She’d never felt so amazed about any other thing in the world. Enclosed in his warm embrace she could feel every beat of his heart as if it were her own.  Feel the heat emitting off his body coming from the blood that ran through his veins giving him life. That life, that very life that she’d thought extinguished by the cold touch of a cruel world. She couldn’t dare to meet his eye, afraid she’d see something in herself that she hadn’t seen since she began the downward spiral that had lead her here. She couldn’t bear to see that her glow had returned, that once again she was hopeful. She’d forbidden hope from her heart for so long. It was just too painful to hold and hold and hold only to find your grasp was on air. But this wasn’t the case. He was here, touchable, graspable, reachable and she wasn’t going to let him go.

She finally looked up into the eyes of the son that she’d never raised, that she’d never known. He had a scar lining his jaw that hadn’t been there when she’d last seen him. He had a dark look to his eyes that was evidence of all the evil he’d seen, that’d he’d experienced. She knew she didn’t hold the same son in her hands as she had all those years ago but she didn’t need to. She only needed to hold her son. In this moment she couldn’t have asked God for any other gift, for a single other thing. The lost had been found and returned and through all the pain, all the tears and despair he’d been walking the path all along that had brought him back where he belonged. Into his mother’s loving arms.