Life doesn't stop.
Good doesn't stop.
Challenges don't stop.
Loss doesn't stop.
It doesn't stop.
Most days, I feel like it should stop, like I should be able to get off this ride. It doesn't. I don't.
Graduations still occur and our kids keep learning. Our teachers continue offering the students incredible opportunities for success, for pathways to tomorrow, for experiences that allow kids to build bridges from this place in their lives and into the next.
Our students amaze us - sharing knowledge and creativity that enable us to see God's promises for the future and a hope. Their bright eyes lighting up with each word they share about research or college or careers.
Young people fall in love, promise each other a lifetime and start their tomorrows courageously - relying on each other and a future, fragile and expectant.
Our son continues to prepare for college, to grow up and embark on a journey we raised him to take - that impending day that taunts my faith.
It's hard to write when I am angry - hard to place the right words in the right places with the right meaning and the right spirit. So I don't write or I write and then I erase it because the words lie lifeless on the page, deceitful..
And then I stew until I realize I am mad at God again or still, or I am afraid that he is mad at me.
Wrestling with grace must be my proverbial wilderness because I can't seem to rest in the assurances I have been given in the last twenty-two months, or the lessons I have learned in the last forty-eight years. Perhaps the wandering saves me from becoming completely lost. Maybe the constant battle keeps me needing the grace I can't seem to accept or understand.
I listened to five seniors present their Independent Research Projects this afternoon. Self-directed, intrinsically motivated, highly intelligent young men and women presented with great skills and confidence, and I stood amazed and sullen. Amazed and inspired, I cannot wait to see how these young people change the face of the world we live in and how their counterparts across this globe will do the same. Sullen, my heart longs for the girl we raised and the mark she would have made. I can't seem to be at peace with Taylor in eternity instead of with me - like anything she could have accomplished here or experienced would compare to the glory of heaven. More and more, I find myself shaking my head and saying the words, "Silly old woman". Still, I wrestle; I miss; I look; I question; I mourn.
It doesn't stop - life's perfections and imperfections, its promising futures and frightening fragility - It keeps going.
In the midst of my wrestling matches, at the end of my tears, some times before I have given up my control and succumbed to prayer, I am always reminded whose hands hold me. Those reminders come quietly sometimes and other times they are bold intercessions. They are not reliant on the depth of my faith, the frequency of my prayers, or my ability to find or relate the good in a day. #golighttheworld