I’ve never had a problem with emotions.
I also haven’t really felt myself lately.
And the two of those things have danced around each other for months.
For the first time in my life…I have felt positively non-emotional. It was sorta nice, actually…for a while , anyway. There were no tears the night before the first day of school. There were no tears the following morning during the drop offs. There were none on the river in Colorado…a place that generally tugs hard on my heartstrings. I didn’t cry when I looked into my grandmother’s faded, blue eyes and realized that her memory had faded even more. I didn’t cry when I loaded our cat into a pet carrier and drove him to his new home. I’ve watched sad movies…listened to sad songs…heard sad stories. And nothing.
Until today.
Today…I cried.
I cried hard.
Today I watched This Is Us. This is a quote from the pilot.
“But there is not a single day that goes by that I don’t think about the child that I lost. And I’m an old man now. I like to think that because of the child I lost…because of the path that he sent me on…that I have saved countless other babies. I like to think that maybe one day…you’ll be an old man like me…talking a younger man’s ear off…telling him that you took the sourest lemon life has to offer and turned it into something resembling lemonade. If you can do that…you’ll still be taking 3 babies home from this hospital…just maybe not the way you planned.”
A doctor was having to tell a new father that one of his babies had died before birth. And he shared his own experience on why he had become a doctor.
I tell you what. I sobbed and sobbed. I let out all kinds of pent up emotion that I didn’t even know I was carrying around inside.
Because a day never does go by. And I think I’m just realizing that one never will. And all of that is coming together with how we have allowed God to use the sourest lemon of my entire life to send us on a path that resembles lemonade. The truth will always be that we would never have adopted our daughter…or be a foster family for this baby boy if we had brought our babies home from the hospital. And that even though I didn’t bring my babies home from the hospital the way I planned…they are all around me. I brought them home in my heart. And it’s time that place is warm again.
It felt a little bit like Fall today. Finally.
Its was a perfect day for lemonade.