I get that.
As I walk through the aisles of Target tonight picking up the ingredients for tortellini so I can feed my husband's boys tomorrow, I get that. I grabbed the meat, found the Italian sausage marinara and the three cheese Alfredo sauce. I picked up two cases of gatorade, so each of our boys would have enough. Then as I left the pasta aisle, I was suddenly aware that I was crying, that tears were streaming down my face and that I couldn't name the trigger, identify the memory, call out to my pain. I just miss my Taylor.
Luckily, I am an old woman who is easy to miss in the hustle and bustle of our super Target -so my tears don't cause a spectacle. Taylor would roll her eyes at a spectacle - twice and then walk away. ha!
Sometimes the dark hole that grief carves my life into before and after and shadows every foot fall finds me; It finds me and reduces me.
This isn't about the promise of heaven; it isn't about how much joy sweet Taylor knows every moment; it isn't about faith - and for a very long time, I struggled with finding the dividing line - between all that I know to be true and the amount of pain living without my daughter ...is.
A good mother would rejoice that her daughter is with Jesus.
A good mother would be thankful for the 20 years.
A good mother would turn tragedy into triumph.
A good mother would .- dot....dot....dot...
A good mother would have been good enough that her daughter would have been saved. It always ends there, always.
And I am reduced.
She loved Tortellini and having the girls over and the brownies that followed, and I love that I have that image of her sitting on my kitchen cabinet, retelling her day before her six sisters walked through the door. The banter began, and I became just her mama, the mama with the dining room table, offering warm pasta, listening to gregarious laughter, serving warm brownies, the mama with a purpose, the good mama.
When I look for the good in this what I have is memory and hope....
The memory of the warmth of security and friendship - between Taylor Renee and her friends, between Tay and me- that she would be so secure to not just share those moments with me, but purposely include me....
And Hope -
The hope that those girls and my sweet son and perhaps even the football boys that only come in season know that fellowship around a table, filled with food and a kind of love that causes tears to spill at just the sight of pasta is the truest, most sincere, most evident proof of God's love there is....
Ecclesiates 3:12 "Know there is nothing better for people than to be happy to do good while they live...."
#golighttheworld