Not Drowning, But Waving...

Um...where to begin? I can't believe I haven't posted in close to a year. It's because I keep getting pregnant. I get remarkably anti-social when pregnant, sort of a gestating, grunting wildebeest or something (now, how's that for a lovely image??)

But I am no longer pregnant, having given birth to Rosalie Grace, the most beautiful girl in the world. And unless God has some really frightening surprise in store, this is my last pregnancy--I am done with the whole baby-making thing, so maybe I will once again become something other than gestating wildebeest/sleep-deprived mommy of tiny children.

And on that note...

First, an update in the Saga of Gracie the Dog: we found her a good home with a nice family and a big fenced yard. This was a good thing, because I was this close to throttling her, and I'm only half-joking. She had to be the most in-your-face life lesson I have ever received. The culmination of her visit was her last Sunday morning with us when she decided to try and jump on our kitchen counter and sent a 2-quart bottle of red grape juice in a death spiral through my kitchen. This was after devoting her weeks with us to digging exploratory holes all over my backyard--I mean holes, people. I think I saw magma from the earth's crust bubbling up from one or two of them. But Gracie is now happy with a family who do not seem to mind walking her overgrown self through the puddles in the pouring rain at 6AM on Sunday mornings. Hallelujah and amen to that.

But then, does anyone really welcome grief into their lives, in any form? It's never really a welcome guest, is it?

I had a list of prayer requests last year that I wrote down and kept in my journal. I think I was starting to need some tactile proof that my prayers were not bouncing off the ceiling, and I was merely talking to myself. Some were answered with "yes", some with a definite "no", some I'm still waiting for an answer to come. I asked for more life, less death in our lives for a change, and was blessed with little Rosie, who also answered my (rather selfish) request for a little girl. That was a big request, and it seems we are finally starting to thaw from the numbingly frozen world of grief where we have lived for so long. The world looks permanently different, though, and I am trying to remind myself, daily, to slow down and savor the moment in my hand, because it is achingly fragile and nowhere near as permanent as I would like to believe.

I remember when Sammy was first born, only weeks old, he got RSV (as some of you might remember from earlier posts). I wrote then that the only prayer I could pray was a paraphrase of a line from one of Stevie Smith's poems--"Lord, I am not waving, but drowning!"

I did not think God heard me, but here I am today, almost 2 years later, and I am not drowned.

Words are coming back to me, slowly, randomly--I've been a stranger from them for so long I wonder sometimes what they mean and I get afraid to let them live anywhere but in my head.

My children are with me, and my husband, and all the chaos and messy, loud love and guilt and pain and joy that families bring with them.

The blank page beckons, and I write: I am not drowning, Lord, but waving.

Be patient--it's a new prayer for me.