After all

written on 01/04/2015

Our baby was due a month from today. 

It makes my heart ache thinking about what this month should have, could have looked like. It makes me miss my baby. How can you miss someone you haven’t met?

I should be putting the finishing touches on the nursery. I should be washing clothes and putting them away. I should be checking our packed bags. This month should be filled with joy and anticipation of meeting our first child. 

I received an email this morning notifying us that we are now licensed foster parents. 

I was initially so excited. Then fear crept in.
Are we ready to be parents? The room isn’t ready. We don’t have clothes or a car seat or toys or a bag. We don’t have daycare prepared. It has been just the 2 of us for 5 years, can we do this? What if I love them and lose them? Everything is going to change. We are suppose to have 9 months to get ready for this sort of thing…

Haven’t we though? 

Haven’t we had 9 months? Nine months filled with trials and teaching. Haven’t we had 9 months thinking about and praying for our future children?  Haven’t we had 9 months of loving them and losing them? 

Hasn’t He prepared us for this first child? 

And if He has been preparing us, who has been waiting for us? What has the past 9 months been like for our child that God would prepare us in this way?

It isn’t what we thought this month would look like. It is messy. It is unfamiliar and unknown. 
It is terrifying. But, my goodness is it poetic. 

It doesn't make it okay. It doesn't lessen the hurt we feel when we think about the past 6 months. It still doesn't make sense. This world is still the terrible awful place where my babies had to die for us to be able to love and provide for someone else's child this February. But He shows me a glimpse of His plan through the poetic timing and reaffirms to me that He is doing something. That we lost our babies in this world to care for another family, to show them God's love in this world... Because He knows we will have our babies in another. 

After all, I will spend this month preparing a room and putting away clothes and waiting in eager anticipation to meet our first child in this world. 

A New Year, Thank God

written 01/01/2016

The holidays have been a tug of war between rejoicing for the future that the birth of Christ promises and being saddened by the absence of our babies. 

The new year was a struggle between being grateful as hell that that terrible year is over and not really looking forward to another year.

That sounds bad, but I’m not sure that is completely a bad thing. It isn’t that I have no hope, I think I may just be learning that nothing in this world can satisfy me. That this world is not my home. This world will have always have trouble. I am not made for it. And for the first time, I don’t belong. And I don’t want to.

As much as I would like to trade this past year in, I wouldn’t dare. The God I knew last January was not as mighty, as sovereign, as powerful, as loving, or merciful as the God I know now. He hasn't changed, but oh how I have.

As much as I wish I could, I wouldn't trade it. 

Christ's promises are way better than the promises of a New Year.

Joy in every circumstance

written 12/06/2015

I have always been a social person, an extrovert. I love to be around people.

So, it is very different for me to be so anxious and uncomfortable in social situations. But alas, I am.

I get nervous thinking about them. I have many anxious moments in the days leading up to social gatherings. It doesn’t matter who it is with, even my closest friends. Family in a big group. It doesn’t matter, I get anxious.

I think of the pity glances. The things people will say that will unknowingly make me uncomfortable. The questions and small talk that will make my skin crawl. The eye contact I will now try to avoid. The “encouragement” I will try to talk over to shield my ears. The drained feeling I will have when I leave from acting like I am someone I am not anymore.

A majority of the time these thoughts and feelings are unfounded and I leave feeling more full. And, sometimes not. When strangers ask if you have kids and it isn’t your party so you have to say no to keep the attention away from you and then you feel as though you are going to throw up because you surely do have children... the fact that everything is so hard is evidence.

We had Friendsgiving in Columbia this weekend. I was anxious.  It is really hard for me to communicate that. To say that I am scared to see my friends because I feel different and I haven’t seen them. So, instead I sit in the passenger seat and think about it for 3 hours and convince myself that I am alone in the world and then blow up as we pull in the drive…

cause that’s helpful.

Sometimes I forget that others love me. Maybe because some days it is hard to love myself.  I was nervous for this weekend, but it was a great reminder that while losing my babies is a part of me, it is not who I am. Sometimes when I think of social situations I see myself wearing a name tag that says “Hi, I have failed to carry my two babies.” A weekend surrounded by and simply being loved by my best friends reminded me that I am not broken. My name tag says, “Hi, I am a child of God...” and He has taken care of the rest.

There is such joy in that, in every circumstance.