Eight Weeks

11/3/12

I have nothing to do today.  Submitted a 15 page paper last night, which means I have 75% done with my last class for undergrad.  25% left, 5 weeks to go.  I bought my cap and gown the other day and on December 14th our tiny little cohort will walk across the stage and accept diplomas.  And I can't really help but think how, except for our small group of family and friends, no one will really know all it took to get us there.  How symbolic it all is, that we're finishing together.  That after so long, after so much, we will soon be done.

But today I am choosing not to do anything.  There's another paper to write.  And a quiz to take.  Research to be done.  But today is Saturday.  And the lights are switched off in my apartment and Judah is asleep on my chest.  We will take this day as our own.  We will settle in this day, the third day of November, and enjoy each other.  My precious weekends.

I got a few pieces of mail yesterday, which sent my stress level skyrocketing.  I made a mental checklist of the things I have to take care of on Monday and I created a mental image of myself... franticly spinning plates.

That is how I feel right now.  Like I am trying to keep so many plates spinning.  I can't keep up with all the obligations and deadlines and fax numbers and well, there are days when each of those plates teeters precariously and I wonder... will it all fall down?

Here soon, while walking across that stage, I will be able to gently take down one plate.  It won't fall and break.  It will just slow down, slow its spinning.  And I will walk over and take it down, wrap it up, and put it away neatly.  It will be done.

~

Last night, he winked at me.  Walked by and grabbed my waist like he used to.  And I'd be lying if I said my heart didn't skip a beat.  I was overwhelmed with the remembering.  Oh my.  I wonder sometimes if when we meet people, we got a glimpse of a year down the road, how different we would handle our relationships.

You meet him and know, a year later he is gone already.  

You meet her and you can't see it now, but in twelve months she will be the best friend you've ever had.

You meet him and normally wouldn't think twice.  Assume.  Reject.  And there he is... this time next year... one of the most precious people in your life.

~

The words don't come like they should.  And every time I reveal a bit of my breaking heart, I worry you question my love.  

Only you, you who have children, might understand.  The way you feel like your most vital part is missing when your child is somewhere else.  

Those moments, deep and at 4 in the morning, when he decides he is awake.  He lays beside me, cooing with his deep little man voice, staring at the world, as if he can see all its beauty.  And I wonder if I will yell at him when I teach him to parallel park.  Or if I will cheer for him at a ball game.  Or if we will cry over algebra.  And I daydream about the first time he kisses me and the first time he presses his forehead up against our big man's.  Or ... be still my heart ... when he squeezes my hand three times.  

And I think about the first steps.  Who will be at the receiving end?  

I'm tired of being told it is selfish, and I am tired of worrying if others think I don't know... that all things work out for the good, and the right man will choose us, and Judah is better off.  

I know these things.  I KNOW THEM.  And I am broken, in so many parts, and there is so much healing in my Judah.  And life is beautiful right now in all its purity and all in every act of provision and every baby wrinkle.

In every night that door is darkened.  In every sleeping breath and in the contrast of the big and the small.  And in the whispered words of Jesus when he tells me about redemption.  When He reminds me of Boaz.

Of Ruth.  

And damn it if I can't stop crying. 

Crying about little boys lost in hurricane waters.  Crying about daddys back from deployment.  Crying because I am selfish and I sat beside a sweet young woman who found her love, like the love I'm praying for, and she has to be away from him.  And I'm not sure which is harder.  But I am sure it doesn't matter.

And I just think that eight weeks has gone by so quickly.  

And that just makes me cry more.  All while spinning all these plates.  All while trying to see farther than I am supposed to.