Reflections.

I really want this lump in my throat to be gone; this lump that seems stuck since May 29th of last year and that reminds me hourly of the craziness we've been through, and that there may be more crazy up ahead. I find that I have to talk myself through waves of worry and griping fears almost daily. It is as if I'm crouched and ready to fly back to the hospital with my sick baby, when my baby is happy and "well" at the moment. I'm braced and ready for the next bloodstream infection, fever, mouth sore, and the next ER trip but there's no way to know if/when that will come.

My thoughts are a jumbled mess these days and my emotions are a little out-of-whack too. Slowing down in treatment seems to give room for more processing and recognizing, in a sense, what we've been through as a family the past almost 10 months.

It isn't a bad thing to acknowledge and grieve, but it makes for a tired mama.

I find myself constantly wondering, "when will life get back to normal?" I crave normalcy like a drug. I want my babies well and safe, my home somewhat tidy and food in the fridge, and a date night on the horizon. Time with friends, a vacation planned, and dinner actually in the crockpot would just be a dream. All such good, good things --not ultimate things, but good things to desire for myself and my family. Instead life feels broken and dangerous, with so many unknowns around the next bend. Granted, it has always been that way, but now I feel as if I am living more in the midst of it instead of on the sidelines looking in.

“How is faith to endure, O God, when you allow all this scraping and tearing on us? 

You have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity's song --all without lifting a finger that we could see. You have allowed bonds of love beyond number to be painfully snapped. If you have not abandoned us, explain yourself.
 
We strain to hear. 

But instead of hearing an answer we catch sight of God himself scraped and torn. 

Through our tears we see the tears of God.” 
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

There is much that I am learning about faith, fears, God, and the reality of suffering. There's also heaps of grace for where I am.  I am slowly, slowly learning to lean more into that place of grace and to cast myself on the wounded Son who went before us. His life and death and resurrection is the only lens through which I have looked that gives meaning and hope to these trying days.

Come lift up your sorrows and offer your pain;

Come make a sacrifice of all of your shame;

There in your wilderness He's waiting for you

To worship Him with your wounds, for He's wounded too.

— Michael Card, Come Lift Up Your Sorrows