It’s nine in the morning and I haven’t slept yet. I can’t seem to sleep for anything lately. I know what the reason is. It’s that even though I’m trying not to pay attention, even though I put it out of my head, somehow my body is recognizing that this . . . is coming up on a year since it happened.

My body is making me think about my mother.

I look around me and see all these nice, kind people who are certainly as entitled as anyone would be to their families and suddenly it all seems so grossly unfair. It feels grossly unfair that some people get to have grandchildren. It feels grossly unfair that some people get to have parents. It feels grossly unfair that my daughter will never get to know my mother. It all just seems so terribly unfair.

I know it isn’t. The Lord is sovereign. I know that. And part of me can look at this and be pleased that she isn’t suffering anymore, not only in her illness but with any of the discomforts of just being human. She’s never tired anymore, or achy, she’s never hungry or cold-that makes me grateful. But sometimes I feel awful and rebellious and broken wondering why she had to be sick at all, and for it to be then, and to have to die that way. I know there’s purpose in it. I take comfort in that. To trust the Lord in one thing requires trusting Him in all things and I do, really. I just have these moments sometimes.I am having quite a few lately.

I keep thinking that these rushing feelings of loss will dissipate. And they have in some ways-in frequency if not in form. Sometimes I feel so sorry for myself it’s pathetic. And the Lord is patient in that, which is so gracious. He has yet to give me the supernatural talking to that Job got, although reading through it I see that it still applies.

I feel like a cavern. I feel like empty space. My heart aches.

And so I did something foolish. I reached out to someone in an inappropriate way because I wanted to heal my heart too quickly and with the wrong medicine. In the blush of morning, I am blushing myself. The truth is a boy can’t fix this. The truth is I already knew that, though part of me still wants to be held.

It’s an awkward thing to admit, but there it is. The truth is also that I don’t know how to be interested in anyone anymore. These things, the adoption, the death of my mom, the loss of my friendship with Simon, they’ve all taken a toll on me and have apparently manifested in simply not being able to have my head turned by anyone. I’m disappointed about it. But at this moment, perhaps the cavern is too deep to be filled no matter who might try. Perhaps the Lord is telling me to let Him heal this first.

I am sighing with the breeze. The morning is growing stale. I will try my hand at sleep once more.

I’m supposed to meet Sarah and her parents and Natalie and Sean for dinner tonight, and I’m afraid. I don’t know what my problem is. I should be happy to see her-it’s been a while. And I am, I really am. But I’m also scared, nervous, anxious. This is all new ground for me. I don’t know how to do this. And she’s at that age where she’s getting very attached and it’s difficult for me to even think about being around her when she doesn’t even know me.

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I want to run away. I don’t want to be here anymore. I can imagine myself in places all over the world, sitting, accepting, some place that is quiet and strange to me. I can see myself breathing out my days with some sense of . . . peace? With some sense of rest.

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.

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If you happen to be unfamiliar with the term “to winge”, let me please explain. To winge is to whine excessively, to become so frustrated with one’s circumstances that one is paralysed from the top lip up and the bottom lip down. To winge is to make a thorough annoyance of oneself based on consistent and usually ridiculous complaints issuing forth from one’s mouth, preferably with an alternating, but always very high, pitch. To winge is to take a long hard look at the cruel world you live in, stick out your tongue, and call it a meanie face. To plant your feet firmly on the ground, cross your arms, and pout like a three year old.

It is this practice that I would like to demonstrate for you now.

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So today is Thanksgiving. Hoorah! Fall is past full bloom and winter is on its way in, with all it’s traffic problems and snow delays, with all its cancelled school. Winter is a great season. I mean, sure a lot of people get S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder-isn’t that cute?) because there’s less sunlight, and it’s colder than blazes, although it’s usually not cold enough to snow so instead there’s a lot of yucky grey rain/slush, and also it’s more expensive with Christmas (and in my case, several birthdays) and gigantic heating bills, and . . . Well, winter’s alright anyway. It could be worse. Probably.

So the reason I’m going on about winter is 1) winter makes me want to fall in love, and 2) although that’s true, it isn’t the reason. The real reason is that I’m procrastinating, and the reason I’m doing that is because I don’t want to go to Thanksgiving dinner.

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There are dark times. This is one of them.

This year I have lost both my daughter and my mother, four months apart to the day. The woman I came from and the someday-woman I bore are both gone from me, and that makes me wonder . . . where do I go now? What do I do with my life? How can I now make them proud? What would they expect from me? What do I expect from myself? And most importantly, what does God expect?

I could say this was the most devastating time of my life. But it isn’t. Of course, it’s painful. It . . . twists in me. But it has also been a time that I have seen most clearly the faithfulness and providence of God. As I was going through my mother’s papers, I found a letter I sent a few years ago to encourage her and in it I wrote how God knew what was happening and He had control of it. Reading it over now, I thought to myself, How could I have possibly known that then?

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