It's been exactly two months nearly to the day since the last time I wrote or published a blog. Two whole months, and a lot has come and gone since then. Truthfully, I'm a completely different person than I was two months ago. When I look back and read up on what I was writing about two, four, six months ago, I'm amazed at the changes I come upon.
Life has done a complete 180 degree turn since the summer. Isn't it funny, how you beg and beg and beg God for something and once you get it, the greatest and worst things are when you realize it's either not enough, too much or something totally different than you thought you wanted?
As many of you know, but most of you don't, I have been working in some, um,
different circumstances. October 1, I accepted a job as a full time nanny and somewhat-part-time housekeeper (the two go very much hand in hand) for two of the sweetest baby girls I have ever been blessed to know. Blake and Paige are four months old this past week. As beautiful as it is to see such sweet girls grow, the mark of their four month birthday also means their mother has been with the Lord for four months, too. This family, a large, growing even more, beautiful, accepting, grieving family, four months ago lost their daughter and wife and sister and in return gained two little souls who will live and breathe their mother's great legacy. Much of this sounds incredibly personal, like I am apart of every moment since she died and they were born-- because truly, it is, and I feel as though I have. Every single day at 7 am I arrive at their home and the pictures of her greet me as do the waking, stretching, sweet tiny-footed little girls. And I go home, regularly when the sun is setting, and I cook dinner and clean my own house and hug my Michael over and over. I read and pray and call loved ones when I can. I sleep early and rise even earlier. No day is the same, but every day holds the same potential.
I begin to cry while I write this, because it has been so incredibly difficult for me. To love them, to care for them, to watch them grow has been such a blessing... but to be thrown into such turmoil as someone who never even knew their mother but watches minute by minute how every other person in their household deals with her passing has become astonishingly personal.
Remaining "business" and stepping outside the situation has never been an option for me. Explaining this to my husband has been difficult- I have always been the type of person who feels other people's emotions so easily. Truvvy in Steel Magnolias quotes it perfectly when she says,
"Oh, please don't cry-- I have a strict policy that no one cries alone". Always, since I was a little girl, I have felt and experienced people's emotions with them as though they were my own. Both an honor and a curse. Naturally, since I have been with this family for quite some time, now, I grieve with them as well. For the fact that these sweet, precious girls will never know their mother. For every time I mention to someone what my job is, they have heard the story and know the family, and by nature comment on how sad and tragic it is. How difficult my job must be, they say. And I think to myself, yes, it is extremely difficult. Not just because I am up and down the stairs fourteen times a day, sh-sh-shushing and quieting and rocking, sweeping and vacuuming and Lysol-ing, loving and kissing and laughing and watching these girls go from sleeping newborns to sitting, exuding emotion, eating solid food, but because I feel every single emotion that passes through that house. And there are plenty.
In honesty, it is an ever-present dose of what-could-be. Selfish as that is, I am thankful to go home to my husband whom is still here. But I cry, frequently and heavily, for the loss of this woman whom I never had the pleasure of knowing. What a blessing and a gift she left behind, for everyone else, including myself. And as time goes on and life passes us every day, I realize how easy it is to love these people, these baby girls. Strangers who lived lives I would never have encountered before now know me on a personal basis because I am taking care of their best friend's children. I pray for her, for her children, her husband who aches and carries on as best as he can on a daily basis.
But what do we learn from situations such as this? I heard one family member remark that she has found no good in this since her beloved passed, that she hasn't spoken to God in a very long time. So I do it for her, around her house, throughout her day, over these babies. And the power of prayer is indeed, just that-powerful, but ever so slow sometimes. The process of grief is such an abundant, massive burden to bear that we often cannot do anything, let alone talk to God, on our own. It is unmanageable to lift ourselves up time and again when we are weighed down by the heaviness that death brings upon us.
Sadness, though, is not the only thing that we must remember comes with grief. See, inside all of this, the circle of distress, there's a light that will shine if you remember it exists. What is life, friends, if we are not constantly sacrificing ourselves to others? What is continuance, survival, love, if we are not being servants to every person around us? And
that, that is what keeps me sane during this whole process. I may grieve a loss for someone I've never known for reasons I'm not sure I even know exist... but I have found a servant's heart inside my own where the light shines fully and brightly.
Back in late June, I was so homesick my world would spin when I'd close my eyes. I felt lost, for more than one reason. And I begged God to show me someone who needed me. To give me a job where I felt a purpose, a place to go where I felt needed. Like someone couldn't grow without me. A strange request, I realize, but when you feel empty, the only thing you really want is to feel as though there is a use for you.
I got what I asked for, in more ways than one. Some days, it is harder to remember why and when and how this all came about and if it is worth it or not. The long hours, the days that are significantly more difficult than others. But I suppose when you ask God for something He knows is truly in your heart, there's no take-backs. You do what you do because somewhere inside you, you know that it's helping you survive and find purpose whether you like it or not.
