The Weekend

It's been more than a week since I last posted, so I figured I should come in just to say hello.

There's nothing new here. Well, Brady developed a rather nasty cold a few days ago, which he so kindly shared with both me and Adam. The end result? Adam went to bed 10 minutes ago. It's 8 PM on a Saturday night. We're livin' the high life.

I'm just floating along, I guess. Logan departed this life seven weeks ago. Sometimes I think 'wow, has it been that long already?' At other times, I feel like I'm starting to forget the little nuances that made him my sunshine, and I get scared. If we're only seven weeks out and I'm already forgetting the details, will I remember him at all a year from now? Five years from now? Twenty? We have pictures and videos and all of the things that we need to make sure Brady will grow up 'knowing' his biggest brother, but I'm not going to kid myself into believing that it's the same.

I've found myself getting angry with platitude pushers lately. You know --the ones who say things like 'God's ways are mysterious and not ours to know or understand' blah blah. It's all fine and good to say those things, but when it's YOU who's been burned; when it's YOU whose child has suffered the unspeakable... it's different. So yeah. If you ever find yourself personally knowing someone who's lost a child, please don't tell them 'it was God's will'. Please, please. I'll say what I've said 100 times and believe to be true: The God of the Bible desires good for us. What happened to Logan was NOT GOOD. So it wasn't from God. It's a fallen world. Things don't always go as planned. Not even as God Himself planned.

But with that said, I'm waiting for redemption. I'm waiting for the promise that God made that says that He'll turn bad into good to come to fruition. And I'm not just talking about the next life. I'm talking about THIS life. I won't lie: My life isn't fun right now. I have moments of peace and pricklings of happiness now and then, but the underlying sensation is pure, searing pain. It feels, emotionally, like I've been cut open and had salt poured over the wound. It feels like salt is just caked on the wound. And like it'll never be rinsed clean again. Maybe it won't. Right now, I don't know.

I've also been a little frustrated by my inability to see any signs. I've been looking; I guess perhaps I've been looking too hard. I had a single day this past week that felt more hopeful than the others. I was at Walmart (and I swear I'm not there often, even if I seem to talk about it a lot here) helping Isaac pick out birthday presents for his friends at preschool. He, of course, made a beeline for the 'car' (or, in more accurate Isaac-speak, the monster truck) aisle. As I turned the cart to follow him, my eye spied a tiny light blue Corvette Hot Wheels car on a peg. I snatched it up. We walked around the corner, and I saw another Corvette -- a blue and white Stingray with Easter 2012 decals. That one also jumped into the cart. Finally, when we circled around to where we'd started, I saw another blue and white Corvette. It joined its buddies in the cart. It was strange to see SO MANY little blue Corvettes at once. We stopped once more to check out the bin, and my eye again settled on that familiar body style... it was the same blue City of Lafayette Corvette I'd gotten for Adam for his birthday a few weeks ago. I like to think that it means something. But I can talk myself out of lots of things these days.

Anyway, that's a rough, poorly worded update from my house to yours. We're here. We're trying to find out what 'normal' means. I'm trying to not go completely ballistic on people who complain about trivial things, because we're all allowed to complain about things that don't matter. I know I have in the past. So I guess you could say that I'm spending plenty of time stewing in my own little personal pot.

And I'm waiting for... something.