Over and over I heard groaning from the other room. It's midnight, I'm so tired and I'm determined to sleep and wake and run. I've already gone in the room multiple times, there isn't really a good solution to comfort enough that buddy doesn't feel the hand, foot and mouth pain. He has the nastiest virus. Stephen and I bicker and go our own ways, we are all worn down.

I wake today and i see stars, its crisp and clear and i crave the fresh air and movement. I am afraid of the dark but I am more afraid of stillness right now, so I am grateful to meet a running buddy and see the glow of the lake from the moon. its big and bright and i am so comforted by its beauty and grandness. it keeps me appropriately small. when all of life is asking me to be so big.

this is my new season, one I am staring in the face and choose to commit to, and yet while being assured of my place and timing, I am almost wholeheartedly afraid. How will I watch my mother die? Already I know that death in and of itself is not likely to be the hardest part, it is all this change, all the realignment, all the disappearance of what was. Staring at death is hardly going to be about the day I lose my mother, but about each of these days how I am battling out the confusion and change of my family. of me. death is already hollering my name in so far as life as i understood it to be, the full life, has been flipped on its head. the beautiful table setting has had the linen yanked from underneath and there are beautiful familiar pieces spread all around but the settings are no longer in place.

My season is really saying yes to receive my son. i've been half participating in his welcome and I didn't totally know until the courts named aloud he was to be our son forever more. so like a pregnant woman who uses the time with the growing womb to accept and endear to her child, I am still only 5 months pregnant in some ways, accepting and learning along the way, but mostly just keeping the daily nurturing afloat. this season is for us buddy, for me to know you more, and for you to find deep rest and assurance in our home. we are forever your family, and so very blessed to be so.

so I step in. to this huge and feeling rather impossible season of daughtering and mothering. of growing love and life with a one year old to watching life go with a strong and beautiful 66 year old mother. how oh how, and yes, oh yes, i do.