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.

I know the decision was right. I know she’s where she needs to be. But I miss her. It might sound crazy, because I only really had her for four days. But I loved her from the moment she was concieved and it’s difficult to think now how she’s so far away and she’ll never be mine again. Is that selfish? It probably is. But I know that with prayer, God will bring me through this. He has before. He is always faithful and good and providential. But still, this is how I feel. And part of me is tempted to skip the whole thing.

I won’t though. I won’t because I care for her and I want her to know that even though she won’t even remember this someday soon, that I was there. That she was important enough for pain. That she was adopted but never abandoned. That I saw her whenever I got the chance to. She is worth so much more than simple heartache. Every mother knows that.

But sometimes I think it’s the worst to be in this halfway. It’s probably better to either be all in or all out. I can’t move on and forget about her, and I can’t be over there three times a week either. So I’m stuck with seeing her every three or four months and every time being pleased and dismayed at how much she’s grown, proud and devastated for all the milestones she’s passed. It was the right thing to do but that doesn’t make it any easier.

I must remember:

She’s happy. That’s a blessing.

She’s healthy. And that is a blessing.

She has two stable, wonderful parents. That’s a blessing as well.

She has people who love her as if she were still their own that she doesn’t even know about. And that too is a blessing.

These are all good things. These are wonderful things. These are things that comfort me when I feel close to the edge of despair and regret. God has provided, for her and her family and myself. And Sarah is kind and has been nothing but generous with me. I just wish I didn’t feel so weak. I wish I was stronger. But in these moments, in these difficult times when I feel pushed to what I believe is past my capabilities, I learn to lean on God. And in leaning, find my strength.

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.

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

So here I am, just coming out of the wilderness in a lot of ways (or maybe still in it sometimes, I don’t know) and being led about by God (or at least trying as much I can to follow His leading) and having difficulty recognizing that everything I say doesn’t need to have a qualifier (though I really think it helps sometimes). And I’m looking around, right? I’m looking outward because I feel like I need some . . . help or brotherhood or some kind of human support and I’m writing, writing, writing, all these people that I haven’t communicated with in like a year or something because I felt like my soul was  on the rack and being stretched in ways that were breathlessly painful  and I wanted to listen and be still and maybe just lick my wounds a little. I’m writing and I’m saying I’m hurting and I want you to be there with me, I want to walk with you for a little while and put it down and just try to imitate normal life until life can start feeling normal again. I’m sending out a call and in it I’m telling these people that I was bonded with before about the fact that I miss my little girl and I’m aching because I will never have a mother again, not for the rest of my life, the whole fifty or so years that are left of my life, and I just wanted you to know that I loved you and I want to love you and I want to love someone that I can really have because I can’t have these two people that I really love and . . . ?

And???

Crickets. Tumbleweeds blow by. Nothing. Nothing is returned to me.

And I know I’m winge-ing right now because I’m lucky to have my sister and brother.  I’m lucky to have my Lord who walks with me through everything. I’m lucky to be alive and know that my mother is in a place of perfect peace and my daughter is warm and safe and beautiful. I know I’m lucky. I know I’m blessed. I just . . . wish . . . I wish I felt . . . I wish I was important to these people. I wish my struggles mattered. I wish that I was understood and forgiven and held up. And I guess that’s too much to ask for.

Doesn’t anybody care? And what does this teach me about the importance of caring?

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.

It’s not the Thanksgiving part that I’m not looking forward to. I love giving thanks, thank you very much. It’s the dinner part, with all my family around, and everyone knowing what has happened and all that goes along with it.

Some people would probably say that there’s even more reason to go this year than before, because you need the rest of your family when a portion of your family has been removed. But . . .  I just don’t want to have to deal with everyone talking about it, or not talking about it, or asking me “How are you doing? Are you doing alright?” with brows furrowed and arms crossed over their chest, shoulders hunched. I just don’t think I can feel in freedom with all those people.

The good news is that I’m also sick. So maybe I can still climb aboard the Excuse Caboose.

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?

The truth is that, although I had been through some difficulties, they were nothing like what was to come. Nothing like this. At the time, I was telling my mother to wait upon the Lord because He had said to do so in His Word. Now I have seen Him prove that He will sustain. That mourning lasts for a night but joy comes in the morning.

So I can’t count this as the worst year of my life, even though the humanity in me wants to. Because I recognize that if it weren’t for what has happened, I would not have known God as I am learning to know Him. I wouldn’t have seen firsthand the beauty and sweetness and goodness that He gives. I wouldn’t have known the deep wonder of sufficient grace. In this time of brokenness, I am reminded that He makes me whole, and I am enraptured, enamored, and unfathomably indebted.