A weekend with Grandma and Papa (KK’s parents) makes everything MUCH better.  On Saturday we took our weekly pilgrimage to the Farmer’s Market followed by Swimming Lessons.  This is my ABSOLUTE favorite way to spend a Saturday.  The only activity I love more than visiting the farmer’s market is swimming.  Put those two things in one day and add the whole family?!?!  Win!  Also, Z started sleeping well again (three nights with 6+hour stretches) and managed to show us tooth #3.  Way to go kid!

To expand a little on my last post:  A student who was home for the summer managed to overdose on prescription medications.  We will never know if it was accidental or intentional.  He is on life support until they determine if it is possible for him to make any kind of recovery – for at least another 2-3 weeks.  Because of the amount of brain damage he did there will never be a full recovery.    It took quite a while to come to the decision that the needed to give him that time…in the middle of the week it was looking more like there would be no chance of recovery.  This made it a very rocky week for everyone.   As clergy on a college campus it is my responsibility to provide rituals that honor our community and the students who have left it, and to provide pastoral care to students who are struggling.  To say that the week was draining is putting it mildly.  I don’t think I really slept until Friday night…

As the mother of a boy there is a whole new level of heartbreak in these moments.  I spent a lot of time over the last week thinking about how incredible life is and how miserable I was in college.  For a few years I thought daily about how wonderful it would be to not be in the world anymore.  Thankfully, I did not act on those thoughts.  As I imagine Z’s life I wonder how I can spare him from those moments.  Not the moments when life is hard.  It’s important to work through those things.  But, to spare him from ever feeling like life was so awful that you just don’t want to be alive.

When I was little I would often say that I couldn’t wait to grow up.  I looked forward to being free to make my own choices and decisions about everything.  The adults around me always scoffed, saying that childhood was much better.  As an adult now I disagree.  Childhood had its lovely moments, but this adulthood is so much better.  What I want for my child is to have the experience of adulthood.  To be able to make his own choices and dance to the beat of his own drummer.  I want him to see and feel and taste and smell how amazing life is.  I hope that he would learn that there is always grace, always forgiveness, always redemption.  He cannot unmake poor decisions, but he can always clean up the mess and move on.