Labor Day

The end of summer sweeps in every year.  Labor day.  I remember last year's labor day.  There were two parties we attended over that weekend.  Phoebe had come to both of them, later than me, on her own.  Both times she walked up to me with a smile on her face.  She was fresh and free.  I remember watching her make her way around, introducing herself to those she hadn't met before and chatting with those she knew.  She had grown into a young lady, confident and sure.  I remember my heart full and proud, catching her eye across the yard.  I see it clear now too, and imagine that when I see her again she will wear the same smile, the same glimmer in her eye.  I miss her.
Had all things gone as I had imagined, we would have dropped her off at school this weekend.  I would expect to have spoken to her tonight and hear all about the swim the freshmen do across the bay to Acadia.  She would have loved that ...the cold shock of water, the surge of energy to go the distance, the exhileration would have enlivened her.  When I had read about that new student event, she immediately checked it herself and smiled, liking the unique immersion into college life. 
But, we didn't get to drop her off this weekend.  And while others busied themselves with the return to school, or the scheduling of senior year plans, I listened ...and wept inside.  To be heart broken is to have a heart that breaks over and over.  I like to hear about other people and their lives, their plans, their hopes and dreams.  Its that I can't have plans with Phoebe anymore that makes me sad.  I miss her ...and all our plans ...all the chances to bicker and giggle.  What might have been is a fiction in my head and heart ....lost.
I've labored many, many months now to survive.  I am a survivor, always have been.  I remember begging God for a year to pass quickly so that I might survive.  It's near, that year I pleaded for.  Months of hard work, intense in very unusual ways.  I have to let go of so many things, even people.  I've also had to let some others in.  Labor makes us stronger, more deliberate, efficient.  But it can also callous a person.  Harden the softest of hearts, the purest of souls.  I've closed my heart to God, I'm sorry to admit, in some ways.  When I thought I've leaned into Him, I haven't. 
I've labored to serve Him, acknowledge Him, trust Him.  I've gone through the motions and trusted that would keep me close.  But I've gone through the motions with a worldly view, not an eternal view.  Where am I going ...ultimately?  I hope to be with Him.  I believe my daughter is with Him, and I believe only He can love her with the purity and intensity she desired ...we all desire.  But truthfully, I've been so so angry.  At first, fear took hold of me, and now I know the anger has taken hold.  How could He do such a thing? Rob us of so much?  How?  I don't understand this God. 
I know suffering is part of redemption, and that we live in a fallen world.  I know I am weak and wretched without His mercy and grace.  But I've been thrown so far off track  I can't see the meaning or reason of His story of salvation most days.  I accept it and trust it ....but it doesn't run through me like it once did.  I don't share this here to say I think its all a sham ....because I don't.  I write it to show how far we can be thrown when the unthinkable happens to us ...to show what the loss of Phoebe has done to me.  I want her back and there's no way that will ever happen.  But still, it's all I want.  That is, with my worldly view.  I'm striving for the eternal view, where I can breath and say "ah yes, my girl is with God, she is at peace."  That's where I want to be, it's how I want to see the great divine plan. 
Surviving is work; pure, hard, labor.  Grieving is barbaric and devastating.  It hits you hard and then just eats away slowly at yourself and everything around you.  It is a lonely, lonely walk.  It is transformation in Him, I think.  I feel like I started running last Oct. 9 ...and I have run and run and run.  And now, I am trying to catch my breath.  My feet hurt, my lungs ache, I'm hungry and tired.  I've been running to stave off the enormity of pain that comes when a child ends their own life.  Illness, accidents, war leave many mothers weeping over the devastating loss of their child, those are unchosen deaths.  Mine could have lived ...should have lived.  And I don't know why she chose what she did, when I loved her so much and she had so much to live for.  The labor of making sense, has left me senseless and lonely.
I've been trying to figure it all out on my own ...and I can't.  It will never make sense.  But to God, who makes all things new, it does make sense. He has a purpose and plan in all things ...even this.  I cannot walk alone through this and ignore my Creator because I am angry ...so, so angry.  He took Phoebe from me ....Phoebe, of all people.  She was a unique child in so many ways.  Why would He take her?  He must have an extraordinary reason and an extraordinary plan.  The isolation of anger insulates me from His grace, prevents me from seeing His supernatural way; prevents me from accepting His plan ...His will.
I doubt the labor of grieving will ever end, but the labor of running will, one day, end.  And I know God is patient with me, and I know He is waiting to carry me a little further, maybe soften the missing just a bit. 
I'm waiting on that and trusting it will come.

Eternal rest grant unto Phoebe and may perpetual light shine upon her.  May she rest in peace. Amen.