normal

It's super late. Or super early. I don't know. I can't sleep. I was awake a little longer than this last night, too.  Last night I was working/sewing....tonight I was crafting some more...watching some old 90210...and looking through old photographs on the computer...back when things were normal.

I suppose it's...well, normal, to reminisce.  I know everyone does it.  But...for us, at least I think, it is different.  Honestly- I don't remember what it was like to be normal.  I don't remember what it was like when we had just Sawyer and we were able to load him in the car and "just" do anything- go to the zoo, go to dinner, go to church, go visit family.  I certainly have no idea what it is like to do that with two children.  It isn't like I'm missing that-- I seriously just do NOT remember how that feels.  I look at pictures of other families with their kids, and I think "We've never done that.  Ridge hasn't ever done that.  They look so happy.  WHY don't we get to have that?"  I seriously, really, literally do NOT remember that feeling, the feeling that I know was there two years ago. 

It's too late/early.  So normally, it is easy to just trudge on and block these thoughts, but you know how it gets when it is late or early and your mind is so tired it is sort of clear/easy to see things.  Everyone is asleep and I am the only one even remotely stirring in this house right now.  It makes me so sad that things aren't normal. That I can't just take my kids to go do whatever bc of illness, Ridge's lack of some vaccinations, Ridge's central line.  I haven't cried a lot of tears over all of that in a long while, maybe never, because I just haven't thought about it a lot.  But tonight it makes me sad.  I mean, really...REALLY, our life is so not normal.  And I know, normal is overrated, blah blah blah.  But seriously.  Some things are normal- I can type about what the kids got for Christmas, or how the boys have been sleeping in Sawyer's bed the last couple of nights, together, and it has been so cute....or how I have mountains of laundry piling up or how the fabric store didn't process my order correctly...there are things in our life that ARE normal.  But the big heavy ugly cloudy thing that is NOT normal is always there.  Even when we aren't realizing it, it is still there.  And I hate it.  HATE HATE HATE it. 

I'm not trying to be all "gloom and doom."  I'm just telling you how it is; and this IS how it is.  I know there are truths and promises and that we will come out of this and one day get to be normal again.  The thing is-- normal....will I even know how to be? 

It isn't fair. I'm not going to leave you with a bunch of encouragement and things to make you feel all good about yourself or your circumstances here, although I know those words exist.  I know what is true.  But even though Shadrach, Meshach, and Abedngo escaped the fiery furnace unscathed, surely they felt the heat.  Even with the mouth of the lion snapped shut, surely Daniel trembled just a little.  And while I have so so much to be grateful for, and while I know these trials are only temporary, and while I know the Lord has a greater plan and is doing a fantastic work in our lives through this....some days I just desperately want to be NORMAL.  And it just isn't fair.  It. Isn't. Fair.