Moving along, here’s the scoop. So I’ve dropped my Comparative Government class, and before you say anything, check yo’self ‘cuz I went over it with Arend and he already said it was okay. So THERE. :::sticks tongue out like a three year old::::

It isn’t as if I don’t want to learn this stuff. I do! That’s why I dropped it. I got my book late, I have a three week class term, and I am nowhere near prepared to take my midterm on Thursday. The real trouble is that I found out that taking the same class in the autumn quarter, which I was so totally prepared to do, is impossible. Apparently it’s “full” or some such nonsense. I suppose I’ll just have to cross my fingers that it’s offered in winter quarter and pounce on it as soon as it perks its unsuspecting little head up over the long grasses on the Savanna.

Sigh. I wanna go to Africa.

And that’s where all this is going. I thought I was doing all this schooling because 1) I think my mother would have liked it and I’m able to afford it because of her, and 2) because afterwards I wanted to go to Bible school and then whisk myself off on an African evangelism adventure! But now I can’t afford to go to Bible school afterwards, and I wonder suddenly, What am I aiming for?

This is the constant confusion of People My Age. I’m not too worried about it. Not too worried about the wondering, that is. It’s typical, it’s appropriate. But getting to the answer, ahhh, yes, that is something.

No, really, I’m as shocked as you are.

And, in the spirit of being upfront about things that I don’t want to admit, I should say that I’ve also been missing Simon. I broke down and asked him to call me. Argh. Why do I have to be me?

I just don’t understand it. I don’t know what happened. And I keep wondering, have I handled it all wrong? Have I only made it worse? I hate that Simon can be even more stubborn than I am. I used to put the townsfolk to shame but I’ve gone soft in my old age. Determination? Yes. Discipline? Of course. But stubbornness for it’s own sake? Useless.  Life is bone crushing enough without holding on to any sort of pride or anger or bitterness or even hurt. Every day holds enough difficulty and need for the intervention of God without adding to it the hardheartedness of yesterday. Matthew said it nicely, Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

But maybe that’s not what this is about. Maybe stubbornness has nothing to do with it. Maybe Simon’s just gotten wise. Maybe he’s just thinking that he trusted me when he shouldn’t have and now he won’t trust me when he finally should. I was too good at lying, being a hypocrite. I thought I could sneak by but now it’s time to pay the toll.

I just can’t believe that this is happening, somehow. Yes, I’m a Slow Learner.  I just honestly didn’t know he would do this. I just . . . I honestly thought  . . . I just can’t believe he would let me go through all of this by myself. I can’t believe he would recognize the anguished depths of being so completely left, and then up and leave too.

I can’t sleep at night. I either refuse to go to bed because of some free floating anxiety or I wake up again and again and can’t fall back asleep. Grief is choking me. It creeps up on me while I lay in the dark with my eyes closed and suddenly I hear my mind say, “My mother is dead.” It’s as if I just realized it. I weep. My mother is dead.

There are framed photographs of my daughter in my room, taken during the four days that she was mine. She’s so pristine, so frozen. She seems like a dream, like a memory of something I made up. She’ll be eight months old in a couple of weeks. After that, years will pile up, time will pass, and one day she’ll be a child, and then an adolescent, a young woman. And I may see her from time to time, we may even become friends if God is merciful in his will. But what of all the days in between? What of all the discoveries and abilities and a thousand mental photographs of her that I will never carry with me? The way she will watch television on her stomach on the floor, feet waving lazily in the air? The exact angle of her chin when she refuses to clean her room? Her very favorite dress she will remember from her childhood?

I keep thinking that things are going to turn out differently than they do. I plan, and my plans come to nothing. And, this is the reason that my relationship with Simon is such an ordeal. He’s someone I can do something about. Or so I thought. And in him is wrapped my other losses. I thought he might be my husband, and so, and as such, he and I could have had more children. More little girls whose ins and outs I might have been able to know and carry with me. My mother wrote him an email before she died, asking him to come to visit me for my birthday. Even then to be thinking of me . . . and of course he didn’t.

It’s only two in the morning. It’s really not that late. I don’t want to go to sleep. My heart is aching. I don’t know what to do now. For more than just tonight, I just don’t know what to do.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.