My heart is full of so many emotions right now, so much so that I am afraid to begin this soul soothing process of writing again. Writing has always been for me a method of healing, a place where what I really think and feel bubbles to the surface. Sometimes that happens with a ferocious speed, and other times it is a process akin to labor. Ahhh, there it is. My first unwitting reference to the birth of new life. There will be more I am sure. It is just where I am right now.
These last fews weeks of my life have been something I cannot understand. Have you ever been in a place where you knew exactly what you needed to do to make things a little better, but every fiber of your broken being raged against that? I have never been there before until now, it is a lonely and desolate place to exist. I believe in a merciful God who loves me beyond my comprehension, but I have been unable to face Him of late. So much anger towards Him, frustration that He did not intervene, rage that He is allowing me to walk through this kind of pain once again. And so I have run from Him, much like Jonah, refusing to acknowledge His goodness and wisdom. I have hidden from Him, stalked the halls of my home and cocooned myself here in the safety of isolation. Mostly, I have withered into myself and allowed myself to wrap this depression firmly around me. It is odd how that isolating depression can become something I am dependent upon, making it so physically burdensome to fight against that despondency.
As an adult, I have known how difficult the journey through Lent can be. It often feels as though not only are we struggling to control our passions, but we are confronted with the most painful or trying situations. My grandmother's illness comes to mind, visiting her in the hospital after Pascha, and her funeral during Bright Week. I began Lent at home this year, alone, and it has been a long one. Slow, painful, tedious, difficult to stay focused on the task at hand being so desperately distracted by sadness. Bright sadness, we say that about Lent, don't we? We sorrow in our loss of paradise and the death of our Lord, all the while knowing a little secret...that soon we will rejoice with the angels in our resurrected Savior. My head knows my little babies will be resurrected when He comes again, my head knows they are safe in Her embrace, my head knows this separation is temporary. My heart screams out that none of that helps right now. I have been so angry with Him this Lent, more out of control of my heart and emotions than ever before in my entire life. I want to find that Brightness in the midst of this, I have struggled so to find it and it slips through my fingers with the drop of a tear. Now, as I sit here, mid-way through Holy Week, I am so physically exhausted already. I feel somehow as though my struggle through this week is so very important to my healing a little bit from this pain. I know my Savior doesn't want any of this for me, but it is so hard to understand why these kinds of things happen. I know He is soon to be crucified, and I can imagine the horror His mother must have felt at watching that happen to Her Son. My words are scattered and confused here I know, but it is all jumbled in my head as well.
It is terrifying the things which will trigger my emotions, and I seem to be especially susceptible these days. One moment I am fine, the next huddled up in tears. In the midst of a conversation, and then hit with it all over again. I remember the first week or so after my Juliana died. All I wanted to do was sleep, but sleep was so elusive. I would wake each morning feeling fine, and then the reality of what was going on would wash over me. Kind of like having short term memory loss, and having to relearn everyday that you have lost your child. Horrible. Now this new truth is no longer one I am able to avoid through sleep. I am confronted by it throughout my everyday in different ways. The way my daughter hugs me, burying her face in my belly where just a few months ago she knows her sister was. Sweet ladies around me with their happiness. Plans for my life that are so dramatically different from what I had thought. Moving my youngest from crib to toddler bed, knowing that crib was supposed to be used for another, and won't.
So, today as I sit here at this point in Holy Week, I am also designing my daughter's grave stone. A task that never in all my thoughts or dreams did I imagine I would be doing. But I will. I am so tired. I am so tired of sadness, long for a smile that isn't forced or a laugh I really mean. Through out this week, my heart has been turning towards the words from Saint John Chrysostom's Paschal homily, anticipating hearing that hopeful proclamation, asking God for mercy and forgiveness.
