Next Time

Next Time

     Ian,

We're almost passed this horrible year, aren't we?

 After writing some this morning I was more light; 

Felt you lifting me again.

 I invited God in and accepted Him again.

That is something, all things considered.

Thank you darling boy,

You are such a good son.

When we walked in the woods together just now, along the river, I jabbered on about all the things you used to do....the things we used to do together, and you walked along with me there

You most certainly did.

My weak and unfocused mind can barely keep a thought, but nonetheless your presence was strong and so warming. I smiled. I told you about my problems with a friend, my sadness and deep disappointment. I told you that Chris and Kenzie love you so much in the midst of their pain; and all the other stuff I am mad about or hurt about or confused about. I told all and you listened and I felt your head nod in agreement and fealty. 

You are on my side as I have always been on yours.

It is our special secret, this unity and blind loyalty to one another. You know my heart's odd ebbing and flowing, and you accept my imperfect soul.

I also said you and I were never going to lose each other and as I whispered it, I felt the certainty that transforms a wish into reality. I felt the melted wax seal of it on our love letter to each other. I said to you, "You are the strongest and most loyal person I have ever known, and once I love, I never let go." 

We might be strangers that meet one day in another life and suddenly know we've met before and form a smashing friendship. We might be born together off an island near Africa, a part of some crazy tribe that occasionally spears annoying Christians. We might be a in a pod of massive whales, plumbing the indigo waters where humans cannot go. I can hear the whale song as we would speak it. 

It is that real, that possible.

We may possibly be two small and exquisitely painted spiders on tiny dew-drenched webs, or two lacewings buzzing about in the night together around random porch lights to the rhythm of cicadas, then sleeping away the daylight in the cracks of an ancient oak.

We might be brother and sister, maybe twins, or Mother and son again. We might be 2 soldiers sharing nasty jokes and smoking weed, or we might be astronauts. We could be cliff swallows with fantastic mud mansions living in the constant reflection of Lake Amistad.

Wherever we end up next, I think we will be closer than ever,  tempered by the tears of this particular life.

I know this, Ian. Not too many souls figure out how to keep hands clasped on different plains, not many still can speak so clearly or hear so well as you and I. This is at least something, right?

If I ever shake this shroud away, perhaps there are angles to our love yet to be seen.

Love,

Momma

Sorrow's Companion

 Sorrow's Companion

Ian, 

Sorrow is a dance, they all say;

A back-and-forth

Swaying worse, then better, then worse again.

And in the end we must find our own way,

And in the end we find a measure of wisdom 

Gathering it up like acorns in the dark woods of sorrow. 

No one can help.

It is a solitary business.

But is grief my ally? Such an odd thought to imagine that my only steady partner through this year has been grief. Of course I have my family, friends...I have God....He is always with me, but as I have lamented so many times, God is not tangible. I must love and accept Him in abstraction. 

That's a part of the deal with God. 

You have to use your own imagination and faith

 And senses 

To detect

His elusive vapors....

sniff them and dig them out...

More truffles than acorns

 Is our Creator's elusive love.

But grief, now GRIEF is a solid companion I can feel with certitude. Evident, persistent, real. She is the wailing Mother, confused child, the terrified soldier looking down at the bloody place where his leg used to be...No imagination or faith is required, just life.

For me, grief arrived the day you left me, Ian. As I sat numb and transfixed at the thought of you gone, she slipped her shivering hand into mine and we began our walk. She is here with me every second of every day; never tries to lie to me or cheer me up, whether I am out in the world of the living or silent and still in bed.

She is truthful and she leans in.

I find that after a year of this shit show, her embrace is still the most authentic and honest moment of every day. I think she is my friend now. Without her terrible and tender presence I cannot seem to move. Henry Thoreau said, "To regret deeply is to live afresh." The deeper my sorrow and regret, the stronger I feel her arms tethered around me in agreement.

I do this funny thing at night sometimes.

On the cusp of sleep in the soft bed (on your mattress pad) I wrap my arms around myself very tightly. 

Too tight.

It's not even comfortable and it makes my shoulders ache. I give substance to my broken heart. It is how the feelings become flesh. Then I gradually relax of course, my strength wanes and I finally fall asleep....my body in agreement with my sorrow. She stays beside me even here, just on the edge of my sleep and waits like a small ember, ready for me to warm against in the morning. Then we start it all over again with the rising of the sun.

Then there is this surprising thing that happens sometimes. She gives me an unexpected blessing of sorts. She is a physical reminder that (for now) this sorrow is stronger than me and I cannot escape it, so I might as well relax against her and let go. Like skydiving, the jump is terrifying. The long fall is not a natural thing for humans, you know....

Because we are fixed on the fear of hitting the ground.

With my hand in hers, I forget the fear and can drift on the warm air a little while without gravity. It is nice. Then unexpectedly, relaxed and ready, she places both our hands on something pouring in from the Other side, from you my baby,  or from God. She draws my eyes or ears toward the miracle; a butterfly, a cloud formation, the wind chimes toning, or a blanket of fog. She makes me look and smell and hear it.....linger in it for a moment drinking it in. 

Together we know the Holiness of it.

Then we move on to the next wave of pain.

And I miss you

And I miss you

  And I miss you....

And She nods 

and knows.

                                                                                                 Love,

                                                                                                 Momma

Color Harvesting Dream

Color Harvesting Dream

    

      I dreamed I am in San Angelo, College Hills to be precise, within view of Ram Stadium. In a car with several people I know, we are going to see a couple that Dorothy Duncan knows.

      I am not sure if she is with us but I feel this is a mission or expedition that she sent me on.

     The house is an old 1950's style, with a sliding side door and a low concrete entrance on the side. Old fashioned brick I think. We drive right up to the entrance.

     Although the flowers aren't visible, it is evident that the couple have a butterfly-friendly habitat, because as I get out of the car, I am immediately surrounded by hundreds of butterflies.

 

All sizes, colors, and shapes....tiny and huge....translucent ones of pale green, tiny metallic, drab grey, light and dark. They are so thick that I feel them touching my body, my cheeks, my eyes. So thick I can feel their wings move the air and hear the fluttering. Exotic, from all over the world...delicate, intricate and beautiful. I am careful to not let them fly into my mouth or step on them. They surround me on all sides. Butterflies and moths blanket me and I am astonished and amazed. I feel them touch me, light on me and the breeze of their wings is light and so clear. I can hear fluttering in both my ears. 

      It was a transcendent moment and even in my sleep I think I knew it was a moment you gave me, Ian.                                                                                                                                                                                                        

                                        I am so careful not to breath one into my mouth.

     I go into the house and begin to talk to the couple. They are artists, researchers, or something. There are drafting tables with lights, art supplies and stools around as the man carefully scrapes the magnificent and luminous flakes of color from the wings of a giant butterfly. It is as big as a dinner plate and multicolored.  At first I am worried about the insect, but the man explains that after harvesting the color, the wings can regenerate. He carefully puts the butterfly back into a compartment so it can heal. 

     The pigment will be used to make paint, magnificent paint.....

     We talk for a while about the people we all knew in San Angelo and I think we talk about Dorothy. I am aware that I have had two lives in San Angelo....the one from my college years and the one I have now with Kenzie and Hudson. I tell the people Dorothy's story about Allen Savory and his method of preserving the land through the innovations he observed in Africa when he watched animals migrating across the savanna. The Savory Method, which has always amazed me, even all those years ago when she told me about him.....  and I wake up happy............. 

                                                                                                     Love, 

                                                                                                         Momma

The Spirit

The Spirit

Ian,

Its an odd morning; odd because it is bitterly cold. The kind of cold that keeps me on the cusp of sleep and hesitant to move from the sunken, memory foam womb of my bed. Odd because I am up at 5am on my longest work day, when I go in early to see my indigo-girl, lost and lovely druidish veterinarian dreamer....delightful Ms. C. Odd because I usually don't feel good getting up on these days but today I do.

It's an odd morning because I feel hope. So long gone that the remembrance of it is startling for a moment, like tasting food after a long hunger. My stomach doesn't quite know what to do. I registered you in that hope, lifting and helping me get excited enough about this neat client to want to get up. Excited. I am finally learning that you really are helping me.

It started last week, on the heals of a hard and eerie Thanksgiving. I just endured it but then the next day I spent with my two sisters going to Austin. Phyllis, our ambassador of  being in the moment, and sweet and joyful Tansy. We were a ship of fools, but lovely, happy ones for a day. They replaced a 20 watt bulb in my darkened heart, at least for the day and you were there.....I felt it. Then yesterday I found myself excited at finding some cool presents online for Christmas for our family, for Chris, Sarah, Kenzie, Hudson and Chase. Online is a new thing for me. It was fun and easy and different. I felt you nudging me, like saying...."Do it Mom....it's OK to do it differently".

Perhaps different is what I need? Perhaps Kenzie is right after all and this year it just needs to be different because what I wanted (all of us together in our living room) will never come again. Perhaps we all have to have the courage to pick ourselves up in this forced march and dare to believe there might be a new future waiting. Like the Jews who always wear their hats, just in case they have to leave at a moment's notice?

I resist  when people tell me "Ian is an Angel now, he's looking out for you." In fact, I hissed and spit venom at the very idea (until today). I say....how fucking shallow to reduce this to a Hallmark moment? today I didn't resist the thought. Today I acquiesced and agreed that perhaps you are my guardian...of sorts.

As I blew dry my hair and got ready to leave so early,  I started to remember that you WERE Christmas Spirit to me. When no one else could get me there, you could. You have always been my carbonation, my electric charge....my fuel. Are you all schooled up with Angel know-how and wrapping your long and lovely arms around this family as we pack up our familiar lives and walk out our doors  and toward a new life without you?

Ian, you are the most powerful soul I ever knew. You ARE the wind and the sun.....the healing warmth, the storm....the weather....unpredictable, consuming, refreshing, terrible and beautiful. Maybe you have harnessed the power now and you are back to lift us all up and bind our wounds.

Are you all trained up and fully armed? Are you unleashing your love on us.....Arch Angels carry swords, but you were always more carbonation, binoculars, and lasers.....220 volts in a 110 world.

At any rate, you armed with love is a formidable thought, Biggun. I can envision you with your arms around all of us nudging us into a new life.... fist to the sky as you announce:

"Mom, love Hudson and go see new things......create..."

"Kenzie...build and grow a fantastic, fun family...."

"Chris...invent, create...think....wonder....the answers are coming"

" Dad, heal your hate and sadness and find yourself again"

" And I will fuel you all....I will bring the Christmas spirit."

What a lovely present, baby boy. Good work Biggun. I want you to know I know....

Momma

Dreaming

Dreaming

     Last night I dreamed of you.

You came to me full grown, strong, complete.

Exactly like you should have been

Exactly like I expected once

Exactly the man I saw glimmers of LAST November.

     Still  my Ian, with a deep yet boyish voice,

Curious, bursting with energy and love. 

Long, strong arms and legs, squeezed into my car

That familiar blue Polo shirt, turquoise really.

You smelled so good and clean, like clothes off the line.

   Like a dream I had of Jesus 20 years ago

When He came to me, smelling close-line clean 

and I received the Holy Spirit. 

You smelled just like that.

     You showed up so quiet and real 

That is was as if you were home for a visit 

You, home from school or work.

You as the man I knew was inside.

You  as you almost were.

     We hugged and hugged and hugged

You wouldn't let go, just like always.

So close behind me that I could not tell

Where I ended and you began.

     Driving around some strange town

Talking about memories and things we saw

Talking about where to go to lunch

Talking about a Mulberry tree and grape vines.

     Then Phoebe barked and woke me up

Reality came flooding in as I lay still as death,

And reminded me of this horrible year

And you became thin, clear, and disappeared

And I was alone again.

I didn't cry, I wished I could.

Momma

      

Mad Manifesto

Mad Manifesto

Ian,     

I found this when I was reading Luke this morning. It's about my walk with God; 

No, I guess more like my 

fragile, 

sore, 

wounded,

 feeble limping with God. 

I haven't been walking so well lately. 

Like Miss Phoebe I have been struck by a truck again.

The rage of grief is so hard to carry, baby. It's a life saving instinct, but it can only carry me so far before it's burning leaves me alone on charred ground. 

Truth is, my scorched earth anger is just the back side of desperate sadness and longing for you. I long for you baby boy, and I long for God to gather me up and make me safe..snuff out the fire. 

I need the food of His love to stop this anger.....it is the hunger pains of starvation.

Did Jesus know rage? Is it time to write a new manifesto for my spirit?  Luke showed me a slightly different angle, a new direction, buried in the 6 stories of Christ I love the most....a woman anointing his feet with tears and oil, the four seeds, the calming of the sea,  the demons in the pigs, sending forth the 12, and feeding the 5000. Mysteries, stories. I've read them so many times, but this morning my spirit heard this. 

Maybe my inner manifesto to God comes to this...

One: Listen......listen hard when I am angry, listen when I am scared, listen when God whispers....and whisper He so often does, as soft as the sigh of a mouse. In as many moments as I can manage, listen....

Two: Love......Sunflower up. Turn my face toward this almost inaudible love. Reach my neck north toward Love. Reach my cheeks, eyes, nose, chin, mouth, and forehead toward the love and listen. Feel what this does to my heart, inhale it in. Exhale and learn. Love...

Three: Believe......Look beyond the barking of my rage and fight to hold onto the simple and maybe ridiculous notion that my heart knows. "If I am going to trust You with anything, I will trust You with everything." (Kathy Drago)

My outer expression of my manifesto to God comes to this...

One: Speak......deliver my gratitude to someone or something whenever I dig myself out of pain enough to do it. Smile, praise, appreciate You where ever I might see You. Give You some fucking credit for not turning away from my wild rantings with a Godly eye-roll and abandoning me to the gloom. If I can't feel grateful for anything else, appreciate at least THAT. Sit in the nest of knowing. As I think about it, gratitude these days, is something else besides a holy "thank you" bubbling from my lips. 

Gratitude can be sigh of surrender on the cusp of sleep. By God, I can do that. I can exhale and save the battle for another day. The softening around the lacy edges of my brittle nerves when I know You haven't left me.

Two: Release....all my human partners, friends, family...release them from the grip of my interminable disappointment in them.  Give them a Presidential Pardon....or 50 acres and a mule....unshackle them from my anger at not loving me enough to fix my shit show. I know they can't. And for those who have utterly failed me, let them go.

Extend, as much as I am able every day, unconditional forgiveness to them that is guilty, them that ain't, and them in the dangerous middle. Love them when they don't know how to love me, because as the Tai Chi practice I learned at 25 years says....

I love you

I bless you

I forgive you

I release you

after all, Anne Lamotte advises....

"If you are going to learn to practice forgiveness, you might want to start with something smaller than Hitler".

Three: Feed.....someone or something. Just meet some need, do the next thing and tie another knot in the broken cord of this net. If love is the pulsing force that binds and knits us all together...animal, plant, spirit, human, then perhaps a small, secret act of tribal defense is to feed some small part of some small thing, human or otherwise. Just do it when I can.  It's ok if it's just a bit of bacon or a tender thought. 

So I hand my manifesto back to you, Ian. Your homecoming 10 days ago, icy norther as a marching band, playing you in, didn't change what came next. You didn't stop Phoebe from biting at the wheels of a trailer, or my other injuries that came pouring in that week....More damn pain...but it was instead, a soft lift from behind, beside, beneath, and above me. I was suddenly carried and didn't even know I was going to need that. Not so much a gurney  as a thousand hands reaching up as I fell backwards into a mosh pit.

Like the silly, absurdly and completely understood and real appearance of a butterfly on a sick dog's head, saying....

"It's gonna be ok, I love you, Momma."

                                                                                             Momma loves you too, Ian

"See the dog and butterfly.
Up in the air he likes to fly
Dog and butterfly
Below she had to try
She rolls back down to the warm soft ground, laughing
She don't know why, she don't know why.......
Dog and butterfly

Well I stumbled upon your secret place
Safe in the trees you had tears on your face
Wrestling with your desires;

frozen strangers
Stealing your fires, the message hit my mind
Only words that I could find".

Heart

Blue Norther

Blue Norther

You came blowing back in before the blue norther Sunday, like kettling buzzards. For a while you have been silent and distant and unreachable. Then you came and I felt the height and weight and breadth of you all around me; in front, behind and beside me. I felt your warm arms like a shield.

Same as in your waking life, but different. Strong and well as a ripe melon. Gone the parts blemished and bitten by life. New.

You came because it was a bad week, but then again you always came through for me. 

You did it when you were a small boy,
You did it as a teen when most hate their parents,
You did it behind my back, speaking words of honor of me to others. 
You did it openly and lovingly.
You did it when you were starting to get sick, coming to me when I needed you and calling me, fighting with me and forgiving me and letting me forgive you.

And you are here now, not a sick young man, but a vital, pulsing force of life. You know our little family is shattered and you are bringing the glue. Changed, and yet the same. 

Sunday was hot and still like the sucking in of the breath before the plunge. 

Monday came the winds and rain, and the temp had dropped 40 degrees. A pal of winter was draped over everything. It was in this surge of nature that you came back.

It happens like that sometimes, you know....

Things can change suddenly.

A person can be so lost

And in a second found again by love.
Gathered me up before the storm.

You were there and had me
 I was relaxing again

And into your arms.

It was an unexpected joy to feel you again. For a while I felt you were the parent and I, the child.

                                                                                                  Love,

                                                                                                            Momma

The Comfort of the Desolate

Desolation

     Nature is disrespecting my grief. Twelve inches of rain chooses dry and forlorn September and has created a false Spring. 

I don't want it.

I squeeze my eyes shut and refuse the hope.

Still, though, my gaze is drawn to the dew on my Bermuda grass, as blue as a sleepy baby's eyelids;

the chill in the air finds my skin.

An immigration of every kind of fungi and mushroom has invaded the borders of my potted plants. They live.....and

I am stabbed again.

How can hope survive? 

How can the world ignore the tremendous disappearance of YOU?

                                                                 

How can the essence of YOU be reduced to just a measure of chemistry; how could the carbon in your cells disperse and reform and go back into the Earth, my son? I don't accept it. 

I can't.

     Yes, yes...I can imagine everything being "ONE" and visualize that you are now a part of all of nature;  the "Circle of Life".....bu that is just the light in the closet people turn on to scare away the monsters waiting there. They want me to shut up and feel better so that they can get on with life: so they can get back to their dinners and husbands, and children, and grandchildren, and jobs, and politics, and dirty dishes.

Sure, there may be some great big cosmic system at work; our souls may precede this life, and continue after.........

But not Today.

    Today I need  a grey sky;

A moaning gale;

Today I need dark, hopeless frost on barren trees.

I need empty, dusty fields.

I need wastelands.

Orwell.

Nietze.

Leonard Cohen.

You are gone.

You are gone.

You are gone.

And as cruel as this announcement seems, there is something more cruel. That's why I need howling winds across icy steppes and relentless and endless rolling seas. I need Nature to wrap her arms around me in agreement of the deep darkness of this. 

You are gone.

And I must stay.

I miss you Biggun. 

                          Momma

    

24

24

I couldn't write on your birthday, but I got through it somehow. Sometimes the only thing to do with pain is to look away for a bit and breath. 

At your memorial run, Augustine said he could see you behind me, your big arms holding me up. You were smiling down on me, he said. He said you would always take care of me. At first I didn't think I felt you, but I did feel strong and capable and the day went so well. Maybe it was your strength that flowed through me all morning. 

You or Source or God or Jesus.

Maybe all of you together,

A splint of sorts.

Remember Ralph Waldo Emerson's words about the sun?

                         "It shines and warms and lights us, and we have no curiosity to know why

                         this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, 

                         and mosquitoes, and silly people."

Well, maybe the good energy I felt come to me yesterday as the runners came and went in their little family groups and I stood alone without you there; the energy that kept me positive, warm, loving and whole was you. Perhaps you really are a part of Spirit; part of Source after all. As Rodney Crowell says, maybe its "God and Krishna and Minnie Pearl, too." Perhaps your essence has been poured into the sacred Vessel of all souls, and you really were there with arms around me. El Rey

This morning I am thinking of light and energy as I read Luke, and how Jesus called out the demons from a person as they shouted recognition of Him. As they shouted that He was the Son of God,  He willed them to leave, pulled them out and sent them away. It was significant that He ignored the shouts of truth from the mouths of evil....  Jesus wouldn't even allow the demons to proclaim to the crowd that He was the Son of God.

Why?

Lots of possible reasons,  but this came to me this morning as I read Luke.....

Evil thoughts can attach to my "truths", like a cancer cell attaches to a healthy one. Half truths....but nasty and confusing, they drag me under the water like a creature swimming beneath me in the deep that grabs my ankle and pulls me under. 

I am praying for God to pull the healthy part of my grief away from the foul and dying thoughts that might attach to my sorrow. I have no idea which of my mind-fucking thoughts are evil, as grief fogs my senses and weakens my heart. I know this:

I have these demon thoughts.

You had them too, Baby.

But they hold no sway,

As long as

We hold true to each other.

Recently, Pastor Carlos mused with me about the wonder of our strange and unique connection, you and I.  I told him I know you and I have known each other since the beginning of all things.

 

We came from the same star, I said.

He sidestepped my sacrilege, smiled and suggested to me that we were so connected for a reason, as Mother and son. We grieve as big as we love, he continued, and now I feel lost without you because the work is not done, the work of our two souls. 

He said maybe one of my purposes 

in the time I have left

 might be

 to pick up the gauntlet and continue our task; 

to keep leaching out these thoughts for us both,

 tied as our destinies are to each other,

 like twins that share one heart. 

I am to continue to raise my fist against the darkness

 and lift up my terror to God in healing

 for the both of us.

 Finish our work.

Your Mother says this is my pledge to you,

 my son,

 as I arm myself and chase down the dark lies

 that plague me\

and made you so weary...

So very very weary my love.

These lies ( and I know you know what they are),

 hold no sway over us anymore.

And may this be your birthday gift from me.

 

Love,

 Your Momma

The Momma Pact

Motherhood

 I'm reading about Elizabeth's miraculous pregnancy with John the Baptist and Mary's pregnancy with Jesus. Both were devoted to God, or so Luke says, but both were dubious...could this really be happening? Two vessels, charged with bringing forth the herald of Christ and the Christ child himself. One very old and one too young. Both chosen. Why? Why are certain people sometimes plucked out of the garden of humanity for special missions? Is everyone hand-picked for a small or lark task, or is there a cosmic "pecking order", or does God single some out for the really important tasks? And why?

Mary and Elizabeth had the extra boost of feeling the blessing that was bestowed on them through the receiving of the Holy Spirit. Not in a tiny trickle, but a great big shot. It was so powerful that John jumped in Elizabeth's womb, as if a small bomb went off. 

They got a sure sign.

Angels came with trumpets.

 I envy that.

 Imagine being given a sure sign, instead of a vague mish-mosh of "maybe's or possibly's". 

I got jipped.

I didn't get jolt of the Holy Spirit, Ian, but so many times I have felt immensely blessed and anointed to be your Momma. In fact, God bestowed a sacred charge on me too, even in my commonness;

I accepted a  special appointment to raise you-

Sometimes I remember thinking that I was the only one on earth who could understand and love you fiercely enough to tolerate and appreciate your fire.

Your rebelliousness matched mine, Ian. 

We cocked our heads as others said "Why" and retorted..."Why Not?"

 I am so glad I was your Mom.

 I got you, and our souls knew each other.

From you as a baby laying in my arms and the secret craving I had to be with you all the time, to the dirty-fingered, flat-footed barefoot toddler carrying fists full of rocks and feathers; to the young child following me through the house asking question, after question, after question. Such wonderful and deep questions. Curious hands, curious mind, and a curious heart. Zero patience for waiting....you just needed to know it all NOW.

I loved the things about you that annoyed others..."fuck them", I secretly thought... and I think you secretly knew that I was thinking that...what a nice thing we shared. So of course I felt blessed that you and I belonged to an exclusive club of rebellious, curious seekers.

 God how I love that  I got you.

So blessed that even when you got sick and  broke my heart, somewhere inside I kept an iron vault filled with unending forgiveness.

Immediate

Complete

Unending

 God gave me that as well.

 It came with the package of YOU.

When the blessing turned, it landed as a sudden and icy slam to my soul. The very fire that fueled our love: that fueled your earthly course.....was suddenly frozen and gone. Gone. It was as if  the golden ribbon to which we were both clinging; the tether I held for 23 years, slipped from my fingers and you floated along with it off into the vast unknown. GONE. I don't feel blessed anymore, baby. For the first time in my life...I do not feel blessed.  It is a horrible feeling. 

Did Mary and Elizabeth feel the same shock and horror when their son's fell? Imprisoned, beheaded, crucified? 

I like to imagine that all the historians had it wrong. Maybe they punched their fists in the air at the seeming betrayal and unfairness of it as I so often do, and questioned the wisdom of Divine Will.

So here is the lonely truth;

The darkest place; 

The nastiest riddle.

Mothers of great souls have to eventually read the fine print and accept the end of the story along with the blessing of being bound to such wild souls. It is the place I live these days alone, as I imagine Mary and Elizabeth did; perhaps hoping to hear (as I do) the sweet voice of a loving God.

                                                                                            Love,

                                                                                                         Momma