It's hard to believe that tomorrow marks 3 weeks since Ellie's birthday. It feels like yesterday and months ago all at the same time. I was talking to one of my sisters last night and wondering out loud if these feelings of motherhood will ever subside since we don't have any other children at home (and pondering how life would be just a little bit easier if they would)--I already knew the answer. It's no. And it's so hard to feel like a mother but not have your baby to hold. Then again, why would I want them to go away. It'd definitely be easier emotionally, I think. But Ellie has changed and touched every part of my life and has already affected everything about how we're going to be parents in the future..

I'd also give anything anything anything to kiss her cheeks again. Just for the record.

 

A friend mailed me C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed which I'm so glad I hadn't read yet--because clearly this is the perfect time to read it. Anyways, there's a passage that I'm just loving right now that goes:

...But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble? I tried to put some of these thoughts to C this afternoon. He reminded me that the same thing seems to have happened to Christ; 'Why hast thou forsaken me?' I know. Does that make it any easier to understand?

I love this. Mostly because it's honest. And I love the conclusion of the paragraph because it doesn't attempt to resolve any of these feelings of abandonment and pain. It's not like, "Hey! And Jesus went through it too, so let's talk about that and get to the bottom of these feelings." It's more like, "Jesus also felt this way........and.....I'm still sorta lost."

So good.