Household Changes

My daughter will now be a single mother. Her husband, the father of my granddaughter, has moved back to his father's house a couple hours away. His limitations, the source of my concern from the beginning of my daughter's relationship with him, led to the separation. In my opinion, he's just not ready to grow up. And I'm not sure it's really his fault. There is a good deal of evidence that there haven't been any grownups in his family in a couple of generations. When a kid grows up with an absent, alcoholic father and a drug addicted mother, neither of whom have ever worked regularly or finished high school, and the church was nowhere to be found in their lives, there just never was much hope.
On the good side, my granddaughter's parents were married. That makes a difference to me, and will, one day, to her, too. And at the time my daughter came home with her baby, she would never have come without the boy. And she needed to come home. So we made the effort, held our breath, and hoped and prayed for a different outcome, but here we are.
The update: our baby has passed 10 pounds. She is now 21 inches long. She smiles constantly, and laughs out loud often at all of us goofy people who make funny faces at her and speak to her in peculiar tones of voice. She especially thinks that her Aunt Em is the funniest human being on the face of the earth. My daughter is working full time, not something to be taken for granted in this economy. They are under our roof, with all of the necessities of life available to them.
There is only one problem: every now and then, the baby goes to visit with her birth grandmother, and when she's gone, none of us know what to do with ourselves. Kaly has become the center of the universe, and her schedule seems to regulate us more than it does her. Even the in-laws come searching when Shannon hasn't showed up for good night baby kisses by a certain hour. We all just sort of sit around forlorn until she is back home. She really is that much fun. And we are all-this whole crazy clan that comprises my family-thankful for the incredible blessing that is having Sara and Kaly home with us.

One of Those Calls

When you do what I do, and it's 8:00 on Sunday night, and you're at a gathering with your entire family, and your phone rings, it is never a good thing.
It certainly wasn't last Sunday night.
There had been an accident. One of my parishoners was being air-lifted to The Med. Her whole family is in our church, very fine, pillar of the congregation-type people. We all gathered at the hospital. The doctor came in, and as gently as he could, he told her family and friends that she had been in full arrest when she arrived, and even though they tried for a half hour, they never got any response.
An old man from a distant state had made a mistake. He pulled out onto the wrong side of the divided highway that runs through our community. It was a head-on crash at highway speed. The two drivers were killed. Two passengers, the man's wife and my member's son, were spared with scrapes and bruises.
Alicia was 39. Her husband suffers from Multiple Sclerosis. Their children are 12 and 7. Her dad has been in and out of the hospital with heart problems as long as I've known them.
Do I even need to say that it isn't supposed to go like this? Parents should never have to bury their children. Pre-teens aren't supposed to have do deal with this kind of situation. A young husband isn't supposed to have to deal with his illness and his children's future without his partner.
But here we are.
Our Baptist-dominated religious culture wants to say that it's just God's plan. He needed another angel, or it was just her time. My tradition doesn't buy that. We don't see God killing a young woman and an old man to fill seats in the choir. We often hear that we must accept it, and not question and surely not be angry with God. Have you read the Bible? Ever hear of the Exodus? You know, the whole "we'd have been better off to stay slaves in Egypt than be brought out here to die of hunger!" Or, "thirst!" And yet, God was with them and provided what they needed.
I'm not very happy with The Boss right now. But I'm confident that God is big enough to love me through this, and all of Alicia's family that feels about like I do, only much, much worse.
We have a funeral tomorrow afternoon. I'm still struggling for what to say to this family about what's happened to them.
We'll all do our best. And somehow, even if none of us can see how right now, God will be at work, tomorrow and in the days to come, to bring something good out of this awful, awful situation.

The Best Job I've Had Yet