Only You

Remember a while back when I got all riled up about writing Rip's book...actually wrote a book?  Then got rejected by 40 some odd editors and publishers?  That was (not) fun.

Finally, a very nice man who offered to take a look at some of what I'd written confirmed what I already feared to be true...I needed to re-write the whole darn thing.  Well, maybe not the WHOLE thing, but most of it.  Talk about exhausting.  I mean, wasn't it enough to live it, write a blog about it, and then kind of copy and paste all of that into a book?

Yeah, I was afraid not.

The problem was that mainly I wrote like I thought I person might write who was writing about losing her baby...I didn't write like me.  I didn't write what I wanted to write, I wrote what I thought "they" wanted to hear.  And "they" hated it.

So, for a while I've kind of not done anything with Rip's story.  And to be honest, for a while I've been pretty angry with God.  This may be a post for another time and place, but it all kind of seems to go together so I might as well get it all out in one fell swoop (what does that even mean?).

When I was pregnant with Gracie, I was clinging to my faith so hard, I needed God to be there more than ever.  Then when I had her, a lot of that anger that I couldn't afford to have after Rip died just came bubbling back up.  I came to the conclusion that I believed in God, but I was supposed to have all of this LOVE for Him...and to put it mildly, I wasn't feeling the love.

And that lasted for a while until I didn't feel that way anymore.  And that's that, or what months of inner turmoil looks like in blog form anyway. But sometimes I think people go through really hard things and they don't admit to feeling doubt or anger and I think sometimes I was one of those people.  Heck, even Mother Theresa had doubts!

Yesterday I was reading a blog another mother had written who had lost a baby years ago.  She was talking about a sign she received after praying for that very kind of sign.  And I felt such a sense of recognition.  I don't know how God works all of the time in the world, there are certainly things I will always question Him on, but I do know that He sends signs to mothers who have lost their children.  I believe in signs.

So, last night I started thinking about Rip's story again.  And kind of talking over with God whether or not I should write it again.  I flipped open my Bible (after many months of staying away, I've started reading it again) and the following verse is what I read: Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it...(2 Corinthians 8:11)

And I realized that I am the only one who will ever be able to tell Rip's story.  I am the only one that was with him from the very beginning to the very end.  The only one who can complete this for our family.  So I hope I can do it, even ten years from now, I hope it is something I finish.