Today is one of those days when I want to do something, but I can't. Or maybe I am doing something. I'm not sure. But I feel like if I actually did something, then I would stop feeling so sad and angry and scared.

I want to write, but the ideas won't come. (Even this blog post is still a little fuzzy right now.) I want to knit, but I don't think I could sit and focus on it. I want to work, but can't seem to get myself started on anything on my to-do list. Except I'm blogging now, so I guess that's a start. It's 4:30 in the afternoon, and I'm finally starting.

As predicted in my last post, the last couple of weeks have been pretty hard in the grieving department. There have been pretty bad days. And some okay days.

It's all been made a little tougher by celebrating Jabin's birthday last weekend, then having Noah home with chicken pox this entire week which has kept me a little more house-bound than I might have been otherwise.

I think that birthdays and grieving might go together for me the way that other holidays and grieving go together for so many. I managed to pull off two last-minute birthday celebrations this month, but the reason they were so "last minute" is that every time I thought of them leading up to the event, I broke down in tears. Even the day of, all I could think about was that Levi was NOT there running around and making noise with his older brothers and adding to the joy of the celebration. And that we wouldn't ever get to celebrate a birthday with him again.

The morning of Levi's accident, his birth family was already in Emergency when we went in. Laverna (Levi's Nana) had been having to go in every 8 hours to get IV antibiotics as she battled a staph infection. Following that, her health was poor, and then fair, and I thought she was finally on the uphill climb to "better."

But then it took a dive in the last two weeks as the staph infection resurrected, and last night, just before supper, she texted me from Emergency that she had just been admitted because the infection had gone into her blood. The seriousness of the situation did not escape me.

Jason has been working late every night this week because of a tech disaster--the kind that gets IT people fired if it's not fixed ASAP. Last night was the latest of them all. So I was trying to hold it together as I took the boys through their evening routine, then sat and pondered and stewed and cried while I waited for Jason to come home, and when he finally got home at midnight I barely had the energy to chat with him for a few minutes before I went to bed.

The theme of my dreams were Levi's accident, trying to get Levi to a hospital on foot while trying to get my family to safety as hostile forces invaded (my vague impression at this point is "aliens", lol), realizing that we weren't getting Levi back, losing track of the rest of my family and being given charge of two small refugee children to get to safety from the attack, and finally losing track of them in a giant maze of a hospital-cum-fancy-hotel.

After sleeping for much longer than I should really have needed to, I woke up exhausted and sad and scared and feeling like a failure--and have been in a muddle ever since.

So why am I sitting here spilling my guts on my blog today? Shoot, I sure don't want to bring the world down.

But I do know that I'm not the only one who ever feels this way. And that when we have days like this, the tendency is to think that we are all alone and no one else gets it or even cares.

One blessing in my week was making a new friend--I met Melissa yesterday on the WANATribe site, and am fortunate to have found a kindred spirit that I look forward to getting to know better. In a message she sent to me this morning, she said this:

So, here I am, telling you (and myself) that it's okay to not have it all together. Because I don't. And I've been taking some time to rest in Jesus' arms, like Melissa said. And trying to trust that when I pray for my friends' protection, the prayers will do more than give me something to do. (Since Levi died, I've been praying more than ever, but am having a difficult time really believing that my prayers will be answered or effective in any way. Just being honest.)

I get what it's like to have days when it is hard to trust, and hard to focus, and hard to do anything. That's me, today.

On days like today, I am thankful that I don't have to know it all, or do it all. I am thankful for friends who care, even when they are not with me. And I am giving my fear to Jesus, even though it is hard.

Hello from the muddle.