My baby girl is eight months old

She is too big. And too tiny. 

Babies are weird, because time with them is both long and short and they seem both young and old and mysterious and familiar.

Because my children are such a strange phenomenon to me, I think one of the best things I can do is write poems for them. I want to remember how surreal this time is, how fleeting, how surprising. 

For my daughter
You aren't real.
You're from a dream of mine,
a memory of a future that used to be 
unattainable,
far-off and ever-changing
like the many professions I aspired to.
My visions of adulthood,
as real to me as the costume jewelry in our dress-up box,
never included the words "my daughter."
A daughter was somehow
a strange thing,
an impossible thing.
How could I muster dreams of a you
that would inevitably be
so like me?
I'd have to know you,
really know you,
nose-to-nose.

It makes sense now
how you seemed not to fit then
before I knew your shape existed.
Discovering you was like
finding a Delorean in a parking lot.

I say the words
"my daughter" now
and they're shaped like you--
just the thought of your smiling cheeks,
so jolly, so soft
like tiny flans
and I could cry about the you
that is somehow both real
and everything I ever wanted
without knowing what I wanted was
you. 

On Surviving a Car Accident

Yesterday I was in a car accident, and it was rough. Every hour since it happened I've been praising God that no one was seriously hurt (except my beloved car, Han). Somehow we're all safe, and life is so much more valuable than a car. And I am humbled, once again, determined to keep glorifying the Lord for blessing me and everyone else with so many mercies. 

Since I can't seem to help going over the experience and almost none of those thoughts are helpful, I wrote a poem. Maybe it's therapeutic. At the very least it's something to offer. 

Life of a Car Crash

the crash feels like nothing,
like a sound,
like your arms floating up toward the heavens,
like a gesture of surrender.

it feels like blue,
the color of airbags,
it feels like black and white,
like looking through your eyelids.

it feels fuzzy
like losing your glasses,
like the only reality is the baby screaming
like no one and everyone hears you saying
sorry

it feels like shock,
like a moment of invincibility,
like remembering others exist somehow,
beyond yourself.

and then
it feels like a million questions,
like losing consciousness,
like recalling a dream

only later do you begin to sense
your body was in the car with you
and now it's one big bruise

and it feels like relief,
then like swallowed confusion
then like all the fear you should've felt
returning
and again

the crash was like dying
like resetting a switch on mortality
like we could've died and thank God
no one died

it plays over, 
theme and variations
it begs for resolution.
you begin to recover, mind and body
and soul
but that part feels like pain
and why does the pain come now

it's not the losing control
but the trying to find it again
that hurts.

God does answer prayers

June 24th is the new favorite holiday of all pro-life people. A poem for the occasion:

Finally, an Answer

Is this the first one:
It feels like the first real victory,
the first time we rallied
and overcame the enemy.
It feels like the first day in decades
we've breathed clean air

But is it, really,
when for the light to get here
it had to travel quite the distance,
one point in history to the next,
too far away to see at first,
now blindingly here,
leaving behind
a trail of undaunted footsteps.

Every domino set, a victory.
Every step forward, a battle won.

No,
when God was silent
He was not absent--
He was there, baton raised
breath poised,
kinetically focused,
never hasty.
Our lens is a pinpoint;
our frame too small
to realize how short our time is,
how infinitesimal the gap
between silence and sound,
between earth and sun.

So in the darkness, still I will thank Him
for the speed of light.