Good Grief: month 5

Rob has told me for months he feels empty. Today he tells me he's feeling worse.

He's mad.

Not at Heavenly Father or anyone in particular, just mad that this is our story. Mad that she's gone, and we can't have her back in this lifetime.

I am so tired of crying.

I was still in love with Elle when she died—that stage that mothers go through with each of their babies/toddlers. I was still there. I mean, just look at her. Her popped knee, hand on her hip, sucking on her juice box, posing for her mom. She is my definition of adorable.

"When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight." —Kahil Gibran

Elle was my delight for the four + years of her life. And now it feels like I will cry for every hour I spent with her. 

Elle's self-portrait :)

I still keep track of 6 kids in my head. I'm still surprised when I look behind me in the car on vacation and see only M&M and the boys. I set out clothes for church, and I'm done before I should be. I'm not doing enough laundry—where is it all? At the dinner table—where is everyone? I'm alone in the house again?

For the first time in 18 years, I'm not keeping track of a baby or toddler. The freedom is uncomfortable. I feel like pacing. My youngest child now is 7 and in school full-time (!). I have a daughter who is away at college (—how can that be?). Mia will be driving and dating in October. As of July, I have a teenage son. Cy is in 4th grade and playing tackle football. Suddenly the kids seem to be slipping through my fingers. They're growing up too fast. I know it's premature, but I'm starting to panic about my life after kids. What am I going to do with myself? I don't have dreams and hobbies and aspirations I can't wait to launch into when the kids are grown. I've been living my dream. I wanted several kids, so this phase of life would last longer. When they're gone, I can always volunteer, go overboard on my church calling, read, go to the temple whenever I want, work out on my schedule, have a clean house, be able to find my nail clippers and house phones, but seriously—is that any way to replace motherhood? What job is going to be nearly as fulfilling as raising someone you love dearly to be happy in this world?

Jeffrey R. Holland, in speaking of Lot's wife, sums up my struggle, "... her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future.

"She doubted the Lord's ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind....

"To yearn to go back to a world that cannot be lived in now; to be perennially dissatisfied with present circumstances and have only dismal views of the future; to miss the here-and-now-and-tomorrow because we are so trapped in the there-and-then-and-yesterday—these are some of the sins, if we may call them that, of ... Lot's wife."

I cried as I read in black-and-white some of my most poignant emotions expressed so clearly. 

And I was grateful for this reminder "... faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives."

I can trust in the promise of a very distant tomorrow, but I hope to do better than that. I hope I can trust in the here-and-now and in what Elder Joseph B. Worthlin referred to as the Law of Compensation. I have seen it come into play already in our lives, and we're just getting started.