During our vacation, a month long visit to California from Spain, one of our sons (17) was assualted. He was fortunate to have only a fractured cheek bone, loose teeth and a serious concussion. He could have died from the blows to the head and resulting concussion. Both his injury, and the way it was handled (not taken to the doctor nor police report filed,) has caused me great pain. Enrique and I took him to the doctor a couple of days later when we realized what had happened. We think about our distance apart from our California kids. I don't know if anything would improve by being closer, however, but the feeling of helplessness that comes from not being able to better protect one's children, even whey they and another parent make choices that are out of one's control, is overwhelming.
Elizabeth Stone wrote,
"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."
That's it. Multiplied by four. Four, far, far away. I'm a living breathing ghost, a Llorona, who cries through the streets for her children. Empty nesting came too early. Ours were children who were unable to choose their family's dynamics, but able to choose paths of freedom too easily. And they are doing so. I am a mother and woman who wanted and still wants to shape and mold their future. Central in homeschooling 14 years and family life was that we have real relationship with God and with each other. That we love always.
I really wrestle with God, that this was a good goal, and yet it and I failed miserably.
That mission, my family, has been my life. I find I'm still, nowin a new and wonderful marriage and life, incredulous at the outcome, given that my understanding of God and His word was, and is, the unity of family. My inability to love a spouse away from violence, to create lasting traditions and haven for our offspring, and to overcome the odds with a victory that would be God's alone, has left me so wounded that I sometimes stop breathing. I'm a mother nursing her infant who is suddenly torn away from her breast. I once saw a video of a cow whose calf had been immediately taken after birth, a common stockyard practice. She cried and bellowed for her baby for hours and hours, days, until she was weak and ill.
Now, one might say, and I'm aware that God loves me and knows the solutions; that He can and is in the business of making our paths straight, but my question is, will He? Will He intervene? Will He still make new what is so broken? Will He continue a good work? Did he, after over twenty years of prayer? Why did I believe for so long that He would knit the right materials into the fabric of my family's life? Is it possible that my short-sightedness isn't allowing me to see His sovereign hand now?
And, of course, who am I to question God? What is really important in the end when one has lost so much? What can be done for one who has lost her hope, and with it her joy?
My mind drifts often to Ecclesiastes. I first read it after my grandfather and then dear grandmother's death. No need to copy and paste those words of disillusionment. But, I really relate to Solomon, one who saw the futility in life and humanity.
He, the wisest man on earth, in his final words said,
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear (respect) God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
Lord, please give me sleep.
Give me peace.
Hear my prayer.
