I was really wrong, and I'm really glad

The last few months I've been judging myself for not knowing that Julia was dying in my arms. I was her mom. How was I so clueless as to what was happening for her? I worked so hard to fit the pieces together, but in all my best-case and worst-case scenarios, cancer was never on my list of possibilities. It is hard to face the fact that I can be so wrong about something so important. But if I can be that wrong, then my judgements of myself or of God can also be really wrong. And there is something incredibly freeing there. I do not have to be all-knowing. Julia did not need me to be all-knowing. She needed me to be calm and to be safe, which is how she experienced me, precisely because I did not know what was going on. Here's a little poem that captures the paradox:

I wanted to know.
I like to know.
Why didn't I know
anything?
Oblivious to her final breaths
being final.
Unaware that her last leap
was her last leap.

I must have known.
If I replayed it,
retraced it,
over and over,
somewhere in the back of my brain
I could discover
the cause.
That last page on the certificate
would no longer
be blank.

Knowledge finally came.
Swooping in like her death.
Unexpected.
Unprepared.
The truth revealing
what I already knew
but didn't want to admit.
I AM NOT
ALL-KNOWING.

All my calculations,
predictions, and
judgements,
were entirely
WRONG.
I never felt so relieved.
How was it that
my wrongness
was also
my acquittal?

"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" - John 14:6