Last year Easter really snuck up on me. This year Lent passed me by somehow. But I gotta tell you, I can feel Good Friday barreling down on me like a mack truck.

As I wrestle with the source of my inappropriate jealousies, I’m discovering that it has less to do with Ramona and more to do with me. I know I need to accept that God’s plan for me is my own, that we can’t pick and choose the elements that make up God’s mysterious destinies for us all. But there’s a small, hurting voice that remains with me that says, “Why me?”. I just want to take a pass on the painful stuff. I know God hears and understands this. His own Son asked, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me” on the eve of His crucifixion. But then He said, “But not my will, but Yours be done”. So for now, I will do the same and pray: Father, if it is possible, bring healing and wholeness for Ramona, for Simon, for Andy and for me. But not my will, but yours be done.

The cry of my heart is not for a different child or a different life. I think what I’m searching for is a path to wholeness in the wake of loss. Not just the loss of Ramona’s chromosomes or Simon’s birth family, but losses that are older and more fundamental to who I am. The loss of an intact family as a child of divorce. The perceived loss of my fertility. I think that’s why a blog that is supposed to be about Ramona’s well-being (yes, I know I’m way off topic) sometimes leads to thoughts and feelings that seem so unrelated. Maybe it’s because as we pursue healing for Ramona and pray for her survival, I wonder about what makes us fully human, why we’re here and how we can ever feel whole again in this fallen world.

The cynic in me has always categorized the Easter Egg as a pagan holdover and just another symbol of spring. Like bunnies. But today I was thinking of how God’s sacrifice and promise to us as Christians is a new life, whole and unbroken. And I thought of the egg. Whole, protected and as yet unchanged by the circumstances of life. Pure, white and perfectly contained in an unblemished shell. To be honest, there have been days that crawling into a shell and never coming out has sounded pretty good to me.

But not today. Today I want to live life with all its flaws. I want to keep searching for the path to wholeness, to God. I’m thanking God today for opening my eyes to the beauty of the human experience. For giving us life and blessing us. But mostly for the promise of new life in Him, for giving His only Son so that we can someday be made whole again.

Thanks for always listening and for praying for Ramona.

Love, Jane.