I don't know why it is, but we seem to forget how difficult it is to have babies. I remember thinking that getting to delivery was like sliding down into a canyon, and after the baby was born I'd be climbing back up from the bottom. That was the way I managed my brain for dealing with how uncomfortable I was, how much pain I knew there'd be, how much work would follow, and how none of it was forever. Because birthing new life is hard and in the midst of it life feels like topsy turvy chaos.
I'm the grandma who's just part of the support team for the two families having babies this summer, but I still get to experience the chaos of toddlers and all their wild energy, and family tensions, and extra hospital stays, and trying to continue jobs and school and whatever else keeps going as if nothing significant is happening, and trying to be ready for both the expected and the unexpected.
In other parts of my world it's not babies, but life is still changing, evolving, growing, spinning, topsy turvy. Fresh starts are not easy. Leaving old things behind is not easy. Finding what's real and lovely underneath the masks and pretense is not easy.
I don't suppose it's supposed to be easy. I keep having to remind myself of that. And I wonder how many times I'll have to remind myself before I'm done with this life that controlling any of this is mostly illusion, or, perhaps more accurately, delusion.
I'm tired, but maybe that's just because I'm old, and maybe still carrying some of the weight of the past. I'm not afraid of the future, though I'd love to have a clearer picture. I have Psalm 46:10 on my office wall as a perpetual reminder to "be still and know" that "God is God, and I am not," as the Steven Curtis Chapman song says.
Today the words from the wall at my daughter's house (pic above) seem to fit better. "Mind my business, leave it up to God, he will make no mistakes."
Maybe the hardest part is figuring out the difference between my business and God's business. I guess I have to trust God for that, too.
And so it goes.
Thanks, God.
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Pic: Raegan Cannon