Growing Up

My life has been scarily "normal" lately.  I traveled to New Orleans this past weekend for my best friend's wedding, I have been going to work a little bit and spending as much time as possible outside with the boys.  From the outside, I think I look like I'm doing good.  Maybe at those times, in those moments, I am.  However, my pain on the inside is still so very raw and real.  I think at the beginning, I was so shocked and traumatized I could not even function.  Then, I started the "trance" mode where I could not concentrate or tear my mind away from Webb and the horrific end result for even one minute.  But the past week or so, I have felt a slight shift.  A small part of my mind is coming to terms with the fact that life really does go on.  As much as I've said it on this blog, I think a minuscule part of me finally started to believe it.  I still want time to rewind to December when I had Webb in my arms.  I would give ANYTHING for that.  But time does not rewind, no matter how bad we wish it would.  It is March.  Soon it will be summer, then fall, then Christmas again.  And we still will not have our precious Webb.  So what is my option?  Stop living?  Stay in bed?  That would be too easy.  Instead, I have to keep one foot in front of the other.  I have to live each day as though there will not be another, because we have been hit in the face with that reality a little too soon and a little too harshly.  I have to go on, for Zac, for Bo, for Whit...even for Webb as hard as that seems.  I have to push forward and tell you all about this journey so you know that life does go on in the midst of unthinkable despair.  God has not left my side.  There were times I almost wanted Him to so I could be as angry as I wanted to be.  And I still get so angry, but He does not leave.  I picture Him seeing me as a spoiled child, stomping my feet because He didn't give me what I wanted, much the same way as Bo and Whit do when I tell them they can't have cookies for breakfast.  Why??  I keep asking Him.  "You'll understand when you grow up," He answers, just as I do when Bo and Whit ask me the same questions.  Of course, "growing up" is not easy, and I may never be fully "grown," at least not in this lifetime.  I have to hope when God's plan is revealed, it will make perfect sense why Webb is not with us.  It will not happen in this lifetime, but I have faith it will happen.  Right now, I have to focus on my perfect angel up in heaven, waiting for us, but not impatiently.  I have to live this life with no regrets.  This life of losing a child is painful and real and scary, but it is my life.  I will make the best of it, no matter how hard that is to do.  So when you see me laughing, smiling and enjoying the real world, it is not because I am in denial.  (Oh, how I almost wish for denial.)  It is because at that time, at that moment, I am enjoying life.  Fortunately, there are about a million moments in my days no one except God will ever see....and it is in those moments and those times I feel His love the most.  He wills me to go on when I cannot fathom it.  Every morning, He helps me out of bed and into the world.  Most of you will never see the struggle I go through just to leave the house.  But somehow, some way, I do it and I sometimes even enjoy it.  Then, there are times I do not enjoy it and the simplest things become too much.  Today at work, a situation that usually I would let roll off my back sent me into hysterics.  The pain of losing Webb is still always at the front of my mind, and that is a hard thing to function around.  There is not a moment that goes by that I do not think of him.  But I keep living because of him, for him.  And by the grace of God, I keep pushing on.