By the time I got to high school, my love for the stage had spread to theatre, as well. My junior year, our drama department put on The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. I was cast as Imogene Herdman and, having grown up an only child, had fun playing a bossy big sister in a rowdy group of siblings.

Later that spring, one of the boys in our production who played along side me as a Herdman brother, passed away in a tragic car accident not far from our school. He was a year younger than I.

Although we weren’t close friends, the drama club at our school that had a smaller student body than most, felt like family, and his death was crushing for all of us. I remember feeling a weighty sorrow for his family; his siblings, his father, and especially his mother…maybe because my one and only sibling was two-years-old at the time and I have always felt a motherly love over her, being almost fourteen years apart.

But each year as I hang this ornament gifted to those of us in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by our theatre teacher, I think of Tyler and say a little prayer for his mother and the empty space in her arms she much feel this time of year.

If you are a mother missing a child this season, I’m praying for you today, too. Praise the Lord for a Savior born of a virgin that came to dry our tears and promise us a hope of forever with our loved ones someday in Heaven.

With love, Mal