9/20/10 When Google Can't Help

There’s alot of time spent on the computer.  When I’m done with what I can think of to do, I can no longer cover up my sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness.  I check hotmail again, go to CNN, maybe check email on yahoo, sit on that big white Google page with the blinking marker in the space bar, waiting to find...something.   I know there’s a billion interesting things on the great world web, a zillion sites I’m missing.  But eventually I realize the one I want isn’t there.  Then my stomach clenches and I stop breathing for a few seconds, consciously corking the inferno of chaos and fury and desperation,  before taking a deep breath and shutting the computer down to find my distraction elsewhere. Or to take the fire head on, going into Anna’s room and succumbing to it all.  

The internet is a truly amazing tool.  It can give me several opinions on what really occurred at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD (where the Nicean creed came from - so many of us recite it at church without really knowing a thing about where it came from).   It can include me in the experience of thousands of women who are pregnant or depressed, hundreds who are obsessed with Josh Groban or Star Wars or their hangnails.  It can translate a sentence into Somali, show me what sorghum looks like and where it grows.   But it cannot tell me what happened to my daughter.   It cannot explain to me why she died or why we have to fight so hard to have a family.   It cannot tell me how to survive or what to do now.   The internet does not care if we adopt from Korea or try domestically or are losing our minds.   It cannot tell me if we will ever be successful in adopting an infant.   If trying will only cause more suffering.   If having a child will lessen our mourning.  If we will ever feel carefree or truly happy again.   It can’t tell me if or when Brad will get a job, if we should sell this house as soon as possible and batten down our finances so that we can even afford to adopt.   Google cannot answer my questions to God.  It cannot answer my questions about God.  

Some would say finding the answers to those questions within yourself is a beautiful, integral part of the human experience.   There is a part of me that completely agrees.    But there is another part that wishes Google truly had it all.