song

I heard this song last night and I think it pretty much sums up my life right about now:



Colbie Caillat "Older"

Waited all my life for this day to come
I feel like letting go
Life goes on
Wasting no more time
So much to be done
Everything works out
So they say
Over my shoulder
It's tough getting older
Yeah, yeah

Seems like nothing is black and white anymore
Shades of gray and I feel a weight over my shoulder
It's tough getting older
I always thought that I knew where I'd want to go
Now I'm here and I find that I'm still getting colder
It's kinda tough getting older

Here before my eyes
Many roads ahead
Time for me to choose one way now
If I take a chance
What lies down the road
Feeling so confused
Turned around
On and on
On and on
Yeah, yeah'

Seems like nothing is black and white anymore
Shades of gray and I feel a weight over my shoulder
It's tough getting older
I always thought that I knew where I'd want to go
Now I'm here and I find that I'm still getting colder
It's kinda tough getting older

Waited all my life for this day to come
I feel like letting go
Life goes on
Over my shoulder
It's tough getting older
Yeah, yeah'

Seems like nothing is black and white anymore
Shades of gray and I feel a weight over my shoulder
It's tough getting older
I always thought that I knew where I'd want to go
Now I'm here and I find that I'm still getting colder
It's kinda tough getting older

Seems like nothing is black and white anymore
Shades of gray and I feel a weight over my shoulder
It's tough getting older


Its kind of "funny"...my counselor and I have talked about 'gray' a lot. Nothing about losing a child is black and white, she says to find something gray and hang it up in our house so I can look at it often to remind me of that.

It also reminded me of a night shortly after......I was out with my friend and she was telling me about all these other people she knew who had lost a child or dealt with some awful tragedy. It was just so depressing! I kept thinking, being an adult sucks. What is the friggin' point??? Everyone just hurts and bad stuff happens to everyone, and now I hear about all of it, all of the time.

Its like when you are going through something momentous, like getting married or having your first baby...everyone identifies and bonds with you by saying "oh, my {fill in the blank: sister, friend, mom, cousin, neighbor} is {fill in the blank: getting married next month, is expecting a baby girl, just bought a house, too!}. Well, now I hear story after story after story of so-and-so who lost their child by {take your pick of horrific accidents}. On one hand, it does kind of help...knowing I'm not alone in this journey. One the other hand, its really, really, really depressing when I stop and think about it. Every new story...another mother in such agony, another sweet little baby laid to rest in the ground instead of in her arms....

Its so hard to not wonder where and how God is through all of this. Why do some get their 'miracles' and others do not? What are 'tender mercies' and are they really Heavenly Father reaching forth His hand to help lighten our burden...or just coincidences that people use to try and find something good in something bad? I keep reading about them...if we had any tender mercies in the way Gavin died, I am not strong enough to recognize them. With the way I feel now, I can't imagine that I ever will be. Why would He care about all these seemingly little everyday things going on in people's lives, and then let something so huge happen, and in such a horrible way? Where were our tender mercies? Because I can list out a TON of things that made it SO much worse, things that could have been "lightened"....things we could have been "spared" from so as not to have that little bit of extra pain.

And not just Gavin...things like this are happening everywhere. My favorite go-to place: Africa. Take your pick of injustices and cruelties. Where is the Heavenly Father that we LDS-ers like to bear our testimony about therew? Where are their tender mercies? Where are their Visting Teachers who just "had a feeling" and showed up on their doorstep with fresh-baked bread or whatever else. Does He really care about the "bad day" of so-and-so in sunny Mesa, AZ enough to send them a little "tender mercy"...but then allow another to be thrown into a pit of fire? I just can't fathom it. It drives me crazy. I hate those two words right now. Throw in 'miracle' for good measure, too. Because they all lead back to the same stupid question...."WHY???"

And finally...will I ever stop playing this game of "drive myself insane by running circles around all the questions that can never, ever be answered"???? Its not that I have lost my testimony, its just that its currently in a million pieces and I have absolutely no idea how to fit them back together with all of these new pieces. All the good ole, standard gospel "feel good" answers just don't...well, make me feel any good (I'm sure there will be a post on *those* sometime in the future). I am far from the "Primary/Garden of Eden" part of my life. And let me tell you, trial by fire...this is it. All the gospel fluff has been burned away, and now the rest is being beaten with a hot iron sledgehammer. I read a book on grieving called "Jesus Wept" and this is a passage from it:

"Grief work will likely become the hardest work we will ever do. It will extract more time, patience, and energy than most of us expect or feel capable of enduring."

I doubt in the end my testimony is going to be very pretty or fluffy, but its sure going to be a helluva lot stronger.