Does One Bad Seed Spoil the Apple?

I find myself waking to a country song repeating in my head and while I can't relate to a lot of them in many ways (though I thoroughly enjoy them nonetheless) there is one that I can extrapolate on.  Two Black Cadillacs.  Now if you know this song, you may be saying, wait a minute!  I'll put you at ease quickly - my husband has not had an affair and I have not plotted to or succeeded in killing him.  Now that we have that settled....

The lyrics say something like "[t]he preacher said he was a good man and his brother said he was a good friend but the women in the two black veils didn't bother to cry".  Of course my first thought was what a dirt bag this guy was, how could there be anything good to say about him?  But then once I started thinking a little deeper it occurred to me that perhaps he was a good friend.  If he was a father, he could have even been a good father.  Obviously he was a lousy husband and a lousy boyfriend but the question then becomes ...

    Does a bad deed, even a very bad deed, make a bad person?

I struggle with this question because my instinct says yes.  My relation to this song comes from some interpersonal relationships and judgments that I have made in those relationships based on the other parties' behaviors.  I have deemed these behaviors bad and so I have attached that label.  Once that label is stuck on, goodness gracious do I find it hard to peel back.  The fact that I have made these judgments in the first place pains me and is a different topic for perhaps a different day but I've done it so we'll move on.

Could I be wrong?  Absolutely!  Have I ever made bad choices?  Absolutely!  So why am I throwing stones?  Short answer - weeding my garden.  Wyatt and Eli have brought great introspection to my life and how I lead it as well as who I let grow in my garden.  I've come to realize that some people can act as weeds in my garden.  Their negative energy, words and actions can threaten to overtake the beauty which I carefully guard within.  I've learned that a weed is a weed and no matter how nicely you treat it, a weed will grow all over your flowers, veggies and fruit and make absolutely no apologies.  My weed removal method of choice is to pull them very slowly from the ground taking care to remove the entire root system if at all possible.  As an aside, it is also really fun to burn them with a handheld torch until they shrivel and die!

Yet all of this still leaves me speechless.  I don't have the answer.  Perhaps there is goodness.  Honestly I want there to be goodness but I have yet to find it.  So I will leave you to ponder and maybe even contribute to this discussion.  Does badness eclipse goodness?  Can they coexist?

Ushering in a New Period of Mourning

My littlest little girl is going to turn one next week and I find myself not only now sleeping mostly through the night but also feeling that old pull.  The one that catches my eye as I pick out our infant daughter's clothing in the morning.  Those little boy outfits that have been hanging in that same closet on the same hangers, untouched, for about nine and half years now.  The ones for my son.  The baby blue Winnie the Pooh outfit lovingly washed and hung, ready to wear.  Frankly, those outfits have done nothing but make me angry lately.  Angry because even though those outfits weren't for Wyatt, they were for Eli.  He was the son that came after Wyatt.  He was my boy.  I knew it soon after he started growing in my belly.  I knew he was a boy.  I knew it just as surely as I knew that something was wrong with him before I even walked into that ultrasound room.  What I knew then doesn't matter now.  I now know that I will never again hold another little boy from my own body and that I will forever mourn those two little boys I did get to briefly hold but that I will also forever mourn the absence of another son.  At the same time there is great peace in my heart knowing that I will not carry another child.  There is a very real possibility that we could have had another child with Potter's syndrome.  I am so thankful to have welcomed our healthy little girl one year ago.  It has been healing for all of us.  After Eli died I wrote about how heartbreaking it was to watch our three daughters love him and then have to say goodbye.  They had empty arms too.  I have now filled their arms and their hearts.  They still miss Eli and talk of him often.  We know that Baby cannot take away all that hurt but we did not expect that she would.  She just fills a different place in our hearts.