the days of sweet...bitter

Lots of sweet moments...baby naps and a new tooth, homeschool helper and Valentine's Day parties and precious kiddo moments, our dear friend and our pastor co-baby-sitting so Matt and I could have catch-up-on-the-last-three-weeks dinner. Friends who made dinner several nights. Lemon bars. Julie who painted with the girls today. Ms. Dawn who gave Sofie and I a date night. Lots of sweet moments.

The best pieces were sitting down with two long emails, both from women I lived with in Haiti...one recently and one 13 years ago...full of news and joys and heartbreaks and ways to pray, and it filled me up to be trusted by them and reminded by them and to be loved enough to be allowed to walk alongside.

All these sweet pictures and sweet moments, one would think, and it's been suggested, that all should be well and finally at peace.

I guess it should. I know Dad is. 

But it is not. I didn't expect so much to sting the way it is, didn't expect one week to feel like one awful month. Didn't expect the quiet moments to feel so heavy and lonely, didn't expect the happy ones to feel so heavy and sad. Didn't expect losing both parents to feel so different than losing one. 

Didn't realize how many times a week I texted or called dad, or how having the date of the memorial set would somehow feel too soon, all too soon.  Didn't realize how much hearing from dad a few times a week--little, insignificant phone calls--made me feel like someone cared about the little things, like someone was interested in the little corners of my heart and life, in the little events of 7 children. I find myself unexpectedly regretting I didn't tell him every big event for all of the future, somehow...so I didn't now have to live out all those things without Dad or Mom caring or asking at all.  

All the thoughtful, kind things dear ones are saying about dad are true. So True, I think, every time someone talks about how much he helped, how deeply honest and hardworking he was, how lovingly and sacrificially he lived. So True, that's my Dad. I am thankful. I should be thankful. and yet. 

It all is so true that it hurts worse and makes it harder and makes me feel ungrateful and then guilty and all the cycles I know so well...though knowing them doesn't much seem to help except you know one day...not one day soon...you will realize that moments of being ok keep slipping in, and they will gradually become more frequent. 

Until then, every sweet advance Emma makes is a painful reminder that my parents will never see it, that their grandparents on mama's side are out and done and uninvolved. Every concerning element in our bonus girlies' case is just another thing dad used to care about and have wisdom for, and never will again. Even all the details in planning the memorial, details he always would have helped us with and known what to do, and now it blares we are on our own.

Matt being gone all day Friday and Saturday didn't help, and Monday he is off for Florida again for four more days before we all head to Ohio.  All the work was so graciously put to the side and done best as possible the last three weeks, but now that he's back there is a LOT to catch up on and no more that can be missed. I understand and support him fully, just didn't expect to be feeling so pathetic-shaky right now. 

You always give me grace, Lord and brothers and sisters.