Saying Goodbye to Last Year

"Oh what fragile things we are.

Skin and bones house glass hearts.."

Those are the first lines of a poem I've been hearing in my head for the past few months but haven't flushed out into anything resembling poetry yet. It resonates with me every time I hurt or hear of someone else hurting.

It's been about five months since I've written anything. Sometimes I don't write because I don't feel like I have anything to say. Sometimes I feel like I'm the least qualified to give any words of encouragement or advice. And sometimes I just wonder if anyone cares. There are a lot of blogs out there in cyberspace.

 I saw a clip of an Ellen DeGeneres Show where she had as her special guest a woman named Jacqui Saldana. A woman whose story is rife with tragedy, and who now writes a blog about how she is coping. Ellen was on the verge of tears saying that her blog has really inspired her. It kind of made me want to write again. It reignited something inside me that made me realize that the reason I write is two parts because I need to verbal vomit out all of the stuff that swirls around inside of my head, and also one part because I really, really love humanity. I want us to inspire each other, and I know we can only make it in this world if we come together. Isolation kills because it is the opposite of the very purpose we were created for- relationship.

So, I sit here with my coffee that's too cold, that I'm scared to heat up because I don't want to wake my son with the microwave, and tell you what's going on in my world.

Today marks the one year anniversary since I lost someone very important to me. I can still hear her voice in my head. I've come to hope and pray that I don't forget what she sounds like. What her smile looked like and how she smelled. I still have some of her sweaters that, one year later, still contain the smell that gave me peace so much as a child.

Nanny was my peace. My safe place. She was the one who I always knew loved me, no matter how bad I was, or what I had done. Nanny knew what it meant to love. She knew that people needed it and you could sense the urgency in her delivery.

I knew it was close. That I would get the call. Her illnesses had beaten her down and I knew she was not well. I remember the moment at the school. Taking a break from my job to sit along the fence and cry for a minute before gathering myself to go see her. I remember seeing her body, lifeless. A shell. Nanny wasn't there. Something in me changed. The world was a little colder. A little less bright.

A month or so later my son, my reason for being, my baby Jesus on this earth, was diagnosed with a genetic disorder. Fanconi Anemia. It would cause his bone marrow to fail and his life to possibly be shortened.

There were many, many tears. I was awakened to a world I had not known existed as though I was dreaming all along. Parents everywhere were fighting and losing their children. I sometimes still sit in the bathtub and cry. I ask God why he lets mothers feel so much and why kids have to go away sometimes. I cry for the pain I know they feel and for the mothers whose struggles have been much more difficult than mine.

I don't like how much and how deeply I've hurt over these past few months. There has been a cloud over my life and I can sense it in others I love too. Our world has been shaken. Shaken to its core.

I've come to question everything I know about life and God and myself. I told myself that 25 would be the year. The year I finally made sense of things. The year I finally started living. I guess that year would have to wait for me to learn a few more lessons first.

I don't feel like I've quite turned the corner. I am however, glad that Christmas is coming. A lot of people might say Christmas is about Santa, or "Christmas spirit", or even is a pagan waste of a holiday. But for me, Christmas is about a baby that was born in a podunk little town, called Bethlehem. His birth means something to me. Even though I don't always believe wholeheartedly or sometimes I wonder if he really has things under control like he says he does, I can't stop the feeling I get when I hear "Oh Holy Night".

Christmas speaks to my tired heart. It tells me that someone came to fight the fight for me. Came to rescue me from the struggle. Told me that in this world "I would have trouble", but that I should take heart, buck up, and be brave, because he "had overcome this world".

I don't always know what that means, but I feel the brokenness of our world every day. All of us can sense that something is wrong.

I've come a long way around a few strange shaped mountains in my faith over the past few years. I took the fun journey that most kids take in their early twenties where they question their faith and their existence. And let me tell you. It's not fun. Being smart, or a free thinker, or creative type is all fun and games until you start to wonder too hard.

I've come to sit on the side of the fence where I see humanity, see my heart, see my emotional needs, and realize the deep, deep need I and all of us have for a savior. Christmas provided that savior.

So even though my Nanny is gone, and my life is not perfect, I will look to the baby in the manger until I lay my head to rest, because he answers my questions. He gives me the way to life and the way to cope with this messed up world. He gave my Nanny a story. He filled her life with joy as she served him with all of her heart. I want to be just like her.

"And though we be but fragile beings,

we are destined for greater and greater things..."