horsemeat, home, and how do we move on from here?

back home in indiana. thankfully, we made it safely home without a hitch.

during our layover in Almaty, we took a taxi downtown with just enough daylight left to see the mosque against a beautiful mountain backdrop.

we ended up at a Kazakh restaurant where we managed to communicate that we'd like to eat horsemeat.

the fresh veggies were great, but the horsemeat? a little disappointing. kind of like tough beef boiled in broth and onions, served with these dumpling-like noodles. not the high point of our kazakh culinary experience, but at least we can say we ate horse!

after that we managed to get completely ripped off at a restaurant in the airport where, in the absence of the juice we were trying to order off the menu, the waitress suggested we get the "fresh-squeezed" juice. little did we know that this juice, rather than costing 200 tenge each, would cost us 900 tenge each, approximately $6 each. so here's to our freshly squeezed $6 apple and orange juices. ouch.

i thought i might begin journaling on the 38 hr journey home--plenty to process--but i never even opened my journal or even a book. periodically we'd talk, i'd cry, but most of the time we were content to do sudokus, sleep and watch movies or TV from the impressive menu on our Lufthansa flights. (i think we watched three movies and at least two TV show from Frankfurt to Chicago.)

wasn't really looking forward to coming home, for obvious reasons, but i have to admit that the beautiful warm weather and a kitchen full of food from our friends and homegroup helped to welcome us and take away some of the sting...

we've spent the last few days taking it easy-- taking walks, bike rides, journaling, spending time with a few close friends, talking, eating strawberry shakes, watching movies, reading...tears come unannounced, and when they do, we let them come.

went to a mega church about an hour away yesterday, still feeling the need for anonymity... it was hard and though we couldn't really enter into worship, it felt really comforting to be surrounded by it...hearing the familiar words that we know we still believe and want to utter--but right now our hearts hurt too much to sing. the sermon topic was When Life Disappoints, oddly fitting, and we ended up buying the book Disappointment with God at the bookstore on our way out, which we started reading over lunch at Red Robin. i suppose we hope somehow it will bring perspective and help us rise above the pain of our loss, see the bigger picture and remember the goodness of God despite our disappointment.

how do you process something like this? we've shared with a few friends, but we get so tired of talking about it and we find we don't really want to answer the phone. yet we don't want to be alone all the time either. odd...you want the comfort of your friends, you want their attention, but you don't want to have to talk about "it" all the time; i think, in the end, you just want someone to be with you.

friday, and especially saturday, were angry days for me. loss, waste, confusion, futility, guilt, sadness, regret, jealousy, failure --all terms that have and continue to flit across the "desktop" of my mind. sometimes there are moments of relief too-- but sadly, i would not call them "peace". i think right now, the memory of baby A and the loss of having come home without him, of our own choosing, and just having come home from this experience without a baby because we couldn't make the choice to come home with this one --it's just too crazy: too crazy disappointing, senseless, confusing...even with all we know of God or thought we knew-- it just doesn't make sense.

i especially have a ways to go to get to healing on this one. there are so many layers of disappointment. i've thought about blogging my journal or starting a journal just for my "inner thoughts" --but not just yet. i'm not sure anyone needs to come along on that journey, and maybe i will be more honest with it kept between God and me for now. and there is something that i can transmit through a pen and paper that i just don't experience through the computer keys. i appreciate everyone's prayers and am touched by everyone's kindness...but we know no one can give us answers on this one. we're taking it one day at a time, i guess.

so what about the photos we took...all the photos of A and us... i wish i could share them, i want to look through them, but it's so hard to...makes me cry and think of all that we have lost. maybe we would have been the perfect family together - but now we won't know. we will never know who and what he grows up to be. how do you grieve that, when it was you who chose not for it to be?

i say i wish i could go back and do it differently...but then rob asks me, "but how? what would you have done differently?" and i'm dumbfounded...i can't think of what could have been differently. there is no "defining moment" where i think we went wrong or failed to listen to the stirring inside us or God's still small voice; we tried, we prayed and prayed and surrendered ourselves and asked for peace and joy--but still, that peace and knowing just eluded us--it just did. for us, acting in good faith ending up being that we say no-- and i guess, i find a small comfort in that i honestly don't know what more we could have done. still, it's hard to fight off the demon of regret. and it's hard to see an empty baby room.

but we'll continue to pray...we're trying to trust, anyway, and be honest with God...hopefully everyday we experience a little healing. hopefully, we find meaning in these days and weeks after this disappointing homecoming. we know there are a lot worse things people can walk through than what we are walking through. we know he comforts those who mourn.

faith-- the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

so breathe on, faith, breathe on once more...