I am still writing but I have definitely entered a season of peace. More often I don’t recognize a new season until I’m deep in the thick of it and then don’t always appreciate its lessons learned. This past year and a half have been like no other and as I look back I feel slightly overwhelmed at how we handled everything.
We had a baby, she had complications. We lost time we could have been doing mundane life and gained time simply sitting and being still. We lost a mother. We lost a grandmother. We resigned from a job and another job and joined a new job/ new company. We traveled alone, and traveled together. We drifted from some friends and found new ones. Our best friend moved a little further away, and our cousins made more trips and brought us closer than ever before. As mom would say at times be “battened down the hatches” and kept barreling through. We got dirty. We got real with each other. We got brutally honest. And sometimes even too honest. We cried. We laughed. We mourned. We celebrated. We made mistakes. We got more wrinkles, and forgot a lot of things. We missed appointments. We overextended ourselves sometimes. And other times we nailed every commitment and then some I think we even surprised ourselves. We got to intimately know places we never thought we would (Children’s hospital) and we stopped places that simple put- drug us down (Moundbuilders). We decisively sought out what all this is for, and gained new perspective. We strengthen our marriage and broke down old walls. We lived a lifetime in 18 very small months and came out of it fundamentally different.
Each and everything we went through sometimes felt harder than the last and I found myself thinking how much more can I handle? How much more are we going to go through? I felt the weight of the world and the failure of me as a person and it broke down every aspect of my soul. And I shut down. Somewhere in that time I started exposing through this blog what we went through with Marley, but I was careful too not to show how much I was failing. How I crumbled every night with tears or wine. And let me be clear- it wasn’t just about Marley. I stand by the proclamation that she was and still is perfectly made. But I disengaged. I didn’t want to small talk or hear about your stories. I didn’t want to go to your events. I didn’t want to call or talk or text or anything. I didn’t want to see people. I didn’t like who I was. I felt worthless and unuseful. If this were someone else I’d say go to God. Pray. Give it to him. But each and every day I felt like it was all on me and I didn’t have the right to any good. I wasn’t deserving. I pushed. I pushed back, and pushed away. I fell apart. And more than that I lost my short term memory. I missed so many things that before I didn’t even need to write down. I know we went through a lot of stress but I was crumbling. And I hated myself for it.
So what now? I didn’t have one of those moments that stop you in your tracks... but what I did have was hope. If we stay the course and don’t turn back the storm will pass. It will. It always has. And one day you realize you haven’t cried in a few. Or had a “bad day”. The dogs didn’t run away, wining! The milk didn’t spill. Success. The kids are wearing clean clothes. Your body is starting feel normal again. You actually made dinner to be proud of. You remembered how you know that person. You laughed not through tears, but genuinely found it funny. You ran. And breathed. And leaned on new perspective. And found true unaltered love. Joy.
What I realize now is that I had to break down every ounce of me to get to who He made me to be. Anything I went through in all my years didn’t let go of all that wasn’t towards God. He literally shaved off my daughter’s thigh to make me whole. I had felt that this happened because I wasn’t good enough. And it took me almost losing her to realize that I wasn’t being punished, I had been given a gift. And I needed to cherish that and be thankful. I have second chance. One to make the second half of my life different than the first. I have been refined in the fire and came out new. And I went through it all with my best friend. He didn’t leave even when he could have. He watched me suffer and die the old me and held me up when I couldn’t myself.
Why share now? Because I am finally able to see the new season come upon us. Not a true season even though winter will be here soon, but the season of thanksgiving and unapologetic love and most importantly acceptance. It feels right that I should move this blog along to better days and true sharing of the past days- not guarded. Not snippets, but the good, the sad, and the messy. I hope you find your own Hope here in these words. God wants all of you- not just the best. I somehow think he wants the messy the most, because in that we are real and he can make us whole.
We had a baby, she had complications. We lost time we could have been doing mundane life and gained time simply sitting and being still. We lost a mother. We lost a grandmother. We resigned from a job and another job and joined a new job/ new company. We traveled alone, and traveled together. We drifted from some friends and found new ones. Our best friend moved a little further away, and our cousins made more trips and brought us closer than ever before. As mom would say at times be “battened down the hatches” and kept barreling through. We got dirty. We got real with each other. We got brutally honest. And sometimes even too honest. We cried. We laughed. We mourned. We celebrated. We made mistakes. We got more wrinkles, and forgot a lot of things. We missed appointments. We overextended ourselves sometimes. And other times we nailed every commitment and then some I think we even surprised ourselves. We got to intimately know places we never thought we would (Children’s hospital) and we stopped places that simple put- drug us down (Moundbuilders). We decisively sought out what all this is for, and gained new perspective. We strengthen our marriage and broke down old walls. We lived a lifetime in 18 very small months and came out of it fundamentally different.
Each and everything we went through sometimes felt harder than the last and I found myself thinking how much more can I handle? How much more are we going to go through? I felt the weight of the world and the failure of me as a person and it broke down every aspect of my soul. And I shut down. Somewhere in that time I started exposing through this blog what we went through with Marley, but I was careful too not to show how much I was failing. How I crumbled every night with tears or wine. And let me be clear- it wasn’t just about Marley. I stand by the proclamation that she was and still is perfectly made. But I disengaged. I didn’t want to small talk or hear about your stories. I didn’t want to go to your events. I didn’t want to call or talk or text or anything. I didn’t want to see people. I didn’t like who I was. I felt worthless and unuseful. If this were someone else I’d say go to God. Pray. Give it to him. But each and every day I felt like it was all on me and I didn’t have the right to any good. I wasn’t deserving. I pushed. I pushed back, and pushed away. I fell apart. And more than that I lost my short term memory. I missed so many things that before I didn’t even need to write down. I know we went through a lot of stress but I was crumbling. And I hated myself for it.
So what now? I didn’t have one of those moments that stop you in your tracks... but what I did have was hope. If we stay the course and don’t turn back the storm will pass. It will. It always has. And one day you realize you haven’t cried in a few. Or had a “bad day”. The dogs didn’t run away, wining! The milk didn’t spill. Success. The kids are wearing clean clothes. Your body is starting feel normal again. You actually made dinner to be proud of. You remembered how you know that person. You laughed not through tears, but genuinely found it funny. You ran. And breathed. And leaned on new perspective. And found true unaltered love. Joy.
What I realize now is that I had to break down every ounce of me to get to who He made me to be. Anything I went through in all my years didn’t let go of all that wasn’t towards God. He literally shaved off my daughter’s thigh to make me whole. I had felt that this happened because I wasn’t good enough. And it took me almost losing her to realize that I wasn’t being punished, I had been given a gift. And I needed to cherish that and be thankful. I have second chance. One to make the second half of my life different than the first. I have been refined in the fire and came out new. And I went through it all with my best friend. He didn’t leave even when he could have. He watched me suffer and die the old me and held me up when I couldn’t myself.
Why share now? Because I am finally able to see the new season come upon us. Not a true season even though winter will be here soon, but the season of thanksgiving and unapologetic love and most importantly acceptance. It feels right that I should move this blog along to better days and true sharing of the past days- not guarded. Not snippets, but the good, the sad, and the messy. I hope you find your own Hope here in these words. God wants all of you- not just the best. I somehow think he wants the messy the most, because in that we are real and he can make us whole.
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