Category: Faith

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Enjoy It

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What is one of the first, last, and most common things that an older & wiser woman tells a young mama? Enjoy it. Enjoy these days, because they go by all too quickly.

Oh! Don’t we know it!

I do not begrudge the sentiment by a long shot, nor do I hold it against the throngs who have thus sought to encourage me. (And, yes, I too have said it to others!)
But what I would really love to know is HOW ~ how do I enjoy it? What are the secrets to embracing the chaos with joy? Where do I uncover secrets for how to capture the beauty in the mess? When will someone explain to me exactly how to soak up life in its moments rather than being pummeled by its speed?

I know that I should enjoy this.
And in all honesty, there is nothing I enjoy more than motherhood.
Nothing!

But there is also nothing harder.
Nothing challenges me to the extent that motherhood does.
Nothing else pushes me to these limits.
Nothing makes me long for quiet moments lying between cool cotton sheets like the chaos of four children, homeschooled by little old me, in a big house in the country.

I enjoy cooking. And baking (yeah, especially baking).
I enjoy a tidy, ordered home.
I enjoy washing dishes and putting away the laundry.
I enjoy dressing my children.
I enjoy undressing them and bathing them and watching them splash in bubble baths.
I enjoy reading books together and having educational aha moments.
I enjoy being the one my husband comes home to.
I enjoy being the woman who makes his lunches, irons his shirts, listens to his thoughts, and entwines my legs with his at night.
I enjoy waking up to the sound of “moooooooommmmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!” through the monitor.
I enjoy answering questions, especially when I know the answer.
I enjoy planning outings and projects and schedules and parties.
I enjoy homemaking.
I enjoy turning chaos into order, mess into beauty, strife into peace.

But in recent weeks, I have wondered: “Do I enjoy MY LIFE?”

What a strange thing. Individually, I can not say that there is honestly any single aspect of my life which I do not enjoy.
I count myself among the blessed few in God’s wide creation that truly enjoy each thing He has called me to do.
But collectively, when it is all shoved together into the short 24-hour windows that He has allotted for me, I find it very hard to enjoy life.

I struggle with feeling like I deserve to enjoy my life.
I feel guilty if I find myself enjoying it fully.
I’m always thinking of twenty other things I should be doing rather than sitting still and enjoying a moment.

(Tell me I’m not alone.)

When I am on my deathbed, if I am coherent at the time, would I say to anyone, “I wish I had vacuumed more regularly? I wish I had cleaned my home on a schedule? I wish I had stuck to a meal plan? I wish I had sent my children away from me each day to be taught by someone else? I wish I had spent more time on the computer?”
I sincerely, highly and deeply, doubt it.

I will, God willing, look around at my descendants and those who I love most, and say, “My only regret is that I did not put aside futile things more to enjoy each human soul God put beside me each day.”

Thirty-two years already into this life, and no clue how many years yet the Lord has written into my story on earth.
But I am trying to get a handle on this thing called life.
Learning how to walk and drink ~ the basics, really.

Does it matter how many dust bunnies are found beneath my couch?
Does it matter what size my jeans are?
When I am older and grayer, will I look back in my memory banks or gaze through photo albums and simply critique the flabby abs of my thirties or the dog hair & country dust on my wood floors?

I should hope not!

These flabby abs were hard to fight for.
Damnit if I allow myself to succumb to peer pressures which make me think I’m less-than because I am no longer a size two.
This body brought thirteen more eternal souls into God’s Kingdom.
I spent nine years giving my body to the work of fattening heaven and earth with children ~ I will not give up my remaining years to agonizing over the evidence they left behind.

These wood floors in my country home are a tool for our life, not the point of our existence.
Phooey on me if I give in to the false assumption that cleanliness is next to godliness because my home doesn’t always sparkle and smell of white vinegar & lemon verbena.
This home is to be used for a blessing, a haven, for those who live here and those who visit here.
Rather than wasting my days scrubbing this place for the sake of appearance, I need to drive Matchbox cars on these floors, crawl alongside my baby through the dust bunnies, and have tea parties on the rugs. Rugs which, by the way, have a clever skill of hiding immeasurable imperfections.

I will enjoy this life.
I will enjoy these children.
Not only the individual events but the collective gathering of people and tasks and weeks.

My personal weakness is to find fault and focus there. To feel guilt over embracing blessings.
But what has God called me to do? To be faithful. To enjoy Him.
May He grant me the daily and hourly strength to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.
May the God of heaven and earth reach through my weak flesh and grab hold on my faltering heart, causing me to fully enjoy what He has given me to do in this life He has called me to live.

Amen.

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The New Commandment

This morning over at Olive Tree, I have the privilege of sharing some thoughts on the new commandment Jesus gave His disciples before He was captured.

After Judas left Jesus and the other disciples at the table in the upper room, some of my favorite parts of the Holy Week narrative take place. They are common, familiar, lowly, home-centered—perhaps that is why they prick me especially poignantly, as I am a full time homemaker and homeschooling mama of four small children. I am daily surrounded by the common and the lowly. Morsels of bread, washing off dirt, and commands to love one another are tools of my own trade.

Come visit me there, as we contemplate the enormity of Christ’s commandment, with its new distinguishing factor of imaging our Savior… as we ask questions of ourselves, about taking up crosses and washing dirty feet… as we walk through Holy Week in anticipation of Good Friday, the darkness of Saturday, the brightness of Resurrection Sunday.

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Palm Sunday Thoughts…

Yesterday was Palm Sunday. We were given little crosses made out of palm fronds at church. The liturgy was different. The vestment colors were different. And as I dealt with a 3 year old who threw up all over her church dress and her carseat… and as I bounced a fussy, overtired little 4 month old… I was happily comforted in the reminders that my Jesus, my King, is Lord over all things ~ both small and great. He came in lowly ways. He ministered in the daily things. He came to save.

My mind repeatedly wandered back to a year ago… six weeks pregnant with Sweet Teen… and the terrible dance of hope & doubt I was enduring…
So today, I am sharing with you something I wrote that day; last year on Palm Sunday. It’s as true today as it was 366 days ago. Hallelujah! Hosanna in the highest!

 

Today was Palm Sunday—a day full of good reminders of our King who reigns, of His lowly entry and faithful rule, of how we as His people can & should cry out to Him, hosanna! Save us now, Lord, we pray! One of my sons in heaven is named Hosanna, and I love the excuse to say his name. When I do, I am crying to the only One who can save to the uttermost. This morning’s church service, as we visited a church we love a couple hours away, began with the choir, pastors, and dozens of children processing through the sanctuary with palms in their hands while we all sang to the Lord of His glory and honor, lauding Him with our praise. We cried out to Him beseeching Him to save us! And since we are on the other side of the story, we know with confidence that He is the Savior! He has saved us! He didtriumphantly bear our sins and conquer death, saving us from the holds of those shackles! Amen!
But we are still in the midst of the story. This morning I felt painfully, acutely aware that the story continues.

I sat there with my family, in the midst still of our own story of asking the Lord to save and preserve and give us life in place of death, begging Him with every little panting breath to cause this baby to live…
In front of us was a family whose daughter suffered a terrible cancer some years ago, and the Lord preserved her precious life, and there she sat with parents and siblings, with health glowing in her cheeks and hair and the saving presence of the Lord spilling from her eyes as she sang…
In front of them sat a family who buried another son this very week—the Lord saved their little boy by ushering him to heaven, and now He saves this family every moment by upholding them even in the midst of horrible grief…

I cried repeatedly.
Suffering everywhere I looked. Sometimes already redeemed. Sometimes not yet.
It is hard to wait for the redemption, and wonder whether we will see it here in this life, or whether we will be yet waiting to see it in the next.

And then Pastor Sumpter preached on hope & joy.
He said, so much of joy is bound up in hope.
How painfully, purely accurate.

I am so afraid to hope and so afraid to be joyful. Even though there is a sliver of me that wants to shout from the rooftops that the Lord has filled my womb—I want to plan and prepare and anticipate and expect an autumn baby—I want to let the kids kiss my tummy and pray aloud all day for the little baby without wincing in my heart of anxiety—I want to talk about baby names for this little person, to embrace this pregnancy rather than moment by moment telling myself not to get attached.

Today we heard an exhortation to ignore the voices in our head that shout realism and logic and probabilities. We ought to rather take joy in hoping, and not to grow weary if we have to keep asking. It is exactly realism, logic probabilities, and my own history that causes me to limit my joy and squelch my hope. But we serve the Lord who delights in giving good gifts, who takes pleasure in acting outside the boundaries which people expect of Him, who came in order to redeem the broken places so that our joy could be full and our hope renewed.

So this week, even as I constantly preach truth to myself not to give in to anxiety just because it certainly doesn’t do any of us any good, I will also be reminding myself day by day to be joyful even when I don’t know the end of the story. Because that is why Christ came. I rejoice in hope—and this hope is not bound up or settled on the things of this world. This hope in which I rejoice is bound up and settled on the glory of God. And because of this, because of God’s glory, we can rejoice fully! Even when suffering comes. Even when endurance is necessary. When character is tried, tested, affirmed. (Romans 2:1-5)

This hope is not foolish. Hope that is grounded in God’s glory will not put us to shame. He died for me. So that I could have hope. So that I could rejoice.

So as I remind myself of these things this week, walking toward Easter as well as taking daily steps further and further into my pregnancy, I will remember the joy and the hope along with the suffering and the grief. It’s the dichotomy of living the Christian life. May He give us the strength and peace to glorify Him this week through all of this.

I want to hope with unabashed, reckless abandon. I want to have incalculable, irrepressible joy.

This is the Lord‘s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Save us, we pray, O Lord!
O Lord, we pray, give us success!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
We bless you from the house of the Lord.
The Lord is God,
and He has made His light to shine upon us.
Psalm 118:23-27

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Life in the Weeds

I was gritting my teeth through the morning… two crying in one room while two squabbled in another… one wetting her pants while another filled his diaper… two boys throwing up hands because of math problems while the baby throws up milk because I didn’t pat out his burps while I want to throw in the towel at the sight of a dog tracking in mud-and-who-knows-what… costumes and matchbox cars and crayons and sippy cups strewn all over the house…
I am smiling though my body aches and my soul is stretched, because I know there is no other choice.
But there is a struggle going on while I nearly drown myself in self-doubt and self-loathing. Yes, this day feels like an exercise of futility. But does that mean that it is not valuable? Deep in my heart I know that it is invaluable, but that is an intangible & invisible price tag.

Then at noon my phone rang. It was my husband, calling to check in on my day. When I heard his voice, it felt like a drink of cold water when you are really thirsty. I needed that. And when he asked how my day was going, I said, “tell me about your day” – to which he said, “that good, huh? tell me how things are.” I sighed and walked to the bathroom. It’s funny how a bathroom can become a place of refuge, of comfort and quiet. The rest of the house may be a busy, noisy, bustling, messy place ~ but my bathroom? I can close out everything else, even if just for five minutes. So I did. Well, except for the kids calling me from the other room, and the sleeping baby strapped to my chest. But you know. That is basically the same as being alone. 😉

I poured out my thoughts (anxieties, fears, self-doubt, struggles, frustrations) to my generously listening husband. I emptied myself.

And then he poured his thoughts back to me, seeking to fill me back up.
I may have cried while he did.

He encouraged me, it is hard to see the fruit when we are still planting.

And, it is hard to see when you’re in the weeds. You have to be able to step back and see where you came from.

My husband took the time amidst his own busy workday to encourage me in mine.
I don’t get graded or adjudicated or reviewed to find perspective.
But my husband can see my emptiness. Especially when I am not too proud to lift the veil and let him see it.

Sometimes all I see are the weeds that need pulled out. And when the plants are still small, the weeds and the seedlings can actually be hard to distinguish. I need a fellow gardener sometimes to give me perspective and remind me that I am still planting, still watering; the harvest at this point is in tiny portions. Someone else’s eyes may better see the good growth while surveying the land, while I am on my knees in the furrows, hands covered in dirt and eyes focused on the weeds.

My job isn’t to wonder how great the harvest will be. Not yet.
It is to keep planting good seeds, keep watering, keep fertilizing, keep plucking out the weeds, to let the sunlight in, to patiently wait while the tiny plants take root.
Someday it will be easier to see the work that has been accomplished.
Right now, all I need is to be this empty vessel, this diligent planter, this person who takes five minutes to cry “alone” in the bathroom and then gets back digging into the dirt.

I need to remember that only eyes of faith can see the beauty of future fruit even when life feels lived in the weeds.
Oh Lord, help Thou my unbelief.

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Adventing Still

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What a glorious time Advent is! And I’ve been too caught up in the business of Adventing that I haven’t been taking the time to write about it. Of course traditionally (so we have been hearing, especially, in the Anglican tradition) it is a season not unlike Lent. Advent prepares for Christmas like Lent prepares for Easter. The two glorious hallmark holy days of the Christian faith are preceded by seasons of waiting and anticipation, preparation and repentance. So we don’t party like it’s Christmas until Christmas. There are no flowers on the altar at church. The word “alleluia” is suddenly absent from some of the liturgical texts in worship, and the eucharist liturgy is actually altered a bit during this season too, with an emphasis on sin and repentance ~ and, praise the Lord, plenty of grace to soak in.

It is good to be children sometimes,
and never better than Christmas,
when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.
— Charles Dickens

In our family, we remind our kids of the waiting and the anticipation by giving them tiny tastes, little sips. They get one chocolate each night, and one tiny glass of wine at each Advent dinner (which we’ve been doing on Saturday nights, and we love this tradition!). I ask them questions (“what does Advent mean?” “who is coming?” “what does Emmanuel mean?” and more…). We sing songs (they’ve got O Come O Come Emmanuel memorized, and most of O Come All Ye Faithful). We read little books that are toddler friendly to remind everyone of the real Christmas story, and I sometimes ask the boys to fill in the blanks to see what they can recall (“what did Herod want done?” “what did the angels tell the magi?” “what did Mary say when Gabriel told her about the baby Jesus?” “what did the angels sing at Christ’s birth?” etc…).

And the kids are eagerly counting the days until Christmas. Every morning (and probably half a dozen more times throughout the day) they declare the countdown for everyone to hear. They love their Advent calendars in their rooms to help with this endeavor.

Most notably, the children know that Advent is about anticipation, hope, looking back but also looking ahead. While they only get one chocolate each evening of Advent, Christmas will soon be here ~ and on Christmas, they can have handfuls of chocolates if they want! We get a sugary, gooey breakfast with rich drinks. We get a big brunch, and a beefy dinner. There will be wine and cookies. And gifts ~ oh, there will be gifts!! I have put some under the tree already, because the kids were begging… but they are ones that can not easily be peeked into, haha! or they are ones not for the kids. :) Although even our two year old seems to be embracing obedience about the tree, the ornaments, and the gifts all being off limits for touching. We are thankful for that!

When the kids wake up on Christmas morning, the rest of the gifts will be under the tree, and the stockings will be full. Breakfast will be baking in the oven and coffee & hot cocoa will be steaming. Music will be on, candles lit, fireplace roaring. Gifts and games and laughter and singing and rejoicing will fill the day. And, Lord willing, it will overflow into the days yet to come afterward. Which is just what grace should be like. It should fill  you up, then overflow you. And one of the best ways of showing that to children is by the tangibles. For that matter, it’s a pretty downright good way to remind us adults too!

Thanks be to God for being the perfect Father, the giver of all good and perfect gifts, so that we know Who to imitate! Now… may He give us the grace to joyfully imitate Him with vigor, and the mercy to grow closer in our imitation accuracy year by year.

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“Man’s maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast;
that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey;
that Truth might be accused of false witnesses,
the Teacher be beaten with whips,
the Foundation be suspended on wood;
that Strength might grow weak;
that the Healer might be wounded;
that Life might die.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

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First Week of Advent ~ Hope

When do we most need hope?
In hopelessness.

That is when we feel lack of hope most acutely. It is when we need to have our eyes opened to real hope.

“A prison cell in which one waits, hopes,…
and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom
has to be opened from the outside,
is not a bad picture of Advent.”
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer

That is what this first week of Advent is all about. Hope.

Anticipating, longing, looking ahead, believing that the fulfillment of promises and prophecies are yet to come.

I love these simple perspectives and tips for observing Advent, even in a family with little (messy, fussy, short-attentioned!) children.

“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and put on the armor of light,
now in the time of this life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility;
So that, at the last day, when He shall come again
in His glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal.”
–The Book of Common Prayer

I am pulling out our Advent wreath, our Advent calendar, and a huge amount of chocolates.
Soon, other Christmas-is-coming boxes will be brought up from the basement, as we slowly see hope fulfilled by the advancing of Christmas.
May God give us eyes to see and ears to hear. May He make us awake and ready.
May He give us hope because of Jesus.

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Celebrating Life with Hope

We are continuing to celebrate life! Simeon’s lungs filled with oxygen 36 days ago. Yesterday Simeon’s head was covered with water and oil. He has always belonged to Christ, but yesterday he was officially welcomed into the Church by receiving the sacrament of baptism. He is officially a son of the covenant, heir of God’s Kingdom, full participant in the body of Christ as a member of His bride. Hallelujah! What hope! What a perfect thing to celebrate on the first Sunday of Advent, where we lit the candle of hope. Please rejoice with us and celebrate the life of Christ in our little son.

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For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off,
everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.
Acts 2:39

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:19-20

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Pregnant with a Rainbow, Part IX

Praying, when you are Pregnant-After-Loss(es)

I have written before about praying when you are pregnant, both here on Joyful Domesticity and in the Rainbows & Redemption devotional I helped write & edit a few years ago.

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Desire and surrender are the perfect balance to praying.
~Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p123~

~…~…~…~

And today, here I am at 36 weeks pregnant with a precious and beloved little rainbow baby, preparing for the marathon that will soon be delivering him from my body into our arms… and I feel nearly at a loss for words at my Father’s feet. I want to pray. I feel like I know what I need to pray for. And yet the words feel so hard to come by. The contractions come more frequently than the words do. My words feel feeble and basic, deft of depth. Are they void of faith too? Lord, have mercy and give me faith in spirit that spills out into faith-filled, faithful words. It is hard to feel like my prayers would have efficacy. It is hard to feel like it even matters. All I can mutter while sitting here and silently speaking with the Lord in my heart is Oh God, I need Your strength and I need You to do the work ~ I need You to establish this work, and I desperately desire Your favor to be upon us.

I am fearful and anxious.
I am both physically and mentally weary.
I am prepared and completely unprepared, simultaneously.
I know God’s in control.
It is both freeing and terrifying to know that I have zero control.

I like meditating on these Scriptures when I have these anxious moments, and turning them into prayers:

Today I am reminding myself of certain truths that I can grab hold of in Scripture, in regard to my child’s life.
The Lord made and fashioned my son in my womb (Job 31:15) just in the same way that He made all other things in creation (Isaiah 44:24), and before even that, He knew my son (Jeremiah 1:5). He not only knew, created, and formed this little baby, but He knows the numbers of his days and sees him even in the secret depths of my womb (Psalm 139:16).
I am begging the Lord to be faithful to my family, to me, to my son ~ that He would deliver this baby from my womb in His perfect timing and cause him to trust the Lord even while he nurses, that not only would He cling to our son once he is born but that even now the tiny faith of my baby would be clinging to his God (Psalm 22:9-10). I am asking the Lord to be the One on whom our tiny baby is leaning even now, and that he will not be afraid when he is plunged into the hard throes of being delivered, and that in due time we all would be praising the Lord together for His provision and strength and deliverance (Psalm 71:6). I am confident that this fruit of my womb is a blessing, an unmerited reward from the hand of God simply because He is gracious (Psalm 127:3).

And so this brings me to my knees, knowing that this entire pregnancy has not only been planned, knitted, and seen by the Lord, but that He continues to hold my life and my baby’s life in His hands… knowing that the end is in sight, and while the unknowns of how and when delivery will happen are outside the reach of my knowledge, it is all in the Lord’s sovereign plan already. I am asking for peace in the waiting and wondering. I am asking for comfort in the face of pain and anxiety.

At just seven weeks, I wrote:

My prayers are no longer eloquent, but have been reduced to a childlike sputtering of short phrases. I walk around in circles feeling like time is slipping by at the rate of a tortoise race while my heartrate feels like a busy jackrabbit. At the heart of it all, I guess my humanity is saying that I want control, that I want what I do to matter and effect a difference. My child is in the coziest place, closer to me than anyone could possibly be in any other physical way—but I have absolutely zero power over what goes on in there. It is a helpless feeling. The helplessness of a child wells up within me, and I feel like a toddler. Those childlike prayers come out, the tantrums happen, I climb helplessly into my Father’s lap when I curl up on the couch with my Bible or my prayer book… and I remember the call of Jesus to become like a child. And I think, oh! That’s exactly what He has done to me right now! He has made me like a child before Him in all of my sputtering, frail helplessness!

At twenty-five weeks, I wrote:

Please grant us hearts that are rejoicing in You, Lord. Make us rejoice! Please give us confidence in You and peace with all people. Remind us of Your presence with us each day, no matter what arises—spotting, nausea, exhaustion—and give us Your power over anxiety. Lord, help me to bring everything to You in prayer. Give me the wisdom not to simply fret, but to rather be filled with thanksgiving so that I can bring You my requests in prayer and praise and supplication. Lord, please remind me that it is Your peace alone that will surpass my understanding, and will guard my heart and my mind in Your own Christ Jesus. When I feel anxiety beginning to take over, bring me to my knees so that Your presence, Your peace, and Your guarding Spirit will be the only thing overwhelming me. Please fill my mind with things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable. Please take away all things which are unlovely, false, dishonest, and fretful. Make me to dwell on things that You find excellent! Give me a heart that focuses on things that are worth of praise! Use Your people around me, Your Scriptures, Your Spirit that lives within me—to help me practice what You would have me do. And please, in all of these things, send Your peace to be with me and reign over me (Philippians 4:4-9).

At thirty-two weeks, I wrote:

It has not been an easy road for over eight years of seeking to grow our family. But Lord, You have done the work, and You have repeatedly restored us. Desolation has always been followed by restoration. We see Your faithfulness. We have seen it in the darkness and the valleys. We have seen it while dancing on the sunlit mountaintops. Your hand of grace and Your heart of mercy has never been far from us, even when we in our humanity somehow felt far from You.
Therefore, we sing to You and we give thanks to Your holy name. Because while we have felt the cold shady side of being Your children, living tangibly in the realities that You are sovereign even in the most painful and harsh of circumstances, our family is also living proof that You do bring the dawn—and with it, You restore joy.

And now, with the culmination of this PAL journey nearing my fingertips, I pray again:

Oh God my Father, You have been faithful. You have been my food and drink. You have been my peace and strength. You have been my hope and joy. Remind me of these things now while I am feeling weak, isolated, empty. When the contractions grip me, use their power to remind me of Your hands powerfully gripping me. When the pain overcomes me, fill me with Your presence so that the One who overcame the power of sin and death will give me the strength to come through the agony of delivering a child from my body. When the fear and anxiety of unknowns control all my attention, give my heart Your peace because I have confidence that You not only know all but planned all and hold all things.
Give us joy, because You have continually proven that You hear our prayers. Give us confidence, because You daily provide for all our needs. Give us energy, for You are the source of all light and life and strength.
Give me words to speak and pray that are glorifying to You. And remind me that eloquence is not Your measure of faith, but a contrite heart and open hands. These are what I offer to You today, my King and my God. Be near to me, near to my son. Don’t let us go.

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Anxiety is unable to relax in the face of chaos;
continuous prayer clings to the Father in the face of chaos.
~Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p71~

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I am asking for big blessings. Big strength. Big faith. Faith that will be far more precious than gold, for it has been tested and tried, given and proven. May the Lord’s blessing be upon us as He establishes the work of our hands and knitting of His covenant child in my womb. Amen.

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A needy heart is a praying heart. Dependency is the heartbeat of prayer.
~Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p24~

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Nine Treasures, on PAIL Day

Today (Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day)
we are remembering our darlings in heaven,
the nine siblings of our treasures here.

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While this day does not cut so acutely into my heart as it once did, it is still a day that bittersweetly blesses and affects me.
In addition to treasures of glory, of Christ, of spiritual hopes & faith ~ we have nine treasures in heaven.
Little treasured people whose bodies I held within mine… and in my hands…
Boys and girls, my sons and daughters, who were beautifully created and wonderfully knit by their heavenly Father.

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Covenant Hope, Glory Hesed, Promise Anastasis, Peace Nikonos
Mercy Kyrie, Victory Athanasius, Hosanna Praise,
Heritage Peniel, Fidelis Se’arah

~ oh, how we love you. I think of you all the time and imagine what life would have been like if you had stayed here with us. Your brother Gabriel talks about you a lot. And even Asher and Evangeline are starting to know your names, to remember how your lives have been entwined with theirs, to acknowledge that our family is much bigger than what meets the eye. ~

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I am so happy, blessed and honored and privileged, to be their mommy. And I look ahead with joyful anticipation to holding them again (or if I don’t get to hold them, at least being with them and seeing them and singing with them) when I join them on the other side of eternity.


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Pregnant with a Rainbow, Part V

Anxiety.

A very big part of my PAL journey is wrapped up in that one little word.

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I have been continuing to write weekly entries into a Word document where I am essentially journaling through this pregnancy, mostly for my own sake, but perhaps to share in snippets with others (now or in the future), and anxiety has been one of the most frequently recurring themes. In case you’re curious, joy seems to be giving it a run for its money; humility and thankfulness being runners-up.

It takes a big bite of courage paired with a gulp of honesty for me to publicly share how real anxiety is for me.
How big a part it has played in my life this year (and not just this year, but since that’s my current topic of conversation, it’s where I will stick for now).
Let me share, by picking & choosing, a few of the more notable times I have written about anxiety in this PAL journey with my Sweet Teen.

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Four Weeks …~…~…
I invite you to share with me in the Lord’s work—to walk through the hope and rejoicing, to navigate the fear and the anxiety, to experience vicariously the psychoanalyzing of every twinge and the microscopic scrutinizing of every piece of toilet paper.

Five Weeks …~…~…
Anxiety is bubbling up around me in more noticeable, tangible ways than it has yet in this pregnancy. I feel naked, exposed, vulnerable.

Six Weeks …~…~…
I am so afraid to hope and so afraid to be joyful. Even though there is a sliver of me that wants to shout from the rooftops that the Lord has filled my womb—I want to plan and prepare and anticipate and expect an autumn baby—I want to let the kids kiss my tummy and pray aloud all day for the little baby without wincing in my heart of anxiety.

Nine Weeks …~…~…
Coping with the emotional aspects of very real and present anxiety can be the ugliest and most monstrous of challenges—it is the type of battle where my enemies are invisible, my battle lines are blurry, my armor is thin, my weaponry is inadequate. This is a challenge where understanding sympathy is harder to come by… the average joe can not grasp this mysteriously invisible war on anxiety…
Anxiety can be my worst enemy. I focus a lot on purposeful resting right now, on breathing and praying, on being still. Meanwhile, anxiety threatens to clench my chest and speed my heart until my palms are sweaty and my ears are ringing. I run to the bathroom neurotically, not because I have to go, but because I want to make sure I’m not bleeding—I just need to check that tissue once more. There is part of me that just assumes that one of these mornings, I will wake up in a pool of blood. And every day that it doesn’t happen, rather than revel in the unbelievable joy that is the Lord’s tender mercy made new yet again, I tend to resign myself to thinking, well, not today but maybe tomorrow.

Sixteen Weeks …~…~…
Of course, staying in prayer and in Scripture and reading good things to encourage my spirit in the Lord is good always but I won’t pretend that it is a magic fix for my anxiety and worries, or that suddenly when I seek to hold my thoughts captive by resting in the Lord that it all clicks and works 100%. It doesn’t, because I am still a sinner, and I still live in a fallen world.

Seventeen Weeks …~…~…
In those moments when the anxiety is particularly cutting—when there is a pink tinge on the toilet paper, when it has been two days since feeling movement, when I can not quickly find the heartbeat on the doppler, when I am feeling tender pressure “down there”—I want to focus less on the worry and anxiety, and more on trusting and committing my way to the Lord.

Twenty-Four Weeks …~…~…
This pregnancy has not been without its complications, and it has been full of abundant anxiety on my part. But it’s miraculous.

Twenty-Seven Weeks …~…~…
As I was thinking this evening about going to my OB appointment tomorrow morning, I started to panic rather fully and ended up in tears simply because of my vivid imagination running away with me and getting the better of me. I was imagining being there by myself—usually I don’t have to go alone, but I will be alone tomorrow which scares me so much—and them not being able to find the baby’s heartbeat, and having to be by myself at a terrible ultrasound or something. How just thinking about something like that could get me into a total panic and a total teary mess is ridiculous. It shows how absolutely vulnerable and anxiety-prone I truly am.
It is not only my duty but also my joy and privilege to trust in Him alone. If I give up of myself—including the inner turmoil of anxiety, worry, fear, doubt—my trust in Him will cause my roots to be deep, strong, and abiding to the point of producing good fruit.

Twenty-Eight Weeks …~…~…
In my moments of the most anxiety, the most doubt, the times when I am tearful and feeling sick… these are the times when I know I need to throw myself at the feet of my merciful Lord! Why is it so much easier to have that knowledge in my head than it is to actually follow through with it by faith?

Twenty-Nine Weeks …~…~…
The physical struggles that have come with this pregnancy coupled with the overwhelming anxiety that darkens my eyes and fills my heart now on an almost daily basis leave me feeling vulnerable and naked before my family, the friends who peer into my life right now, and even You. Lord, would You clothe me? Please cover me with Your pinions and outstretched hand. Put Your whole armor on me. So often these days I feel the schemes of the devil himself threatening to choke me—he taunts me in my pain and nausea, he plagues me with blinding anxiety that fills my days and my nights with terrors and fears. Wrestling the physical battles of flesh and blood is real enough in pregnancy: the pressure, the pain, the inability to sleep comfortably, the continued nausea—just to give a few common examples, but Lord, You know the deepest and hardest parts. Wrestling the invisible battles are even harder because keeping my feet up, putting ice packs on my neck, taking Tylenol or Zofran—they don’t do a thing. When I close my eyes and envision the nightmare of delivering my baby ten weeks too soon, it is spiritual forces of evil in their invisible cloaks that are grasping and twisting my nerves, slicing my heart to pieces, making my heart pound and my eyes overflow with tears. Oh God! Strike down these powers and these dark rulers and authorities—they have no power over me!
There is nothing like the anxiety I have been battling recently, especially this week. The internalized fears paired with the physical things that exacerbate my worries threatens to choke me every day, and has me in tears by the time evening arrives. Even in sleep, my dreams focus on the anxiety and inhibit my rest.

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Please know that as I share these selected snippets with you, they are just that: selected snippets. The document I have been writing during this pregnancy is already 82 pages long, so very clearly this is just a small and very narrow glimpse into my experience. I wanted to share with you a view into the side of PAL that is anxiety… but it is only one facet. Please remember that. Please know that the Lord is my shepherd, and I am His joyful sheep. Please know that my husband, my parents, my children, and my medical team are all not only aware of the anxiety, but participating in both the struggles & the solutions with me.

That said, if you too find yourself overcome with anxiety, especially during a Pregnancy After Loss(es), I want you to know that you are not alone. I want you to be reassured that it is a normal part of this particular experience. I want you to know that your level of anxiety does not say anything about your walk with Christ, nor does it generally effect the child within your womb.
And as always, please remember that I am a comment or an email away. If you need someone to walk alongside you during a similar journey, I’m here ~ and I want you to know that I truly believe in living out Romans 1:3-4 in a tangibly empathetic way.