You sense the smell of your newborn child as absolute proof of God, and six months later the sleep deprivation is irrefutable evidence of the curse. Life is always and ever both.

This summer I sat on the banks of Shuswap lake. If I could’ve flown like the crow just over that mountain, I would be at the place where I lost my second baby. Just there in that bay. By now her body  has turned into moss, a tree? I was certain that was the end, no babies for me. And then… There I was, watching my children play in the waves…on the moss. It is too much. I cried and I smiled. There is no gratitude like this without a loss like that.

I was sitting in the corner of the dining room on Tuesday, my back against the wall. I am watching my little girl open an art studio. She is painting and selling it. Then suddenly she is gone and is back with a handful of dolls whom she seats, she is trying to teach them the Highland Fling. Meanwhile I am pressed up against the wall, dog in my lap, there are sometimes decisions to make and you know in advance that none of the outcomes are good. But still, you look up as the marvel and heartaches mingle. You look up.

I was driving this morning, thinking about friends who are sick. I was praying for restoration and healing. My eyes started welling as they do, and then the sun started rising into the crystalline blue, the grass along the roadside bending with the weight of frost diamonds, the children started to sing. Life is always the balance of our open eyes, our clenched and clinging fists.

This afternoon I will walk in the woods, under the blue sky, over the moss. That is the miracle of it. How in our aloneness, we are not. How life, it just goes on.