Grace to Accept the Things I Cannot Change

Eight years ago April, my mom asked me to come along with her to a doctor's appointment for some test results. Dad couldn't go, and the doctor recommended she have someone with her. I knew that was bad, but when she gave us the news that a routine CBC had detected leukemia, the same leukemia my grandpa had just passed away from, I thought I knew how bad it could get. I didn't know.

Saturday I was two days late, so I took a pregnancy test and it was negative. I was devastated. My tendancy to see the worst-case scenario surfaced, and I just poured out my grief: losing my baby, the possibility of losing my mom, the possiblity that I might never get to have kids, the possiblity that even if I do, they might never get to have the grandmother that Hayden has. My heart just HURTS.

Joe tried to comfort me, but he didn't understand. This was a revelation to me. Joe has road rage: he'll get (what I see as) irrationally upset about what other drivers do. If he has a bad commute home, he'll be in a funk for at least an hour after he gets home. This is incomprehensible to me: I just don't understand how he lets the behavior of other drivers affect him so much. I think this was a chance to let us be in the others' shoes. I let all these things I can't control affect me so terribly, and he can't see why I let myself get so upset over what might happen.

Not to say my grief is unwarranted, or that I don't need to work my way through it, but I understand a little better now. I need to find a better balance between honoring my grief and letting it overwhelm me.