Dangerous momentum

Sometimes it becomes apparently to me that I am on some divine journey. Whether you call it God or Allah or Fate or just choices, sometimes what is happening in my life seems to be something greater than myself. And when I am honest, really really honest, that is what drives me. This sense that I can take all this mess that was cancer and children and mistakes and history and turn it into something brilliant and artful and meant-to-be.

I am less certain tonight. Tonight, I am wishing to put on the brakes in a big way, as if I have been zooming down a brilliantly clear highway, only to realize those lights in the distance are not stars, but brake lights, and I am about to slam into them without even pausing to wonder or evaluate.

I drew Medical City for clinicals this semester. It is randomly assigned, our clinical location, and that is the hospital in which Joseph was treated and in which Joseph died. I am excited. I am petrified. Ultimately I think, in my better moments of bravado, that I want to work there one day on the transplant unit. Yet tomorrow I face down the truth of it, walking through those doors once again and knowing for the next 15 weeks I will spend 10 hour shifts there in those same halls, smelling those same scents, seeing the same restaurants and corridors and turns. Knowing he walked those places with me once. And tonight....tonight....

I am meek.

I am afraid.

What have I been thinking?

How will I do this?

So much is at stake. So much work to do. So many impressions to give of competence and readiness. So many lives beyond my own, relying on me, hoping for me, perhaps even waiting for me. People in need. Will my need inhibit my ability to give?

Will my pain get in the way of my desires?

Will my grief interrupt my learning?

I am afraid. I am remembering. I am wishing for divine strength, for ultimate hope, for absolute peace. There was a time, toward the end of Joseph's days, when I quit praying for miracles and started praying for peace and acceptance. For him. For me.

I am praying for those things tonight. And I am praying he give me his hand. I cannot do this. Not by myself.