The Light & The Dark

Too many hands on my time
Too many feelings ---
Too many things on my mind
When I leave I don’t know
What I’m hoping to find
When I leave I don’t know
What I’m leaving behind...
-The Analog Kid
RUSH

The last few weeks have been somewhat of a roller coaster for me. I have feared that I will likely lose the light of my life. The Wife has been exhibiting symptoms consistent with Multiple Sclerosis, and the weight of that has been crushing indeed. I don't normally go on and on about things of this nature, at least anywhere other than here, but at one point the weight became too much and it spilled out essentially unbidden at work while talking with a friend and a couple of co-workers. Once the levee broke, it seemed there was no stopping it, until Zack finally spoke up and with a simple and succinct phrase, as is his wont, said "Don't borrow trouble!"

Don't borrow trouble. How simple, and how profound. I do that more often than not. I think we all do. We live in a culture of "bad news". It assaults us at the top and bottom of every hour and precious little of it has any significant consequence to our daily lives. Tradgedies of mind numbing proportion happen in the world evey day that we never hear about, and somehow we manage to get through our days with no knowledge of them. Why should the ones we hear of make any difference? The misery of others becomes a side show that the carnical barkers of the evening news entreat us to look in on with awe, and a certain sense of perverse glee.

So I have spent a few weeks struggling to renege on a loan I should have never taken out. Should that become a reality however, I suppose it will be something that will be dealt with as any other challenge would be. In a way, I almost half expect it. Our lives are guided by The Master Gardner, The Trainer of Souls. When an athlete is struggling with a certain procedure, a trainer will guide the athlete through a series of actions to strengthen the muscles and mind in order to overcome that weakness. If I continue to borrow trouble, I may just wind up burdened under a load of debt so great that I have no choice but to turn it over to The Almighty Counsellor.

"I pray, if it be thy will however, that this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done."

Often it seems, I start these missives with some comment about the dark content contained within, and I suppose if I were to stay true to form, this one should as well. But just as I say that there is a dark side to nearly everything in this life, there is also light.

Last summer The Lord blessed us briefly with a baby. This small life has since gone home and awaits there for us to meet them, and for evil to be blotted from the face of this earth. Once again we have been blest. Should all go well, we will be parents. Sometime late fall or early winter we will hold a small life that for a short time will be ours.

I almost don't know how to feel. Last time was such a shock, then wonderment of it all was nearly overwhelming. I walked about in a daze up to the day we new something was amiss, and that we would never see our child until Heaven. Now it almost seems a given. I kind of miss the suprise. I believe it is there, I think I just need to find it.

For so many years I have wanted to be a father, a daddy. To follow that mad progression from when a baby involuntarily grabs your finger when you put it in their hand, to that small hand reaching up and searching for yours as it tentatively strikes out into the sensory overload of a grocery store, till that hand slips into a baseball glove for the first time, grasps a bicycle handlebar and wobbles off down the street, the same street it will one day drive down, and ultimately drive off to its own home on.

I want to provide the kind of childhood that allows a child to be a child. Maybe I'm being selfish, but I want to see the wonder of this world through a childs eyes. Its so easy to be jaded, and "tough", but to a child, all is new, fresh and clean. I want to see every opportunity provided for a child to see the world as it was intended, not what it has become.

I think and I wonder, the endlessly marching enemy soldiers of doubt and worry continue to assail, but in the midst of it all there is this joy, this hope, and this wonder. I must continue to "Look to the hills, from whence comes my Strength".

I just want to climb those hills with my wife and my child, hand in hand.