Yesterday morning was Asher's breaking point with the time change (I swear this is not a mommy post, so stick with me). Starting at five a.m., he would cry for a minute, sleep for fifteen, cry briefly, fall back asleep ... for another three hours, when he woke up happy and squealing. It's my least favorite part of being a mom - hearing the cry that says, "holding me will not help," and waiting while his little body sorts itself out. Picking him up would make me feel better, but it would wake him, disrupting his sleep even more. So there was nothing to be done but to wait.
However, unlike Asher I am not able to wake for one minute, sleep for ten, so I was up, and Brian was out of town. I sat in the living room with a cup of coffee and the early morning light. I thought about anger and about loss and about all of the things I have said and not said here recently. And then it was over.
I remembered that God loves me. There's no cosmic force messing with me. I've been looking at the past two years as a series of events that have happened to me, but that's a short-sighted and incomplete picture. There is something larger at work. I don't understand it, and I can't predict it, but I know it's true as well as I know my son's sleeping habits. I've been looking at pieces of a puzzle and expecting them to make sense, to stand up and give me the explanation I deserve. It won't ever happen. But that doesn't mean it's been random.
I take issue with the popular gospel that includes the word "destiny." The phrase "God's plan" is used to determine career paths, business decisions, what furniture to buy, what car to sell. I just don't know about that. I know that God has a plan for humanity, and God has a destiny for His children. But I'm just not sure that Early Intervention was my destiny, or that the Lord ordained I should drive a Civic until it returns to dust. But in my haste to separate myself from any hint of a prosperity gospel, I forget that our paths are directed, our steps are guided. That all things work together for God's glory and the good of those that love Him. I am so quick to say that not everything is ordained, that I begin to think nothing is ordained, and that's not true either. God did not cause the miscarriages, but he has allowed this experience to be a part of our family. I think Adrienne was onto something when she asked why God has brought their loss into their lives. I'm not ready to answer that question for my own life yet, but I think it's the right one to ask.
My friend Halle often says it is her goal to receive every experience, both good and bad, as a gift from God. To thank Him for it, and allow herself to be changed. She has more faith than I do. I can't thank God for this yet, but for the first time yesterday, I understood what she means. Thanks be to God.
4 comments:
There is just so much here. I wish I was also in your living room, having a cup of coffee, so we could talk about some of this stuff.
When I find myself in incredible pain...when losses have been tremendous and I can't find the sense in things, I try to think about how the loss can be transformed into something that might at some point in my life serve someone else or the world in a better way. It never happens right away, but when I think of "destiny" that is how I go about perceiving "the bigger picture." The loss itself is always horrifying. But the pain we feel and how it changes us isn't always simply awful. It can be a gift too. Later. Much later.
Loss and pain, I believe, are unavoidable parts of life, but it is how we take them and deal with them that marks us as who we are. And you are remarkable.
Amen Emily. Stephanie is remarkable!! And I agree as well with angela that pain can be a gift (much much later) and with emily in that we are marked by how we handle the unavoidable parts of life. if life was always good, there'd be no way to measure goodness - we know light by the absence of it. same with good. i think. :)
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