Moving Toward Hope

"I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden wealth of secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name."

~ Isaiah 45:3

This weekend has been filled with hope.  I feel . . . relieved, though I am trying not to stake too much on this feeling.  It is likely just a break in the grief.

Still.  Since Eve died, I have woken up every morning with the feeling that she was inhabiting my night, no matter what I actually dreamed about.  The past two days, I woke up ready for God.

I wrote to a friend yesterday that perhaps I am now ready for my life to be about life, not about death.  Not about my daughter's death.

Is that awful to say?  It sounds like I am saying that I'm eager to forget my Eve, to erase the pain of grief and her memory along with it.

That is not what I mean at all.

What I mean is this -- I tend to center my life around causes.  Around issues.  Like eating disorders.  Like body image.  I always want my life to be all about this one issue.  To promote awareness of this one thing, and healing in that area.  I think that I am an activist at heart.



And now, I have the opportunity to have my life be about stillbirth.  About death.  I could easily throw myself into this activism and never look back.

And, perhaps, never move on.  Never fully heal.

So, when I wrote that to my friend, what I meant to say was that I am ready to leave the causes behind.  To not do so much as be -- be God's.  Be still.  Be loved, and be loving as a result.

We are all going to point to something, I think.  Every life says something..

I don't want my life to point toward death, to pain.  I want it to point toward life -- or really, toward Life.

These have been the first consecutive days where I feel able to throw myself on God.  Where I can look at what I used to believe and say -- Yes, that is still true, even after all this.  Now that the emotion of deepest grief has broken, at least for the moment, I see that God is still God, still trustworthy, still good, still the firmest bedrock.  That He does indeed offer Life and hope, even -- or perhaps especially -- when horror is all around.

I feel able to stake my life on hope again.