a reversal

It is almost incomprehensible to me that I wrote those words a little over 24 hours ago. That news - the news of a possible due date, a day which we can prepare for our little girl's arrival - was like a small pebble removed from the center of a great, unsturdy heap. Slowly, but surely, it has all come tumbling down.

I find that the grief of knowing we will have her, only to let her go, is new and incredibly sharp. Conor bought me "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis a few weeks ago, a book I confess I've always somehow dreaded even picking up off the shelf in any given bookstore simply because its title was so incredibly awful. There is no part of me that ever, ever wanted to go through anything that could be remotely dubbed grief. There is no part of me that wants to be going through it now. I know about God's glory, God's purpose, and I believe in them. But I confess that I often find so little hope in those notions. They are certain, as certain to me as the nose on my face, but their certainty does not always elicit anything like comfort.

Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis's stepson, wrote about his mother's relationship with "Jack", whom she married whilst in the throes of a fatal illness - one that took her life a few short years later. One thing he says that struck me particularly was that, in her time in Oxford, near her friends, near Lewis himself, when they lived in a quaint little house frequented by friends and constantly bubbling over with warmth, it all "seemed to be the beginning of so much that could have been wonderful." How I relate to those words. I suspect that grief, in its dullest form, is basically the very upheaval of anything we believe could have been wonderful, the removal of something that we believe would be beautiful, or needed, or loved, or hoped for. There is nothing astounding in his words; he simply meant to say what was true, even several decades later. Believing in God's timing, or His providence, or His purpose, does not change the fact that there are going to be great chunks missing in the vision we have for our lives, even a vision that cannot be swept away as ungodly or irrational or selfish. And when they are gone, the agony, we can be sure, will be deep.

To say that I am not up to the task of letting my daughter die is laughable. Who is? I believed that Copeland was the answer to two years of prayer, to the tender supplications of my three year-old at the dinner table ("God, please can we have a baby sister?"). I now feel a grief for her - who she will never be, at least before my eyes - that is exquisite. To know what might have been, even in knowing that every moment ordained for her was planned long ago, is the crushing part of it all.

I have no way of ending this on a lighthearted note. I have no way of making this seem like something it's not. Please know that my words on this blog are real, and what I feel is real - even when it's joyful or hopeful or peaceful. But the moments of despair and heartache are so frequent it would be wrong - deceptive - of me to keep them from surfacing here. And perhaps I find comfort in knowing that there is a human bond in the struggle to find something good in the midst of something so incredibly bad. Pray for our faith. I know that, as Gresham writes, "the stronger the faith the more savagely will Satan storm its fortress."