7 Friday Takes: Run for the Hills

Tanara, Josh Butler, Trying to Pray, Grief, Everyone and No one, Botoxing the Bride's Maids, and Trying To Figure Out A Book Group

Phew! Made it to Friday. Of course, that’s when the real work begins. You kind of slide through the week, and then have to climb up the steep mountain of loose ends to get to Sunday. Let’s see, maybe there are some Takes.

One—Praying and Grieving

This is really tragic and good—Cat writes about trying to grieve in the middle of life going on:

It is hard to write about a grief that is not primarily your own. My brother and sister-in-law bear the hardest burden of all, and Joshua's story is rightly theirs to tell, in their own words. But all of us have been praying for him from a distance, and poring over every photo, and waiting through nights for updates to the family text. On Sunday, we were all avidly following the updates as his vital signs gently but inexorably dropped: heart rate 90, heart rate 30. Heart beat was not detected; in the arms of the Lord now. I had thought, somehow, that I would be at home when the message came, ready to receive it, but I was out in public, in the bright sunshine. Joshua never saw the sun in his 4 1/2 months of life, except perhaps as he was being airlifted to Children's in Philadelphia. Except for the moment of his birth, he was never free of wires or IVs or tubes. He was held once by his parents when he was conscious, as a bright-eyed newborn. Even trying to find a place to grieve is difficult in a busy house. As I sat in the rocking chair in my bedroom (with the door that does not latch, with the lock that's fallen off and now lives on the mantel) trying to cry somewhere out of the public eye, kids kept coming in, looking for something or wanting to use my bathroom.

I keep saying to God that I need more time to think. The list of things to pray about alone is like trying to hold onto a handful of sand at the seashore. I keep scooping up the handful and trying to say all the things I want to say to God, but as I do the grains slip away and I’ve lost them. Then I forget that I was even trying to pray and find myself in the car listening to some alarming or strange podcast. By the end of the day, I’ve run and run and haven’t thought anything.