compassion, love, forgiveness

I eat well during the day.  Then I get home and work on getting fat on crackers and wine.  Or I do yoga and wake  up to sweet and thoughtful babies.  I smiled a lot today.  It was so nice-although a little awkward and odd...

I just find my life so damn surreal right now.  John dreams of an adventure across the country.  I dream of finding a home.  Aiden is always mad at me.  I tapped with him tonight.  That helped him some, but then I was putting him to bed, he went to kiss me, and was too playful I guess and banged into my nose.  All I did was say "ow"  and before I could even be goofy about it, he had thrown his blankets over his head and wouldn't stop yelling about how he was sorry and I was mad at him.  There was nothing I could do to help him understand I wasn't mad.  I think he just needs to be angry, upset, afraid at and with something that he knows will always be there.

I don't feel like I asked for, dreamed for, hoped for, too much.  I most definitely have been blessed to receive, in many ways, so much more than I could have imagined. I think of all the stories that have crossed my path in the two years since John's diagnosis:  an 18 month of bundle of cuteness in little boy pants, suddenly and inexplicably bleeding out in front of his family; so many loving attempts to have a child that ended in heart breaking loss and emptiness; a child defiant, nasty, demanding, needy, destructive and hurtful whose mother read libraries of books to learn how to support her, even after her husband up and left her;  so many mothers who lost their own fathers too soon; so many awful stories of cancer and her devil minions...I don't think we should even use the word "fair".  It pulls at something in the center of me that feels like it could be my soul.  It  makes little tears and cuts.

I miss being the one who smiled almost relentlessly. I will do everything in my power to keep that part of me alive, because my babies will love that part of me best;  because that part of me is my favorite.

I will try to find a way to fight to focus on:
compassion
love
forgiveness

for me, for my kids,

in the hopes that I will always chooses the strongest path toward life, even when I am covered in anger, tap dancing with death in ways that make too-deep connections,if not invitations to enter the fray...