A Moving On

There are days that come, which make us pause...

Perhaps we don't even anticipate them.  They are certainly not marked on the calendar.  They are not recognized, let alone celebrated.  But you wake up and write the date somewhere and it all hits you --

The nostalgia.

Days like these draw me directly into a state of reflection, far deeper than New Years Day ever could.

Today is not one of those days.  But the day is coming.  This week, actually.  And I find myself in a tailspin, enveloped in memories I thought I'd never even filed away.  Remembering little things, then insignificant.  Now, imperative to the story.

So much life can happen in a year.  Perhaps this is why we are subconsciously allowed to remember these obscure milestones, these subtle and subliminal reminders of how we do not stay the same.

~

Camp started this week.  I haven't seen most of my babies in a few weeks, if not months, for a multitude of reasons.  One of them being I work three jobs, am in school, and am currently semi-homeless.  But not really.  That's not really why.  

I haven't seen them because none of us know what to do with ourselves.  Since they're ten years old these children have no tact or verbal filters (most people don't ever fully develop tact or verbal filters ever, let alone in elementary school).  I never see them in a setting where I can sit down and fully explain about Judah.  Explain a baby is not something to joke about, to tease about.  Why I can't swing them over my shoulders anymore. Why I'm more tired, quiet than I have been in the past.  

The help I need to explain such things, is no longer there.  The support system I'd built over the past few years within the family just could not withstand this kind of life change.  I think I disappointed them.  Some of them.  I think, like most people, they are uncomfortable.  They don't have the answers.  Like a few, their response has been to withdraw.  

This time last year I stood with them, hearing God whisper about how His love is demonstrated through the small ones.  Hundreds of little hands and feet, inquisitive faces, and loud voices were the manifestation of God.  A God -- the God -- who had chosen to be quiet for so long.  

Last year I spent this same week with them.  We ended the week at a music festival, carting around teenagers who were skeptical of the "Christian rap" they were told they were going to hear.  We followed the fitted caps through the camp grounds, and found the back stage where any racial diversity at the festival had gathered.  

Some would say it was all downhill from there.  Donald might call it an inciting incident.  

I called it an active giving up.

And Jesus... Jesus just didn't leave.  

Some people want me to talk about how God redeems sin and how mistakes happen and we bounce back.  Talk about resilience.  Talk about recuperation.  Talk about forgiveness.  

But my mind and heart are so full of all I have learned in the past twelve months, all I can remember are the feelings.  All I can remember are the string of decisions and words.  The crash-course lessons in real life, real world.  

Over-stimulated is what I am.  

~

My son is rolling around, pushing on my diaphragm as I sit here.  Tomorrow starts the third trimester.  The last leg of this particular journey.  My head spins, thinking about how fast this has all happened.  Thinking about the million different ways it could have turned out.  Painfully, distinctly remembering a Saturday night five months ago and all the hell and hurt, which followed.

Thinking about all the times Jesus spoke to my heart about provision and grace and defiant love.  

And somehow I heard.  

Somehow in the midst of all the noise and confusion and hopelessness and lies, I still always heard His voice.  Saying, "we have no room for that, Anna.  You and I.  We don't have room for the shame and the guilt and the regret.  I'm not even letting that enter here."

The same way now, I hear Him.  

Whispering about how He cares about food and gas.  About shelter and student loan bills and overheating engines.  

"And if I care about those things," I hear Him say, "don't you think I care about Judah's father?  Don't you think I will provide something so important?  Don't you think I'm chasing after his heart, as hard as I have always chased after yours?"  

And I am quieted.  The complaints, the fears, the worries -- diluted, muffled by the protective, authoritative, powerful roar of King who has been standing up for me... His hand covering me, shielding me from the onslaught.  This whole time.

"Don't you think I know?"

This week, these particular days, cannot go without being recognized.  They are part of the process, part of the moving-ahead.  

To be able to move on to the next year, I need to face this week.  

Because in twelve weeks, maybe fewer, there will be a little boy here.  And instead of rolling around inside of me, he will be laying on my chest.  The things I'm worrying about now, then won't seem so serious.  

To be a better woman, a better mother, I have to face this week.  To face this week, I have to relive an entire year of my life.  I have to write my storyline, recognizing the moments I lost... and the moments I triumphed.  And how each one brought me here.  

That is, actually, what we should always do.  Whether the quiet milestone is a good one, a bad one, a secret one, or one, which passes by unnoticed.  Part of our process, part of the way we live, should be based in honest self-reflection.  And catalyzed by an intentional moving forward.  A moving on.

~

Sensory overload.  I am overwhelmed by an overplayed song, which characterized the summer of 2011.  Smells of $2 beer and sun tan lotion.  A whole lot of life, crammed into a few short months, flooding my memory like so much water.  

Of Haitian children and bare feet.  Sea sickness and thunder and lightning over the mountains.  Bruised backsides from hours on a rickety truck and sweet kisses and sweaty backs.  

Dark parking lots.

Station wagons packed with too much stuff.  Wind chimes.  

A dropped set of keys.  

A tiny studio apartment.  

The day of my sister's wedding.  

Trailing all the way, linked together, into the fall.  Into the winter.  

The muscles of my heart, my spirit, my character ripped only to regain strength.  Calluses form, hope seems lost.  Trust is harder to come by those days.  The games played, I recognized.  

And through it all, I still hear. 

Even now, I feel it all filing away.  Folding up.  Finishing up.  

I am not who I was.

I have not stayed the same.

And some... some still do not understand.  

Some even witnessed the evolution.  

Only I know the transformation -- the potential of what comes next.

Tonight I will love love you tonight /
Give me everything tonight /
For all we know we might not get tomorrow