I can see clearly now...

At my job I see all kinds of people, all kinds of families, all different circumstances and dynamics.  It's easy, actually, to get burnt out, jaded, cynical.  Easy to see through the lies and stories, to see past the smiles and cheer to the hidden family service interventions and methadone treatments and drama.  Except for this... I am unfailingly optimistic and open and gullible.  I see the story they tell as truth.  I see their hope for truth.  I see their own belief in their own story and that their "truth" is more true for them than I could ever imagine.  I see their grief, and their joy.

Today I admitted no less than 10 separate visitors into the room of a momma who was in labor, in a hard and medically induced labor, all for the purpose of delivering a baby who had already ceased to have a heartbeat - a baby that was already being grieved for and cried over and for whom burial plans were being finalized.  A baby that had been loved and wanted and dreamed over and planned for and was birthed into heartache and tears.  They were LOUD and SAD.

I also witnessed a daddy, in full OR coveralls and mask, wheeling his very own momma in a wheelchair and leading a crew of 5 other family members down the hallway in a cheering, laughing, weeping, giddy mass of joy towards the nursery where they could gaze in adoration at a pink cheeked, dark haired, 8lb newborn baby - a damp, squishy, live and breathing baby. They showed me a picture of their newest member...  They were LOUD and HAPPY.

Listening to the euphoric giggles of one family and seeing their smiles shining light beams down the hall, and then turning to the tear streaked, soft, drawn faces of the grievers showed me more truth today than any person has ever spoken.

This is a hard, hard world.  Nothing is fair.  Life isn't easy.  People lie. Good things happen, and bad things happen, and sometimes to people who don't deserve what they end up with.  And at the end of the day, there is always balance.  Maybe not individually, but globally... and as part of the global population? I place my tears in the hands of the universe and I wait for my joyous giddy light beams.

June 2017: I shouldn't have blinked

He isn't 5 for another 16 days but he's already shed all of his babyness and is a full blown "kid".  He grew a full two inches taller since January.  I can barely carry him anymore with his long legs all dangly and getting tangled up in mine.  He likes privacy in the bathroom now.  He makes fart jokes.  He reads street signs and labels and instructions (but only when he wants to), he can look at the calendar and know how many days are left in the week or the month.  When we go to the doctor for check ups, he walks right up and gives his name and date of birth to the receptionist.  When he laughs, it is a wild, full bellied, bent over double kind of laugh.  His arm will be in a cast for another 4 weeks but he's already riding his scooter and running down trails and playing mini-golf...because he isn't a baby, he's a boy.  He made his own peanut butter sandwich the other day.

I thought that I would be ready for this.  I thought that I was just holding on for this exact moment when he didn't need me so much and wasn't sucking the soul out of me with his demands.  I thought that I just couldn't wait until he was a real kid and not a baby... but it happened so quickly.  I think it happened when I blinked.  I might need to avoid blinking for awhile - I don't want to blink and find out he's driving the car and is taller than me.  It feels like it could happen that way.

I started this blog as a written journey of what it was like to give up my full time job and stay at home with this wild boy.  I thought it would be about saving his spirit, about his journey through a trauma back into wholeness.  I didn't have a plan for what to do with it after G was well and whole.  I never even wrote as much as I meant to from the start!  I also didn't plan that it was going to be about my own journey.  I didn't even realize I had a journey to go through.  I was so fully unprepared to embark on a journey of my own, that just like I blinked and found my baby had turned into a boy, I blinked and found myself right in the middle of a life I didn't know I was going to be in, how I got here, or where I'm supposed to go next.  One day I was in Hawaii on vacation with my child, and a week later I was sitting in a vast wilderness of complicated emotions and trauma and brokenness all of my own.

I try to  focus on how the universe brings balance to my life in so many ways.  I feel like its just how my life has been cared for by God (or whatever universal vibe you might want to call it).  Suddenly though, I was smack dab in a place where all the balance had shifted in such a way that it left me spinning, sideways, tipped over, and most definitely unbalanced.  A friend told me some theories show that the universe tends toward chaos and that maintaining order (or balance) actually requires effort.  Huh.  I had to ponder that one for awhile.  It makes sense that to create balance you might have to put forth energy to offset the chaos, but I've always felt that the balance occurring in my life was a gift for me to embrace.  Then I blinked.

I'm a little lost right now, a little adrift, and trying to look for balance, or to create my own balance even.  I have another thought though; maybe I'm approaching it wrong.  Maybe its not so much about trying to find or create balance, but about allowing time to pass and shift and for the balance to occur on it's own.  Possibly I've become a little too used to things happening when I want them too, or when I make them happen, and not enough accustomed to waiting it out.  There is a lesson there, I just have to pay attention to it.  I'll try not to blink and miss it.