So...I haven't been back in about a year and a half. Things just got busy, a job I didn't like then a job I did like, a pregnancy, a miscarriage and now career attempts and here I am again.
I don't really know who would read this other than my friends or my mom but maybe that's just enough. I wanted to have a place to record my thoughts and feelings and try to help someone else out there or have a place where someone could help me. I wanted to share some of my creative work too and get feedback so- this will just be an electronic outlet to my random life and random interests.
Now I am deciding if I back track and share the last year or just pick up where I feel I am today...let me backtrack a little.
Last fall I started praying "God something in my walk with you needs help, I don't know what it is but please change it." The words "desert" and "dry season" aren't really the right terms to use. "Desolate", "Alone", "Staggering" seemed more appropriate. In October Landon and I began praying for a baby. I felt these two things were starting to mesh together. I felt like God was telling me that in this process of wanting to have kids, He would be working to answer the frustration in my spirit. Now, keep in mind, October marked the time of our intentional prayer- we had not been able to get pregnant for 2 years and the doctor didn't have a diagnosis so this prayer time was after we had already hit a wall.
In October I swear my hormones changed and I was weeping, I mean weeping for no reason, I was sore, felt extremely emotional so much so that one night my sweet husband came home with flowers- and a pregnancy test but no baby.
The holidays came and went and I just sort of gave up charting my cycle out of disappointment and low and behold, I had just lost count and found myself 10 days late...I am NEVER late. I took one prego test and it was inconclusive (a very faint double line) and then went to my friend Kelly's for a real ER test and had her watch it develop. She screamed "Linds! Holy S$#@!" and we screamed together.
I was pregnant.
The morning sickness, doctors appointments, book purchases and comfort food all came to my delight. We told parents and friends and couldn't wait to meet this little person. I was surprised that after only 3 months of praying we had an answer!
Then on a Wednesday night, at 12 weeks of pregnancy, I started bleeding. The bleeding got worse, the pain got worse and my hopes failed. Landon and I stayed up watching movies. It is an awful feeling to know you will lose your baby, you will have to wait it out and there is nothing you can do about it. Around 2am it was over and I went to sleep.
Thursday we went to the doctors, ironically that day was supposed to be my first ultrasound. Now, on that screen I saw nothing, a vast emptiness that hit me to my core...there was nothing there.
The cacophony of pain and emotion that ensued hit me like a hurricane. I had emotions in depths I never felt, combinations of emotions I'd never felt, emotions I never expected to feel. Profound emptiness and meaninglessness, sadness, loss of motivation, anger, rage, hollowness, resignation, denial all over this little person no bigger than a peach.
The last 4 months for me have been a journey through not only this loss but the refining this loss has created. It seems the miscarriage was the catalyst to shake everything in me that could be shaken and leave me at the foundations of my faith: "Is He good?", "Can I trust Him?". I have raged at God on walks with my dog where I am sure I look like a crazy woman. I have cried at iphone commercials. I have felt the strange feeling of happiness and anger when a good friend tells me she is pregnant. I have had breakdowns, I have had good days, and I have had days where I really don't know how I am. I even got a tattoo and not a small one either.
To say the least about this time I am living honestly. I cannot fake my walk with God and I don't have the spiritual energy to just pick myself back up. I know better how to sympathize with those who have suffered loss. I have less answers for people and I cry more about everything. It has been harder than I ever imagined and I don't think its over.
I watched a movie about a mountain climber that survived an impossible descend (including falling off a cliff into an ice cave, miles and miles of getting down a mountain with a broken leg, no food, no water-you get the idea) and he called it "a great reduction" of himself. Like a sauce the heat was turned up and all the water, vinegar, all the filler gets boiled out and the only thing left is the pure flavor of your "reduction". So, this has "reduced" me and left me only with some basics.
So far I am seeing that God's design is not for me to live in independence, self sufficiency and unbroken success- He would rather I walk with a limp and lean on Him. That the basis of my relationship with Him is grace- that He loved me when I didn't love Him. And that I should come to Him, even if I am raging. Those are the answers I have right now. This is teaching me about God loving poverty, mourning, meekness and weakness as the jewels of His Kingdom.
I still cry at baby commercials and every once in awhile the sadness just comes back. I am still struggling a lot with what the future holds and how to know what God wants me to do. And I think at least once a week I still have a breakdown but for now, Psalm 77 is my constant friend and I am still walking- with a heavy limp.
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