Green Pastures

The past few weeks have been intense, for lack of a better word. Loving broken people comes with a price sometimes. 

When she told me she was pregnant again, hope surged into my heart. Before, she only told me she had been pregnant after the question of whether to bring a little life into her own young, single one had been terminated. This time, she looked at baby clothes and we read baby name books. We cried and dreamed. I loved the little life inside her almost as much as I love her. I asked some of my closest friends to join me in praying for both her and her baby's lives... they both seemed fragile and a bit precarious. Instead of just praying, one newly-married friend and her husband offered to take the baby as their own, whether temporarily or permanently, whichever she wanted. I made sure she ate nutritious food, stroked her hair and held her when she dizzy and sick, and assured her she was not alone with this child. Every ounce of my hope, fear, and love I poured into begging prayer.

But still she chose.

And the baby is gone.

This grief is a twin valley. One for the little person I loved but will never hold; a life that will never be lived. Another for her. This baby seemed to be a chance at redemption, a tug toward taking responsibility for her actions. She seemed to miss the wonder and awe of nurturing the beginning of a whole little person inside herself. Instead of a growing love, she had a pressing question. It seems she's had to turn off a part of her soul, and I hardly recognize the shell of a girl she's become. 

When the ceiling of life falls in, nothing is sacred from the havoc, dust, and exposure. Every day, questions you never dreamed you'd ask fly up through the holes at God. 

But even in valleys, God opens His hands and provides green pastures. New friends, exercise and rain, a surprise visit from my dad, colorful lollipops to send to my sisters, and moments that renew hopes I had almost forgotten, moments that make me feel young and dauntless. 

Summer will come again, with its sunshine, rest, bare feet, and pure joy.

P.S. Anna, I found this picture on my phone and it made me resolve to visit you and your hammock sometime this summer. :)