Friday, Fresh Fish

Thursday, roast beef. 

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And yet.. and yet. I am oddly at peace with the doom approaching.

Tolkien used the word doom to mean less an unfortunate future, but more simply, one’s own future. Aragorn’s doom was to be King. Frodo’s doom was to be the ring bearer. Our doom is to Love this little girl as much and for as long as we can, and to walk with her as far as we are to go. “But I know I can’t turn back…I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead.”

I can’t explain it, that we fall more and more in love with her sweet cheeks and pretty lips and darling eyes each day, and that I am also at peace with where God is leading us all–even if it means we must say goodbye to her. Maybe I will feel different as the hearing date gets closer.

Maybe that’s why I want to get this out there, now.. if I say it with confidence now, then when that moment arrives–that moment before the judge announces his decision and we move forward to our doom–I will be able take a deep breath and believe that it will be ok.

Perhaps I am naive, but I feel strangely confident that we will be able to remain a family as we have been for two months. There is, always, the doubt in the back of my mind that things will not go the way we have been hoping and praying–haven’t we had enough evidence that things can go another way already? But I see a tiny glimmer up ahead. I will not close my eyes on it.

Maybe, in the Loving, the daily caring-for-her, I have become stronger, more able to weather the storms that come. Maybe I am learning after all..