Day 21: Bad Day

Today started off innocently enough.  I tried to put my mean-spirited in-law's tirade behind me, but I was still feeling a bit melancholy.  Then my friend went home and took her sunshine with her, but my kids and I busied ourselves with finishing up my daughter's room by painting the closet (the only part of the room my friend would trust me with!) and tearing up the old carpet.

About an hour into our project, my brother arrived to help with the "man stuff" like carrying out the old carpet, hanging my daughter's door, and constructing my daughter's antique brass bed.  All was well, until my husband called, and I found out that his week had been almost as horrible as mine.

He loves us, and he misses us, and he had such a cruddy week that he thought about bagging it all and coming home.  And I love him, and I miss him, and I had such a cruddy week that I thought about begging him to come home. But he doesn't want to be a quitter, and I don't want him to quit, and he spent a good part of the conversation saying, "Don't cry, baby.  I love you. Please don't cry.  It will be okay."  So I didn't cry...until I hung up.  Then I locked my bedroom door and fell apart.

It took me a little while to regain my composure, but I did, and I got back to work on the bedroom project.  Then the phone rang, and it was my oldest son who is away at college.  He was tired and discouraged and worried about one of his classes, and all he wanted to do was come home.  But his vehicle broke down last week, and he has no way to get home.  And my heart ached for him, and I just wanted to give him a big hug, but he's there, and I'm here, and all I could do was tell him that I love him and I'm praying for him.

After getting off the phone with my oldest son, I went to go pick up my 17-year-old son, who had gone with his best friend last night to be with him at the hospital while his mother died.  I am SO proud of my son for being there in that way for his friend, but I hurt for him, too.  Who does that at age seventeen? (My son's friend's mother didn't die last night; she died today on her son's birthday.  And my heart aches for him, as well...)

And every where I looked today there was pain, and heartache, and grief, and trauma, and loss, and I don't think that I can do this...except that in the midst of it all there was laughter, and love, and beauty, and hope.  So maybe, just maybe, I can do this after all...