Strange Wonder

Guilt and cocktails.

I think that was nothing less than a brilliant answer from elphaba. I've thought about it a lot and chuckled to myself.

Motherhood is guilt and cocktails: Everything that is hard and self-defeating over and against everything that is sweet and liberating.

Amazing the amount of guilt a five month old can produce without even knowing it.

I didn't put him down in time. I put him down too soon. He's been hungry all this time? I think I'm overfeeding him. I wish he'd sleep; he needs it. Why is he sleeping so much? I'm not spending enough face time with it. His little brain needs lots of stimulation; I'll put him in his exersaucer. He's been in his exersaucer too long; I should be holding him.

But oh the sweetness! I can't kiss him enough or hold him too long. I wish I could stroke his face for hours, or nurse him without interruption or distraction. When he holds my finger and looks at my eyes and whispers the sweet, meaningful gasps of joy--oh, that it would never end.

But it does, and I can't stop it.

I needed help to understand. How could I hold on and let go? Why must the joy have such a sting? I hunted down Lewis' Weight of Glory to help.

What more, you may ask, do we want? … We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it...That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can't...Or not yet.

For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy.

At present...We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.