Dragging Feet

Have you ever wanted to keep dragging your feet so that you don't have to face something?  Did you normally find that once you did, you had relief?  Perhaps because it wasn't as bad as you had anticipated, or maybe just to have that particular thing behind you lifted weight off your shoulders?

That's how it has typically worked in my life.  I think back to school when I'd have a book report or speech due...I would dread that like the plague, and then feel like I had a new lease on life when it was behind me.  In "adult life," I have had several dreaded things that I've come through.  I have tried to handle them with dignity and grace.  I always thought that I'd be able to.  Being a planner, I figured that I had prepared so that I could handle most any situation that could arise with dignity and grace.  That dignity and that grace went out the window when Caroline died.  My daughter died.  I couldn't muster any dignity, and I lost all my grace.  The only way I have survived to this point is by the sheer grace of God.  I actually feel kind of like I'm running on borrowed strength, under someone else's power.  I feel fairly weak, fragile, broken.

I was blessed to be able to experience so much good since we lost Caroline.  We experienced so many good things in our dark days following her death; little miracles to a crushed family.  Then we got a great big candle in the darkness, our Addalee.  She is such a blessing to this broken mama.  I know that Caroline helped me to love Addie with a love that I didn't have before.  I am incredibly thankful for this.  Caroline brought so many beautiful things into my life, through her life and her death.  She still brings a smile to my face (and a tear to my eye) each day.

Now back to the foot dragging I was talking about earlier.  October is so close.  October.  It used to be one of my favorite months, and autumn one of my favorite seasons.  Now, I'm dreading it.  I'm ignoring it, well, as much as you can ignore the inevitable.  You see, autumn is a wonderful season.  The air is crisp and cool, the leaves are beautiful, there are football games, hay rides, ghost stories, bon fires, trick-or-treating, and in our family, it's birthday season.  My husband, mom, and I all have birthdays in October.  We didn't feel like it was a happy coincidence that Caroline was going to be an October baby too.  Just another person to celebrate!  However, now October holds something I dread.  Each year, will be another year further from her.  Each year I will celebrate how much I love her, how much she changed me, how much I miss her.  Each year I will reflect on where she "should be" this time around, what milestones we're missing with her.  This is hard to face.  I don't want to face it.  I want Octobers not to roll around.  I want an October-less year.  I know this can't happen, and that really, I don't want it to.  I don't want to take the easy way out, Caroline deserves more than that from me, as does Addalee.  But it's so hard to stand up tall, take a deep breath, and just walk into this when all I want to do is cry and cover up my head.

So as I stand here, nearing the end of September, and looking over the edge of October, I'm scared.  I'm scared, but I'm still moving forward.  That's what I have to keep doing...one foot in front of the other.  Not each step is pretty, but I keep taking them.

Having this girl here makes it seem a bit easier