Seven Years......

People kindly say I don't look my age, that I have lovely skin, that the way my hair has turned grey is actually pretty.  I don't disagree.  Outwardly, I think I look pretty well.

But my soul is crosshatched with lines, wrinkles and scars.  I got a few in my crazy childhood, a solid fistful from medical school, and divorce and single motherhood leave a mark or two.  Watching your kids struggle with chronic but common childhood illnesses skins you up some.  Watching academic struggles caused by a biological parents' drug or alcohol abuse:  That's a gut-kick, for sure.  Seeing your kids move into relationships of their own, making families, getting their hearts broken and being unable to help at all?  Radically painful.

And under and over and around it all plays the music of Babygirl's kidney disease. It isn't that the things that happen to her sisters have been or are small, or even transient:  They are enormous, life-changing, permanent.

But perhaps because Babygirl is still home, the day-to-day reality of her illness hovers more. The medication alarms (which the dogs now associate with their nightly treats LOL), the endless pill bottles, the habit of low-lighting to avoid increasing headache pain are all minute-by-minute reminders of our surreal version of reality.

So my soul sometimes sags like an old lady's boobs.

I have to confess that I've spent too much of the last nearly 8 years intermittently pissed about it.  I mean, I get that crap happens. I get we don't get to choose.  I get, I REALLY get, that God isn't doing this to her, to US, and that He will work with us to get us through it.

But our pastor said something Sunday. Something I've heard a thousand times in my life, but that somehow just sounded.....different....to me this time.  He was just preparing for communion, and quoting the passage where Jesus asks his Father to "let this cup pass from me."  Jesus knew, REALLY knew before He asked, that the answer was going to be, "No." And he was okay with it.  He just..... needed to ask.

I'm not sure why that comforts me so much.  Maybe because it's permission, in a way, to say to God, "Look, I KNOW there's no turning back, but you know I wish we could.  I'm just glad you don't hold that against me."

It makes it easier to be in my saggy, scarred soul, and be entirely grateful every single day that God gave me daughters who grew up to be my friends, Babygirl included.

Seven years ago today a team of doctors and nurses installed the kidney of a stranger into my little girl, and made her life infinitely better despite the day-to-day struggle.  That boy's parent's still mourn his loss every day. Pray for Jorge's family.  They will never not miss him.

DeeDee