Friday was a day with mixed emotions. It's funny how I still wake up on my birthday with a sense of excitement, even though the older I get the more birthdays become just another day. I worked as usual, some sweet friends took me to lunch, and I worked some more that afternoon before picking Collin up from daycare. And all the while, sweet babies were being taken away from their families. Loved ones were suffering gut-wrenching loss.
Friday afternoon, I worked in my office setting up new files and talking to potential new clients on the phone while CNN was on in my living room, carrying news down the hall to me. The media kept repeating the same things over and over, but I couldn't turn it off. When it was time to stop working and go get Collin, I was incredibly grateful. Grateful I could hold his sweet, tiny hand in mine on the way to the car and grateful I could hug him tightly before loading him in his carseat. I actually made him look me in the eyes so I could tell him I loved him. Grateful I could play freely with him in our driveway while talking on the phone to my mom that evening. Grateful he is too young to know about the events in Newtown and too young to worry about going to school.
Jarrod took me to dinner Friday night, and we had a great time. We visited with Collin's babysitter for a while once we got home, and then my birthday was over.
Saturday was filled with busyness. Jarrod working. Collin and me prepping for a baby shower. Saturday evening, when our day was nearing an end, I made myself sit down and look over the names and ages of the people who were killed. Because while they are just a face and a name to me, they were someone else's entire world, and I owed them a few moments of respect.
I mentioned in my last post my efforts to try and teach Collin about the Nativity... I keep thinking about Mary and Joseph as we near Christmas; their story is so symbolic. This world is scary and painful and messy. I think about how scared Mary and Joseph must have been that night. How painful it must have been for young Mary to endure labor and childbirth. How messy it all must have been within that stable, bringing their child into the world.
And yet the juxtaposition of it all makes it so beautiful. Frightening, messy, pain and Emmanuel. Our God is with us.
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