Heavy Stuff--read at your own risk!

Last night I got a horrible night of sleep. I'm sitting here at my computer desk running Diet Dr Pepper and coffee at the same time through my veins via an IV I purchased at the hospital just for this purpose. I'm not kidding. They took one look at me when I walked in and handed it over, no questions asked. (Don't I wish). I stayed up too late last night watching a freakin' hilarious movie with hubby called "Wedding Crashers". Not the cleanest movie in the world, but he rented it which of course made me feel obligated to watch it with him since I never stay up past nine and just chill out with him. If you can get past some of the crudeness and the basic premise of the story, it's really pretty funny. Anyway, I crawled into bed at around midnight. My eyes were exhausted, my body wanted desperately to fall asleep, but my legs wouldn't let me. If I could have extracted the bottom part of my body and let them go on a three mile jog by themselves just to go to sleep, I would have. Restless Leg Syndrome. Whoever heard of such a stupid thing?! It would be my luck to have that problem on the one night I choose to stay up a little later than normal. I think I got about four hours, maybe.

It's been a hard, hard month for me, for more than one reason. I know that the Bible says that God will not ever give us more than we can handle, but I sure feel like it's being taken as close as it can come. I'm just absolutely drained. Awhile back, a co-worker of my husband's was killed in a car crash on his way to work. It was a snowy, icy day and about a mile and a half from work, his truck spinned out and rolled and he was thrown from the truck and did not live. My husband worked closely with this man and had been to his house on several occasions. His wife had just left him for another woman (yes you read right) and was refusing to let him see his two children. He had diabetes and was partially deaf in one ear. He was a small man and was referred to as "midget" at work. He was not always treated nicely at work because of his size and his disabilities, but my husband always treated him kindly and genuinely liked the guy. He took the death rather hard.

I attend Bible Study at my church weekly on Thursdays. We are a small group of about 8 people and have all gotten very close over the last two years that we have been meeting. This weekly hour and a half became very important to me right after Fiesty was born when I was having real difficulty with her being colicky, and with Care Bear having such a hard time adjusting to not being the "baby" anymore. It became the time of the week that I looked forward to most every week. Now I look forward to it for the fellowship, the friendship and the time with young moms my age sharing a common love of our children and of God. About two months ago, one of the very young moms in our group (age 20 with a 2 year old and a 1 year old...yikes!) requested prayer for her husband's grandmother, who at the time was 65 years of age. Her husband had pretty much been raised by his grandparents; his mom is a drug addict who is in and out of jail all the time and who steals money when she's not in jail in order to raise money for drugs. Her husband's brother is following the same track as his mother and the two of them conspire together to keep eachother addicts. It's a very sad story. She (I'll call her Jean) and her husband (I'll call him Carl) are very close to his grandparents. Anyway, the request for prayer was due to the fact that Carl's grandmother had recently been experiencing pain, was having difficulty breathing and was starting to fall quite frequently. She was scheduled for a doctor's appointment to see what they could find out. To make a long story a little shorter, they found out that she had lung cancer (non-smoking) and they gave her 6-12 months to live. Within two weeks, after more tests, they determined that the cancer was much more advanced than they thought and gave her 6 weeks. She died last Friday. The funeral was this morning. She was only 65. Two years older than my Dad. I didn't know this woman very well. I saw her every Sunday at church sitting in the 2nd row, center aisle. I knew her grand-daughter and son well and felt like I knew her from them. I knew her great grand-daughters because I see them in the nursery every week. I sat in the funeral this morning and bawled like she was my own grandma. I hurt for the family, I hurt for her husband who is one of the sweetest men alive. I hurt for her daughter who was too pre-occupied with finding her latest score to even be concerned that her mother was on her deathbed. And then for some odd reason, I thought of my children down in the nursery while I was attending the funeral. I felt the most intense urge to run down there and hug them as hard as I could and never let them go. I started feeling overwhelmed by all of the things that are weighing me down right now. I began to feel my own mortality. Yes, I am only 31, but things happen. And my parents are getting older, my grandparents are getting older. Everything just began to flood at me during this funeral. I left there feeling exhausted; still feeling emotional and feeling a little lost. I still do right now. I'm an adult; I have children to take care of; I have responsibilities. But right now, at this particular moment in time, I wish I was a kid again and didn't have to face all this "big people" stuff. It's hard.

What a bummer day for my blog, eh? Well, life isn't always fun. But hey, tomorrow is my anniversary. Not sure if there's anything in the works, but we made it another year. My lovely cousin was with me four years ago tomorrow as my matron of honor to share in my special day after a not so fun trip out here.

And on a lighter note, I got all caught up on my laundry this weekend. Yay me!