These days

God was just so nice to me. A friend I've been wanting very much to see is coming into town. I'm actually blubbering like an idiot about it. :)

Comfort comes, it does.

I was sitting in the car a short time ago remembering this time last week. We'd had lunch and were killing time in a book store before the appointment. Then we drove to the office and I took J's hand and said, "Ready to go see our little blueberry?"

I look back and I'm surprised that at no time was I surprised. I don't even remember a moment of understanding. There was just stillness on that screen, darkness, and I slowly just knew. I cried before my brain even kicked in.

Last week was weird. There were solid days of "This will be OK, we can do this, and there's hope for the future, finally." And there were days of just tears tears tears.

I told J that really, if this cycle, this Jan 30th cycle, was going to end in blood, I would rather it be this than just another period. And I still mean that. We have something back that had all but withered away: hope. There is no fear in this, and that makes it better in a way.

But there is just loss. Loss that just sits on my chest like a rock. And the days are getting harder because the loss is not new, does not sting, does not throb. It's just emphatic.

I'm not going to lie and say I don't ask why. But it's so personal. I'm thankful, in a way, because God has rarely felt so near, and so personal to me. And there are times that there comes bubbling out of me, "How could you? How could you let this happen?" And it sounds like anger, but anger is often just the voice that pain uses. Anger wants an answer. Pain isn't looking for information. Pain doesn't mean the questions it asks. It's looking for something else.

And I do find what I'm looking for. Every time I turn around, it seems. It does not give me back that baby, cannot give me back my baby, and God I wanted that baby.

It's exactly like CS Lewis said, "When I lay these questions before God, I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'no answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate gaze. As though he shook his head not in refusal but in waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you do not understand.'"

I don't need to understand. The concrete facts are solid before me and I don't need an explanation. What I do need, though, is being poured out in bucketfulls.