Apology

It is about time I wrote in here, yet so much has happened in my "emotional landscape" that I'm not sure where to begin...

Joel is back home and so happy to be here. He was nothing but smiles and laughs his first day back. I think he truly was giddy with happiness.

But he is a little trouper at the hospital. He does very little complaining or fussing. He doesn't usually even cry when he gets a poke anymore. He babbles away at the nurses.

It's not until he is home that you realize how he misses it. He never smiled at the hospital and he smiled at EVERYTHING when he got home. Of course, I think I did too!

I was so overjoyed to find that his main trouble was his tonsils, and once put on the steroids, his breathing went right back to being fine. I was pretty scared at the hospital, when we were wondering if it was his tone worsening, or his breathing centre in his brain (though it always seemed more like an obstruction.)

But I don't think I'll get into all that now. There will be plenty more times for me to go on about how scary it is to contemplate the vast chasm the absence of your child will leave in your life. Yeah. That chasm is scary... nuff said for now.

I will say that I apologized to my brother in law this week. I was spouting off to him about things and I said that we had gotten "shafted" by what happened with Joel. I can't say that I never feel like that, or that those feelings/thoughts never cross my mind. But I can tell you that they really don't hang out in my head too much anymore. So later on, I apologized for saying it. I guess the really correct thing to say is that I apologized IN FRONT of my brother in law, but really I was apologizing to Joel and to God.

How Joel feels about his deal in life is between him and God. I'm learning that it is just about impossible for me to really measure Joel's "quality of life." Most of the time he seems happier than some people I know who have everything. And the bad times make me furiously angry, and break my heart, but I have no idea really how it is for him. It is the mother bear coming out in me to protect her cub. Any suffering or discomfort would break my heart, and while Joel is a trouper and puts up with so much, still, I can only guess what life is really like for him, both on the good or bad side.

So I had to apologize to both God and Joel. To Joel, because more and more I feel so thankful and blessed to have him in my life. I have said it many times, and I will say it again for the record: if I could heal him, it would be done in the time it takes you to read this sentence. But I will say this too: if I could go back the two and a half years to when he was conceived, I would not change things. Not on my account. If the choice was no Joel, or Joel with a PBD, you know what I would choose. Joel was worth every single moment of pain he has cost me. He has given me so much, things I can not explain nor articulate.

Sometimes I hate to admit this to people. I am afraid that they will take this as a license to dismiss my pain and hardship. "Well, she says it is worth it, so?" So I have an urge to keep these thoughts that Joel is some kind of blessing to myself. Because when you walk through fire, you think that someone should be waiting at the end with a medal, some painkillers and a wheelchair.

The truth is, life is not like that. Here is a quote from my fav work of fiction "All the fairest beauties in the human soul, its greatest victories, and its most splendid achievements are always those which no one else knows anything about, or can only dimly guess at." And most of the things that God has worked in my heart, or soul, through Joel are like this. I had best just get on with the work of it, and stop waiting for applause! Only God truly knows the battles I face, and thus only He can truly appreciate the victories, though my dear fellow PBD parents come close to knowing.

So instead of waiting for others to "understand what I go through" I will say that Joel has been my greatest pain, but also a great blessing. Yes, I am THANKFUL that God let Joel in my life, even though I know the pain I will feel when I lose him will be something earth-shattering.

But my enemy is not pain. My enemy is not sorrow, or suffering.

I already mentioned in my reverse loss list, some of the ways that our souls get twisted up. These things are the real enemies. The things that twist us and deform our soul.

So I know that the pain, sorrow, suffering that I experience through Joel can make me empathetic as it teaches me to see others, can make me humble as I learn I need help, can make me grateful as I learn not to take anything for granted, can make me faithful as I learn to see God's faithfulness to me and practice being faithful to others.

Ultimately true evil, the kind that destroys the soul, is something that can only harm us when we let it in.

I watched a movie about the Holocaust "Charlie Grant's War. One of the characters tells his Nazi tormentor "If I had to chose between being a Jew or being you, I would chose to be a Jew. That way I would only have to burn once." Well, a shocking quote I suppose, but it has stuck with me. Because of the ring of truth. Physical evil IS dreadful. But though we can be hurt, we can not be harmed, unless we surrender ourselves up to bitterness, resentment, self-pity, or all the even more dreadful things that can lurk in our hearts.

So, I can't tell God that He has short-changed me. He didn't. God has allowed Joel to be terminally ill, because this could be made into something beautiful in His plan. He has allowed Joel to come to me, because Joel is a gift and a privilege and even a joy. He will allow Joel to die, because this will not harm Joel. Joel will be with Jesus. Joel's death will hurt me, very, very much. But I know in the end, it will not harm me. I'll be safe in Jesus' arms too.

Romans 8:35&37 "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us."