from the pain of not having him there to sing with me - for probably ever again...