10/21/05

Theo is continuing to tolerate his new tube with no gagging or throwing up so that's some good news. Jamie has been staying downstairs with him the last few nights as I have been working and he has been off this week for fall break. I will stay downstairs with Theo tonight and Saturday to give Jamie some rest. I am thinking of getting a futon for downstairs so maybe we can both sleep downstairs with him or at the very least so that which ever one of us is sleeping down there can have a real bed to sleep in. We have two loveseats and no full length couch, so it's kind of hard to get any sleep. Not that we sleep all that much when we are down there with him, but whether he is upstairs or downstairs, we still have to get up at the end of his midnight feeding (now around 1:45 since we are slowing down his feeds) and at 4:00 a.m. to give his medicine then. The main reason for continuing to keep him downstairs is that we discovered that when we don't transition him upstairs to his crib, he cries much less at night and even when he does cry, he is much easier to calm than when he was sleeping upstairs in his bedroom. I don't know why. I guess it's just that he spends so much time downstairs that the environment is more familiar to him. But it is definitely warmer downstairs throughout the winter so we are thinking we will probably just let him stay downstairs indefinitely.

We both continue to have good days and bad days--or kind of ok days and bad days. I don't think we actually have good days at all. Some days are better than others. This doesn't get any easier. I have really been suffering a major spiritual crisis through all this. I know some people find that their relationship with God is strengthened through trials like these, but I feel completely abandoned and have actually for the first time in my life entertained the notion that perhaps there really is no god--not one that cares about what we're going through anyway. Or at the very least, can't intervene, otherwise why wouldn't he do so? The why questions beginning with us and with Theo, just expand to all the people who have been hurt, killed, left homeless and injured not only recently in New Orleans, and now the earthquakes, but all over the world. The suffering, the pain, lonlieness, illness, hunger, poverty, sadness, grief, of children and adults all over the world, all the time, just goes on and on and is everpresent. I see these things on the news (when I watch the news--I find I have very little desire to actually know what is going on outside our world of Theo most of the time) and I have a new sense of empathy and understanding of how parents feel who have lost their children, how people must feel when they have lost everything. I just can't understand it. Of course I knew that pain and suffering existed before this, but somehow I was able to find some kind of place for it, some explanation or maybe I just really ignored the reality of it all. Maybe it was just plain igonorance. I viewed pain and suffering as some kind of cosmic balancing, the way things somehow had to be until we as human beings found some way of being as a people consistently compassionate, caring, loving, more divine in our nature. I saw suffering and death as sad, difficult, painful, but necessary. A part of life to be accepted and even welcomed on some cosmic level as part of the divine cycle of life, death and re-birth. Now I know what it's like to feel that kind of helpless anguish, knowing there is absolutely nothing I can do and those feelings, this experience has called into question my most deeply held convictions, which I guess as it turns out, may not be all that deeply held. And while I still believe that the cycle of life-death-rebirth are part of a divine or a Universal mechanism of sorts, it feels personal to me now and I don't much like it. It hurts and I just want to continue to scream out how unfair it is. I feel much more fragile. I feel that all of us are much more fragile than I thought, more fragile, more special, more in need of caring and love, and sadly, I feel that God isn't offering much in the way of love and support. Unless it's through all of you, all of us. The divine nature of others comes more clear in these situations, but God himself or herself or whatever it is, feels absent. There is that part of me that knows that God is not responsible for human suffering, that God doesn't cause these things, and I want to hold on to my belief that God is love and wants to help us, but emotionally, I can't get past all the teachings of my childhood that told me "nothing is impossible wih God", that "by His stripes we are healed", etc, etc. And none of those things has been true in our situation. If those things are true, then why wasn't my baby healed? Why did this happen in the first place? Why do terrible things happen, especially to babies and children, ever? And why when people pray and pray, are those prayers not answered? We didn't believe hard enough? Didn't have enough faith? Those are the questions that go through my mind when I think on these things. And I have a hard time accepting that it's "God's plan" because what kind of plan is it then? Or that I just don't see the whole picture, that there is a reason for it all, we just can't know what it is. And I guess I do believe there is a reason, but I can't imagine a reason good enough. I can't believe anybody including God, could come to me and say, "Well, here's the reason Karla...." and I would go, "Oh, well yes, that is a good reason". I know it's because I'm human and all the reasons may be good and valid on some other higher plane where humanity and our wants and needs are not important or even relevant, but I'm not there right now, I'm here and being here right now just flat out sucks. It's just a circle of questions that can't be answered. All my why questions don't solve anything or provide any answers or even make me feel better. I know that it is just going to take a lot of time to heal and it is nowhere near being over.

I just ask that all of you continue to pray for us, because even feeling the way I do, spiritually bereft, I know that prayer and meditation, positive thoughts and energies do have a positive effect. We effect our world and others through our thoughts and actions.
So please do continue to think of us and send us your love and support. We need it. I need it.

Love,
Karla