Of Dreams and Other Things...

I had a dream.  A beautiful dream.  A terrible dream.  I was dreaming that I was back in the hospital the day Andrew was born.  Everything happened exactly as it had, except when my blood pressure bottomed out and I could't breathe and all the bells and whistles started going off, they could not help me.  The medicine did not work.  I died and went to heaven and the first thing I saw was my beautiful, sweet boy, running to me with his arms stretched out.  I bent down and scooped him up, twirling him around as I've done so often.  He giggled and laughed, then wrapped his arms around my neck in that oh-so-familiar way and said, "Hello,  Mommy!"  What a beautiful twinkle was in his eyes!  Then, just like that, it was over.  I woke up.  Such cruelty.  Reality set in and I've not been able to stop crying since.

It's been 46 days.  Only 46 days.  Already 46 days.  It doesn't matter how you look at it, they've been torturous.  In some ways I feel my faith has been strengthened.  In some ways I feel like I'm a giant fraud, only feigning strong faith.  My faith is being pummeled by fear and doubt.  Will it be consumed? Will this brokenness and sorrow overtake me? Or is it just to become a part of who I am? As I've said before, life is now a conundrum...a constant mixing of emotions and ideas, no longer simple.

Today was a "William" day.  Of course, we think of him everyday.  We talk of him everyday.  Tears flow for him everyday.  But today it seemed that every thought, every memory, every song was all about him.  For everyone, not just me.  Wallace, who ALWAYS wears cowboy boots, put on William's tennis shoes as we were going out the door.  He was so proud of them.  It probably should not have been so difficult for me to watch them being worn.  When Wallace came to show me what he was wearing, I simply said, "That's nice, son."  We were taking Andrew for his check up.  The older girls were working at the barn so Michael drove me and the younger children (Elly and down).  I sat next to Andrew and Wallace.  Wallace talked a lot about the day William died, his viewing, and the funeral.  Calvin chimed in.  Elly and Selah sang his favorite songs.  We stopped by Sprout's and I ran in while Michael waited in the van with the children.  I stood in the grocery aisle and cried as I stared at the kefir the children had asked me to get.  William's favorite.  We only started buying kefir because of him.  Will it always be hard to buy kefir?  Simple things, now turned so difficult.

I've always been thought of as a strong person.  Turns out I'm the weakest of the weak.  I cannot pull myself together.  But that's okay.  It turns out, it's not my responsibility to hold it all together.

The Lord will preserve me.  I know He will.  I may not feel it, but I know it.  His gentle Holy Spirit is there to help me take captive those thoughts that are not in line with His truth.  He reminds me that He is faithful to complete the good work He began. We will be okay.  Never the same, but we will persevere in Him.  "But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand." Isaiah 64:8