Sitting with it: Big Guilt, Big Pain, Big Prayer

I feel like a jerk.  A big dummy.  A person with the worst timing in the history of the world.  Bad timing.  Bad, bad, bad. 

And I don't want to tell you why because you might feel like a jerk, too.  I don't want to tell you because you'll gasp and feel crushed and you'll probably feel guilty.  I don't want to tell you because this story will level you and bring you to a fetal position if you really sit with it...if you dare to put yourself in the place of the mommy in this story.  But I feel the need to tell you, mommies (and daddies, if  you're out there.)  I feel like even if we want to click away from the link I'm going to share and push it out of our heads and go to Zappos.com to shop for new fall boots, we might still need to open it and read it and just sit with it for a bit. 

Yesterday evening, after I was all Whiney McWhinerson and "I'm so annoyed" with the towels on the floor and the shoes in the kitchen and blah, blah, blah, I realized that a mom not far down the road was enduring what she refers to as the "crap-iversary".   Last year, during some heavy rains in our area, a mom who writes a beautiful, funny, inspirational and soul-crushing blog said "yes" to letting her 7th grade boy go out with friends to play in the rain.  She just said, "yes".  I would have said "yes".  You would have said, "yes", because why the heck not?  Then THIS happened and you'll have to read it because my hands really can't type the words because I am guilty and sad and weak and I think today I might need to write a little bit more and then sit with it a bit and SHUT.UP.

The thing is she doesn't read my dinky little blog, so she wouldn't know what a big bowl of wrong it was that I wrote about cleats on the floor and messy rooms and absolute minutiae in the midst of the crap-iversary.  Instead, though, she might have heard an exasperated mom lose her cool with her kid at the grocery store.  She might have seen a mom talking on her cell phone while walking her child home from school.  She might have glimpsed some boys around thirteen years old getting off the bus, all gangly legs and wide smiles and breaths going in and out. 

See? I don't want to think about it.  I don't want to read about it and I don't want to sit with it, but I think it's important.  I don't read her blog everyday but every single time that I do, I feel like I should write the name ANNA in black Sharpie on my arm and then I should just STOP.

STOP.  BREATHE.  STARE AT THEM FOR A BIT.  AND THEN SAY,

 "PLEASE, PLEASE, FORGIVE ME, GOD AND THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU"

OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

And maybe today, I might need to just sit with it for a bit, no matter how painful it is.  Just picture it, just feel it, just for a bit.  I might just need to feel like a jerk.  And I might think it is just unbearable and just too much and just impossible to fathom how Anna can keep putting one foot in front of the other everyday.  But, then I'll remember that I read in her blog about Jack's life verse:  "And nothing is impossible with God" from Luke 1:37.  So I'll have to fall to my knees and beg Him to help me believe that verse.  I'll have to thank Him for giving Anna the mind-boggling strength it must take to write her devastatingly beautiful words so that we can sit with them and learn from them.  I'll have to beg His peace and His comfort and His healing for her and her husband and for all those parents who have lost children.  Might you do the same today, please? 

Blessings, people.  Have a grateful weekend.