Just Write {175}

Somewhere it was said that it was the coldest Valentine’s Day in seventy some years, in this here great state of Minnesota. The boys went with Auntie K for a good part of the day, and Elsie and I had some time together. We went out for lunch, slurped some noodles together, we picked up movies, and ran from door to door, never spending more than thirty seconds outside.

It is the kind of cold that bends you up, tightens your muscles and keeps them stuck. It is a searing frozen fire, swiping at your skin. It wears us down by now, we hearty Minnesotans, makes us want to hide. The elements will do that. Life will do that. All the things we cannot control, will do that. And still, while dreading the cold and then rushing through it all day, Elsie must have said “I love you” at least 25 times. She laughed a lot too, and smiled all the time. She was happier than a kid at Disney, to be having Just Mommy and Elsie time.

The cold of this week started to settle in, grow more stubborn, just as life started to shift again. Several stressful things were happening, and I knew in my heart-gut that something was coming. And these changes…yes, more than just one, several actually, are hard ones.

Change is terrifying. I want to hold on, control, pull, push, love hard enough to change everything to what I believe it should be. So the lesson I clearly still need is this: I am powerless over so much, and it is good to let go, get out of the way, let grace take its course.

I hate this lesson.

I love this lesson.

I am angry and hurt and tired.

I love you.

I hate this.

It’s going to be okay.

I called the clinic bright and early Monday morning, asking again for the results of an echocardiogram Elsie had done last week. The doctor called back and what he said, I needed to hear. I needed to know. Just give me the information so I can start to come to terms with it. Please just let me know where to surrender, give me a place to put this down and think on it a while.

He said Elsie has a hole in her heart that will most likely need surgery, that we need to see a Pediatric Cardiologist from the U of M. That’s where we will learn more details about what this hole means. This wasn’t enough information but it is what we can have right now. We will wait again, and all I can think is, Elsie should not have a hole in her heart but she does. 

I want to take it and make it a hole in my heart instead. I would you know, in a heartbeat.

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This is the 175th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {New here? Please see the details.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. (Then link back to this post in your Just Write post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

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