FEELING

Over the last few days my mind has been cluttered with half thoughts which has rendered a writing block.

Yesterday I got an email from a family member. In it she was talking about the tides of emotions we are feeling in our home, times five. Her prayer was that we could manage those tides and that they would be in sync. Her email put voice one of the thoughts cluttering my mind.

I feel like I am constantly putting out fires. You feel that way as a Mom anyway. I like it sometimes. Lately the emotional fires are tough to manage. We all have good days and bad days. Everybody does. Sometimes, when I am in a "good" place I don't want my vibe to be interrupted by the grief of someone else. I hang on by a thread some days. It's a delicate balance at best.

Yesterday was one of those days. I FINALLY started to feel. Each start to what should be a "normal" routine was interrupted by illness. Yesterday was the first day that it wasn't. I completed my first full weekend back to work. Allan has been getting up at the crack of dawn to get to work on time. I'm up late, he's up early. Thus, I'm up early too. The girls hear him up so they are now getting up an hour earlier than normal too. Leaving me with no time to be alone and little reserve. Ahhh, the good old days.

Allan's commute changed the week before Ava was born. So I would get up with him to make sure I could shower, feed Ava and get all other parties ready for the day. All perfect plans never work out so well. Someone would inevitably awaken to see Ava or Daddy. It seems we are back in that routine. But with a gaping hole.

I took the big bugs to school yesterday. As I was leaving with my little bug I felt like I was forgetting something, my arms were not heavy laden with kid paraphernalia. I looked around, saw Lain with me and realized I was missing a car seat. Usually if Lain came to drop off, that meant someone was not home with Ava that morning. Those reminders just plain flat out stink. But they are necessary to feel the loss.

I was feeling like I was on a good track by the time I got the bugs home. Emily was in her room crying for me. It sounded like a real need, not a typical frustrated girlie whine. She fell apart missing Ava. There on their beautifully clean floor was a picture of her feeding her sister. It took her by surprise. My heart sank. I hate that they have to deal with this. I know that it's God's plan and that the outcome will be Glorifyingly good (like the word I just made up?). But I can honestly say that my mother's heart hates the process for them.

I don't stop it. I let them all be where they need to be. They all have their own way and their own needs. They have to feel too. It's so HARD to FEEL.

It's important to do it. If I don't I'll never be able to feel other things. Other joys, sorrows. I don't want my life to be a series of muted experiences where I am afraid to FEEL. How can I experience the Love of my husband, my family and my Lord when I haven't tackled the underlying pain? It's impossible to feel free to enjoy when there is a weight so heavy that you are tethered to the bottom of a pit. That weight gets heavier an more insurmountable as time passes and the taboos creep in. I don't want a life like that for me, or for my precious bugs.

So we are exercising lessons in feeling. Boy does it suck. But I can do it and they can too. In the middle of the darkness and pain is a ray of light. Gods hand is there to guide us and be our life line.

At work I purposely went to the floor that Ava was on. Why should that be taboo? Why should I make something harder than it is? People don't go to hospitals because of the reminders they hold. I did the same thing. I couldn't even go to AI in my mind after Eric died. Why? It's just a place. He would have died if we were at the beach. So I intentionally broke those barriers and REMEMBERED. Yeah it was poignant. Fresh painful memories are. But if we lean on God and use His strength to find the courage to remember that which ties us to that pit, the poignancy lessens and the chain becomes looser.

Sometimes walking a dark walk requires blind faith and courage to revisit the shadows that tie us and keep us from moving through the tunnel to the light. It is amazingly difficult. There really aren't many words that can accurately describe those feelings. We all have them. We all will experience them as we go through our lives. Spoiler Alert: The only guarantee in our lives is that we will die. People we love will die. Some will die when we think it's socially acceptable. Some deaths will be shocking. Some tragic by societal definition. Yet somehow it's always a surprise and a shock. How could God do that to ME??? God does not "do it" to us. We just die. So I ask you, do you want to just die or do you want to live in Glory for ever? That part is your choice. I've made mine. Because of it I sit here and write, I take a break to do the "Hot Dog Dance" -Goofy style, I can FEEL the good the bad and the deep dark pain. I have a full life and vast hole in my heart simultaneously.