Valediction

So, friends. This is my final post. At least for awhile. Partly, I feel that I've said everything I have to say right now and am beginning to repeat myself. Partly, I'm running low on the energy and time that it takes to maintain a weekly blogging regimen. And partly, 50 posts just seems like a good strong number to end on.

It was Father's Day of last year when I learned that Sonya was coming. (Or little James, as we initially thought.) It is imbecilically inadequate to say that a great deal has happened since then. But, a great deal has happened since then.

Part of being a writer is learning the limits of language. There are things that words can't do. The next part, of course, is trying to do those things anyway; but you remain aware that no matter how many digits you add, you'll never reach a numerical infinite. I can see as many pictures of charging lions as you please, but it won't truly convey the experience. Labor and childbirth—somebody cloned Scar from hyena poop, and he's pissed.

Ellie and I discovered [were smashed over the skull with] depths to our relationship that we'd never suspected. We found out stuff about taking care of each other and trusting each other that simply hadn't been asked of us before. It often makes me think of the old saying that God asks of you what He thinks you can handle, and just how crucially wrong that saying is. He knows exactly what you can handle, and He absolutely always asks more of you. Partly to make you learn; partly to make you lean. As hard as pregnancy was, I know and love Ellie's pride and strength, and I would not have missed the chance to be the one she allowed herself to lean on.

Even Sonya, at an age you could still conveniently count in hours, was asked to do more than she could. Eating, pooping, sleeping—things it no longer occurs to us to consider enterprises—they were all Everest-scalingly difficult for her. Right now she's struggling to sit up, and it's taking every bit of power and determination she can muster. It's easy enough for a grownup to dismiss a child's struggles—oh gee, you have to learn the alphabet, your life is so hard—but watching my daughter grapple with gravity makes me glad adults don't have Seraphim dropping by to scoff at us. "Ooooh, someone fired a fifty-megaton thermonuclear warhead at your nation's capital, poor baby. Pfff, I could stop one of those with my theologically mysterious pinkie."

Okay, so—obvious follow-up—why don't you? Why allow Hiroshima, Nagasaki? Why do I have to give Sonya medicine she hates while she cries and wriggles and looks at me with hurt, betrayed eyes? Why can't I just carry her instead of forcing her to learn how to walk? And there's my answer, right in the question. Which, intellectually, one already knows, but it feels a lot more true now.

I wish I had more to say. Getting to the last post was a relief, but getting to the last paragraph is a little bit sad. I love you guys. Thank you for reading, and please pray for us. May God bless and keep you. May His Face shine upon you and be gracious to you. And when the war's over and we find our seats in the tavern at the end of the world, the first round is on me. So long for now, friends. Keep fighting.