when the drugs wear off

I remember easing into the car three times. My insides ripped raw, a new baby cradled next to me. I remember floating home wondering at the joy, this new life beside me.

I don’t remember the ride home after I had been torn to shreds and my arms were empty. Not a drug in my system, I was numb with grief. Shrouded in it’s grey lostness, I stumbled through days and months pierced only by the delirium of loosing him. I shut everything out and tried to sew my life back together. Cloth fed through the sewing machine, needle and thread clicking, putting  pieces back together. Crafting quilts and silly dolls, wishing for such an easy way to mend my existence. God held me muffled in His embrace.

And then I was pregnant, a fragile hope nestled dangerously inside of me. My hormones a drug, removing me from the reality of an empty cradle and filling me fertile. All I could see was growing this child and bringing him safe here to me.

And then my arms were full and he was close at my breast. There is no drug like a newborn babe. I wrapped my every minute around him, life not extending much past the wisp of his golden hair. We huddled close my three sons and I around books and the garden, homebaked bread and long long naps. My man he kept going off to work to keep our world spinning and sometimes we slid close together in the night and sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes we held hands through the brokenness mending and sometimes we didn’t. What we could not share weighed heavy between us. He will never know the feeling of a child dying within his own body, holding death within oneself as I did.

And so I nursed and nursed and nursed my new and healthy son, quite a drug that is.

There were moments when the fog lifted, when I came up for air and realized the sky had cleared a bit or glimpsed fearful the darkness still pressing. There were times I noticed with rejoicing that the scars were fading. And times I longed to be held in those excruciating moments of losing, if only to be close to him again.

A thousand times I thought I had woken up from the grief, gotten sober off the newborn euphoria… and then, then there is the moment the drugs wear off, when the emotions of pain and survival, and hope all just stop

the moment you realize there is no undoing the past, what I had hoped for is lost. Lost into the deep sea of death and there is no retrieving it. That is that. Lost.

a child, a home, a marriage, parents, friends, your health, your  dreams, seasons of joy – whatever your loss, this is the moment to despair . . . or to heal, to truly heal

This is now the decision, let bitterness sink down roots too tough for pulling up – One moment of disaster leading to a thousand more losses, life unraveling in a way never expected so that it is hard to see the beauty still left. Or decide to allow your soul to be sewn back together. Sewn with stitches gentle enough to let the wind blow free through rooms reserved for those treasures that have been taken. This is the time to kneel down and see the beauty brokenness has given and whisper a prayer to your healer. A prayer of thanks when the drugs have worn off.

This is where I stand, I think. The disaster struck sharp and quick, each aftershock buffeting my senses until the only known way through the fog was toward survival. But the healing, that is the tricky part, the part you must live for the rest of your life. Without this deep wound I might miss my need for healing – healing from everyday woes, from my own sin, from each relationship flawed and vulnerable. I don’t want to walk anymore with a limp, a crutch, always an excuse. I want to stand strong and honestly awake enough to miss him more everyday until we meet again. Not numb, bargaining or needy. Accepting the pain deep enough within to give it to my God and find healing for this bitter, broken soul.

( images taken with Hasselblad on a foggy morning and developed at home )