Haven't written anything in awhile, and my only reason is that it has been an exceptionally busy few weeks. The day-to-day activities of motherhood have continued to trudge on, but we've had to add more bumps in our roads. Sicknesses of the children, battles with allergies, wet beds, bad dreams, sore throats, check-ups, kindergarten madness, cub scout meetings have swallowed up even more time. The lingering "kennel cough" in the children is one of the last remaining signs of our past two weeks of craziness. I felt like I could barely keep life together. One evening, I realized I didn't have much of anything to feed the kids for lunch at school the next day. "Buy lunch!" I triumphantly thought, "my task is done!" But, having checked the balance of money left in the lunch accounts, I realized they would not even have enough money to buy milk. "So what's one more day of peanut butter?" I ask myself, but I did remember to send money with the boys to school to add to the lunch account, saving myself from packing a lunch another day. (I have since come to find out that at least one teacher neglected to put my son's money in his account, so now we owe school $.75--thanks, a lot.)
Still, one other tragedy marred our weeks. My friend's husband, having battled cancer for several months, succombed last week. This tragedy has left an enormous hole in her heart, and ours as well. And as we watched the Caring Bridge site for updates, having my email, facebook, cell phone and home phone line open for those last bits of information, a feeling of peace came over when he passed away. I knew this wouldn't be the end of pain for my friend, but I knew she wouldn't watch him suffer any longer. I'm so sorry for my friend, her 3 children, his parents and family and all who feel his loss. I cannot understand it, and I cannot say the right things to make any of my friend's hurt go away. But those are selfish things, anyway, to think that I could even try.
One thing stood out to me: that he passed away during Holy Week, and when all the world is mourning death and despising death, and then here we have Easter, when Jesus conquered death. Is it possible to see hope when we hear the Easter story? It won't take away the pain now, but maybe it will point us to faith. Faith. I have been thinking a lot about faith, because I think it's normal to have periods in life when you have lots of questions and times when you affirm your positions of faith. Faith to me is like the friend you don't see. How do you know that person is still your friend? You haven't seen her, and she's not there to back up your claim physically, but yet you know. Do I sometimes feel God's not there? Especially in bad times? No, I know He's there, but He allows me to contemplate faith. In fact, I think sometimes He may even physically pull back from me, to make my faith grow--maybe even so I can take care of other things. Then there are times I feel very close, very faithful to God.
I guess I hope my friend's pain would be eased by faith. Faith that she'll be okay, she'll have help, she'll have friends and family close by, she'll smile and laugh, and love. Faith that her husband loved her very much and loved his kids very much. Faith that cares for her and is always with her, even when she doesn't physically see it.