Joy comes in the morning?
Ever been caught between a rock and a hard place? How does a person in the “Child Gone to
Heaven Club” learn to stop feeling bad about feeling good? Other mothers do it, make it, maybe not all
the time, but don’t they grow to feeling good most of the time? It seems irresponsible. A shirking of one’s
duties, the passing of a baton that feels wrong to release.
Other mothers, some mothers, bubble over with joy. Do they put down grief, put down that constant throbbing
cement filled handbag dragging the ground that hangs on their shoulders? Isn’t the grief always that heavy, or is this
all wrong? Is the grief ever less than
the joy? How?
It feels so bad to feel good, and so good to feel bad. Why
would a mother give that up? Holding on
tightly to pain, heartbreak, depression, and refusing to allow joy to bubble,
that’s the road to take, right? That's what defines a mother now, isn't it? This is the new normal life, right? Holding on to feeling bad about feeling good
honors Zach, keeps him close, insures the price of guilt is continually
paid, doesn’t it?
Marsha and Colleen, doesn’t it? Your children in heaven with mine and you smile
and talk about grace and forgiveness and God gently scrubbing your soul's guilt away. But feeling bad about feeling good feels
better, doesn’t it? Isn’t this sadness a cloak super glued to the skin to be worn as an itchy, skin tearing reminder of everything that would be made different if given the chance? Or is it?
Questions march in perfect time across the expanse of a brain. Is this how it is supposed to be? Or, is it okay to feel good, to not feel bad about
feeling good? Is it okay to let God have the guilt, to feel good about smiling, to let God erase the bass drum of what if,
what if, what if, that never stops beating?
Mothers, some mothers, said the second year is harder. Is it? Does it have to be?
Marsha and Colleen bubble with joy, grief in the background
of their smiles, grief behind a joy growing stronger, grief sometimes barely visible if not sometimes invisible. How did the strength
grow to get them there? They both told me, God. Eerie, that freedom from grief that's grown in Colleen and that freedom that grows in Marsha. Believable? Real? God.
God, grow me to that place where I don’t feel bad about
feeling good, or I'll just stay here where it feels good to feel bad, where bad feels right.
God, grow me to a place where
joy bubbles, where I feel grace and forgiveness. That
is how it is supposed to be, isn’t it?
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