finding a voice

(for January 11th)
Since beginning this blog, the biggest discovery that I've made is my week has themes.  Natural themes... if I pay close enough attention, they are there without being forced or actively sought.


I watched "The Tree of Life" this week and it begins, "The nuns taught us there were two ways through life- the way of nature and the way of grace.  You have to choose which one you'll follow."


Later this week, I was trying to find something written by one of my favorite authors, Catherine Newman.  It was most likely a recipe as she has possibly the best vegetarian recipes I've ever found.  Instead, I found an article that was written about her experience with her friend going into premature labor during a trip to Italy-


"We sat on Sam's bed and marveled at her roommates, who lay around in their thong underwear, smoking cigarettes out the window and chatting into their cell phones, five minutes after giving birth... our brave, bright-hearted Sam shooed us away so we wouldn't make her laugh so much she'd accidentally push the baby out." 


but mostly this part...


"In the church, I force myself to look up into Mary's eyes, to study the twisted agony of her mouth... But standing before this stricken Madonna, surrounded by what I love most in the world, I wonder: Was an entire religion generated from a mother's most fervent wish that her child not be dead? The twinning of loss and love seems suddenly to explain everything: To devote ourselves properly to one another, we must brave love's terrifying undertow, which is grief. I am awed, suddenly, by our courage to love each other as recklessly as we do... this moment must be what people mean when they speak of grace."


Grace.  I need to follow the path of grace or be sunk by love's terrifying undertow.

I include the part about the Italian roommates because it always seems on my hardest days that I notice people like them the most.  I was already having a tough day on Tuesday when I took Henry with me to Starbucks to get coffee and a treat for him.  The only other people in the store were these three women, each with children under the age of one, all talking about how their babies were born premature, one of them by 8 weeks.  And now look at them!  Crawling and talking and one walking and happy.  It is a miracle, and I don't mean to make light of the fact they are doing so well.  (I also know also that is a bit contradictory to the story I just mentioned, but...) 


As they are telling their stories and comparing notes, I want to tell them, you dodged a bullet.  You are lucky.  Things don't always turn from scary to fine.  They know it and this urge to inform them is really crazy.  Its times like this I realize I must be bitter because all I think is I had a full-term, completely healthy child at birth and things have never been normal.  


But, and this is the craziest part, I firmly believe that one day they will be.  I think this is my grace... hope.