The night before last I had a dream.
I was playing soccer with Bri and the kids. This wasn’t some backyard soccer game; it was a real game on real turf against real pros. We were all in professional uniforms, and we knew what we were doing. However, we couldn’t keep up with the other team. After all, Bella against David Beckham? Unless she can distract him with her cuteness, she’s getting nowhere.
Anyway, we played and we tried and we fell and we were bloodied and bruised. All of us.
“Joys are always on the way to us.
They are always traveling to us through the darkness of the night.
There is never a night when they are not coming.”
(~Amy Carmichael)
Joys are coming.
I am clinging to this these days. My heart is spinning faster than my head, and it seems at every doctor’s appointment my head is spinning more and more. I’ve had appointments for genetic testing, eye ulcers, follow-ups, blood work, physical therapy, CAT scans and now two more tests loom, and I’m tired.
The sticky notes are all different colors–royal blue, goldenrod, bright orange–but they all say the same thing.
I love you, Mom, so so so so so so much.
They appear on my pillow, my mirror, my computer, and sometimes he just walks right up to me and sticks one on my shirt.
My Bear.
His gentle and peaceful ways touch my soul, and especially when my life and heart feel so chaotic these days, his tenderness is a much needed balm. He has no idea how he reaches me, and every time I see those dimples, my heart just about explodes.
“One of the most important lessons I have learned over the past few years is how important it is to have time and space for being with what’s real in my life — to celebrate the joys, grieve the losses, shed my tears, sit with the questions, feel my anger, attend to my loneliness.”
Ruth Haley Barton, Sacred Rhythms
There is so much I want to say, so many joys to express, so much grief to share, so many tears to weep, so many questions to ask, and occasionally there is anger in it all, and often there is this burning loneliness knowing I am the only one who fully bears and understands all I walk through. I am learning to accept it all, to sit with it all, to be real with it all…
Mommy? You wear jeans a lot, don’t you?
I do, honey bunches of redheadedness, Why?
Well. Perhaps you should consider wearing more skirts and different pants, you know, so you look nicer.
She’s five, y’all. What will she say when she’s fifteen?