Home Alone: Parent's Edition

A few weeks ago Max and Kaia went to Winter Camp at Forest Home with other kids from our church. It was the first time they'd both been gone overnight together since Libby died.

The last time they were both gone was when they went to Summer Camp at Forest Home. They got back from that camp on Friday, June 26 and a few hours later Libby had her accident.

You could say that there were some feelings going into this camp weekend.

I wasn't worried about Max and Kaia going to camp. They love this sort of thing and were excited to go back. Max had done other camps last summer after Libby died so he had mostly gotten over his "if I go to camp, someone I love is going to die" concern. Kaia was just ready for a good time, as usual. But Mama wasn't doing so well. It was all too parallel and was dredging things up  from those last days more than ususal.

I remember dropping the kids off for camp back in June. Libby wasn't with me, and a fellow mom, with a little one in tow, saw that I had two kids heading off for the week. She made a comment about how lucky I was to be kid-free. I wish, I thought and maybe even said. But with a small sigh as I did the math, I knew it would probably be the better part of a decade before we might have the timing work where we would have all the kids out of the house simultaneously for a whole weekend.

Because isn't that what us parents of young ones dream about some days? To be kid-free for a week, a day, even an hour? And even now, I can't really feel guilty for that feeling. It's real. Because parenting is hard and exhausting along with all the fun and beautiful.

But now things are different obviously. I felt no excitement at being kid-free for the weekend. Parenting is still hard, but this was not how it was supposed to be, this was not what I had planned. We were not supposed to have child-free freedom. We were supposed to take turns waking up early with Libby while we prayed for long naps and early bed times. We would have spent the weekend trying to keep Libby entertained without her brother and sister around. We were supposed to be able to focus on her, give her some of that undivided attention that can be lacking for a third child. But these were clearly my plans and not God's.

Recently in my moms group our speaker Debbie Williamson talked about how there is no Plan B. God has only a Plan A. We may have other plans, but they're not necessarily His plans. In Jeremiah 29:11 God says He knows the plans He has for us. He's known those plans since the beginning of time. It doesn't just mean He knows what college we'll go to, who we'll marry, where we'll live. He knows our daily plans, what we write down on calendars and to-do lists, He knows the things that seem so unexpected to us. God has always known that Kurt and I would be getting our child-free weekends much sooner than we'd anticipated. He didn't cause it, but he knew it. He knew that my heart would be aching with renewed vigor, He knew that Kurt and I could actually really benefit from this time alone, and He knew we would need some extra comfort.

So back to Winter Camp drop-off. It was hard. Going through all the same steps of signing them in, dropping off luggage and sleeping bags, the buzzing excitement among the kids. It was all too familiar. I was probably the only one wearing sunglasses on that gray afternoon and pretty soon I just had to hand the reins over to Kurt. I said an early good-bye to my excited kids and let myself have a good cry in the car. That was the feeling for me that Friday.

God's mercies are new every morning, and Saturday brought less immediate heartache. We slept in a bit and enjoyed a lazy morning making plans for the day. Kurt and I had fun going thrift store shopping together and just hanging out, having no place we needed to be. That evening we drove to Pasadena. We decided that since we were kid-free we would be European, so I made  9:30 pm dinner reservations. Pretty wild, I know, but sometimes you have to let loose. We saw the lovely movie Brooklyn and enjoyed a great dinner. It had been a good day and I was so grateful for that. It would have been so easy for our grief, our emotions to take over and rule the day, but God had other plans.

And suddenly it was Sunday and the kids were back. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded if they got back a little later. I was really enjoying my time with Kurt. Marriage is hard. Marriage while you try to navigate your grief, your spouse's grief... it can be brutal. So it was really nice to be reminded of how much we enjoy each other's company and to see that we can still make each other laugh. (My favorite from our date night was when we were driving to Pasadena. We were both quiet as us introverts tend to be. Kurt looks at me and says, "So I guess you're just saving up all your conversation topics for dinner, huh?" Maybe you had to be there, maybe you have to be an intorvert to get it, but it sure did make me laugh. We've still got it.)

But now Max and Kaia were home and things were back to feeling parallel. They came home with the same level of excitement and exhaustion, though not quite as much dirt as a week of summer camp accumulates. Our activities were similar to that June afternoon 29 weeks ago, as we all seemed lulled by our exhaustion. I saw the similarities but didn't try to change things because what good was that going to do?

I went to bed early that night. Sometimes when the days or hours are hard, sleep is the escape. When I first woke up the next morning I just lay there in bed, stunned.

I had had my first Libby dream.