Almost a month later

How is that even possible? Almost a month after this and I still think about those 2 all the time. Every time I come home I look up the hill at the clearing where they are buried. Fall is beautiful at camp, one of my favorite seasons for sure. Where they are buried there is one bright red/purple tree that sits among only yellow/orange ones. I love that.

2 days after the dogs died we got a call about a baby boy they were wanting us to foster. He was born minutes after Aristotle died. I don't care who you are or what you believe, that is significant.

I needed a distraction, so the dog that took such good care of me for 8 years sent me one.

And what a distraction he was!

It has been 6 years since I've had a baby in this house so it was quite an adjustment. Are you aware newborns don't sleep through the night? Yikes, that was rough.

But Z was such a good baby! He was beautiful and wonderful and exactly what I needed to help ease the pain of losing my other 2 "babies" a bit.

We had him for almost 3 weeks and then he transitioned to a home that will potentially adopt him should his birth mom not be able to regain custody. It's for the best (particularly since I have a few things going on that no sleep/newborn made difficult) but I do miss the little guy.

My sister is getting married on Saturday (MY SISTER IS GETTING MARRIED ON SATURDAY!!!!) and I'm so excited. I love her fiance and I love a good party. Let's do this.

Wine to Water will be November 10th. I love throwing this little shindig. It'll look a little different this year but the results will be the same - hundreds of people who will have access to clean water who were once without. That's awesome.

Life has such incredible rhythms built into it, I've found.

Grief (losing the dogs) can give way to incredible joy (my beloved sister getting married) and sacrifice (weeks/months of planning) can give way to blessing (for those with jobs/water and for me-to witness a community that truly cares about the world).

I think it's in these moments that I see God the most. In the moments of despair and in the moments of dancing. Life was never meant to be spent entirely in the middle, even though that's where we constantly try to remain.

Life in the depths or heights is brutal and beautiful (or brutiful as this blogger calls it-which I love and will heretofore steal) and even though it can be beyond painful I wouldn't trade it for a life lived in the middle.

A life lived there wouldn't have given me Tomas, Tariku or Binyam. It wouldn't have given me this marriage that is the epitome of brutiful. It wouldn't have given me the dogs or most of my friendships.

So I'll take it. It's damn hard but I'll take it.