A Great Many Things

The Lord works in mysterious ways. (Yes, I opened with a cliche. Humor me.) As I wrote my last blog post, "The Empty Nursery," I was unknowingly...pregnant. Yes, you read that correctly. With child. In the family way. PG. I wrote this emotionally charged, cathartic essay on the year anniversary of losing the second baby where I addressed all of the spiritual and emotional wrestling I'd had to do with faith, God, and life itself until I had finally come to the point where I accepted His will. I had prepared myself for a future with a distinct possibility of no more babies, and I was honestly okay with it. But lo and behold...Someone loves irony, and I'm so glad that He does. For educators, Memorial Day weekend is a culmination of the entire school year because, after Memorial Day, all hullabaloo breaks out. Once we return to school after Memorial Day, it is on, as they say, like Donkey Kong. The mind-numbing, body-exhausting purgatory that is Exam Week begin...

One year ago tonight, I couldn't sleep. I knew that early in the morning they would take my baby from me. Although my baby was already gone, the thought of our impending separation still kept me awake through the night as I said my goodbyes. That was the beginning of the Summer of Sadness (or, to rip off Steinbeck, the Summer of my Discontent. See, I'm channeling a literary genius here, not Lana del Rey). Two weeks later, one of my students drowned. A funeral home full of weeping, broken sixteen-year-olds being forced to face their own mortality for (probably) the first time via the tragic death of one of their friends is sobering, to say the least. Then my sister to whom I have been indescribably close both emotionally and geographically moved literally  (I'm allowed to say that word because I have a degree that says I know how to use it correctly) across the globe another fortnight later. And, finally, my very dear grandfather left us as summer gifted us with its final de...