With Hope

It has been a pretty quiet around here this week. With the heat, we have stuck close to home for the most part. We've hit the gym and the grocery store, but other than that and swimming a couple of times... not too much. Izzy likes the water as much as her sister did. She hardly quits moving the whole time she's in the pool. She just kicks and kicks and she gets into splashing if she's in the mood. I'm glad she likes the water.

It is amazing to me -- in some ways at least -- how many times a day Catie crosses our mind. In the grief books, they talk about your mind adjusting to the loss and trying to figure out where the person that you lost fits now that they're gone. That makes a lot of sense to me and I can see Tre' and I trying to work that out. You want to hold on tight because they're gone... but not so tight that you're not living in and enjoying the present.

Lately, in this whole grief thing, I've been wishing for a plan. While Catie was on treatment, there was ALWAYS a plan. You take this medicine every day for 5 days and then you have 23 days off OR you'll go inpatient once a month, 2 days one month, 3 days the next... stay home when counts are low... take this med to prevent this and that med to prevent that.... There was always a plan -- at least until the tumor would throw us off course... but then we always made a new plan. There was comfort (somehow) in the plan because you knew what you had to do... you felt like it gave you some kind of control. Obviously, it didn't give us ANY control, but still, there was comfort in the plan. Sometimes I wish there were a protocol for grief... you know, to let you know what to expect. I must say that it is definitely a learning process. You learn a lot about yourself and how you work and what you need. I still wouldn't mind having a plan though... then too, we would know when to expect the worst of it to be over.

This week I was talking with a friend of mine who was there the night that Catie died. We were talking about the overwhelming peace that was present that night and in the days that followed. A fellow mom on this journey has dubbed it "holy novacaine." Pretty clever term I think. That novacaine does begin to wear off, but for the most part, the peace remains (at least for me it has). It's funny how you can feel peace and sadness at the same time. How you can rejoice for Catie and long to see her all at the same time. I know that I posted the words to Steven Curtis Chapman's With Hope on Catie's site, but I'm going to post them again here. They are just dead on... absolutely right.

This is not at all how
We thought it was supposed to be
We had so many plans for you
We had so many dreams
And now you've gone away
And left us with the memories of your smile
And nothing we can say
And nothing we can do
Can take away the pain
The pain of losing you, but ...

We can cry with hope
We can say goodbye with hope
'Cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no
And we can grieve with hope
'Cause we believe with hope
(There's a place by God's grace)
There's a place where we'll see your face again
We'll see your face again

And never have I known
Anything so hard to understand
And never have I questioned more
The wisdom of God's plan
But through the cloud of tears
I see the Father's smile and say well done
And I imagine you
Where you wanted most to be
Seeing all your dreams come true
'Cause now you're home
And now you're free, and ...

We have this hope as an anchor
'Cause we believe that everything
God promised us is true, so ...

We wait with hope
And we ache with hope
We hold on with hope
We let go with hope

With hope... Doesn't take the sadness, doesn't change the grief, but at least there is hope. During treatment, "hope" was my favorite word. Hope of a cure, hope for a future... I worried that I wouldn't like the word anymore if things didn't go the way I wanted. But, I like it even more now... while death could take away my hope for a cure for Catie, nothing can take away the hope that remains. Nothing... It's nice, after all that's happened, that there's something that can't be destroyed or taken from you in this life. So... hope just might still be my favorite word.

Off to visit dreamland. Hope your weekend is good!