juxtaposition

On September 13 we heard that my mother-in-law – my husband’s stepmom – got MRI results back that indicated she might have cancer.

On September 23 we got a positive pregnancy test – our first baby is on the way!

On September 26, my mother-in-law passed away quietly, late at night.

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Talk about juxtaposition. I feel such tremendous joy that I am pregnant, that my body that has often failed me in these last seven years of chronic illness could get pregnant so easily. At the same time, I feel such tremendous sorrow. I’ve not really had anyone very close to me die. I’m not used to it. I can hardly believe it’s real – it was so fast. When I got the news yesterday morning, I cried. Tears came easily throughout the day. Then my brain shifts, I think about our baby growing inside me, and a smile crosses my face. Life is good.

How am I to do this, go about feeling two things at once? Somehow I feel pure sadness and pure happiness at the same time, and I wonder if my heart is big enough to hold both of them. But then I think, perhaps this is what life demands of me. I mean, the world is at once full of beauty and yet shot through with pain. Here is God’s beautiful creation, oh-and-by-the-way it’s damaged by sin. Joy — sorrow. Co-mingling.

I think we humans don’t like this, so we try to avoid this heart-breaking by choosing just one thing to feel. We drown in our sorrows, get depressed. wallow. Or, we naively ignore the pain of life and live in a false world of fake happiness where we sugar-coat the pain and won’t allow ourselves to really feel.

Some things I’m realizing:

Either choice results in loss.
Why do we fight feeling so much?
Maybe our capacity to feel is the image of God in us, and it scares us.
We live in a culture that – by and large – modulates feeling. It’s only okay to scream and dance for joy when your favorite football team wins.
To be healthy we need to allow ourselves to be in the moment with whatever feelings that moment brings.
This is hard.

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I don’t know the new baby in my belly yet, though I am already totally in love with him or her. But I knew Debbie. It is strange to me to realize that one day, Debbie was just a thought in her parents’ minds, like my baby is in mine. Equally strange to realize that all life someday ends in death. We can’t escape it. Then I remember that death is not the end, and it scares me less.

I remember what a beautiful soul Debbie was, how happy she made my dad-in-law. She bought so much joy to family gatherings. My sister-in-law wrote a beautiful tribute to her yesterday. It brought tears to my eyes for the 43rd time that day. I am sad that our baby won’t know her as “Mimi”…she would have made a great grandma.

Words fail.

Rest peacefully, Debbie. We all loved you.