One Step at a Time

I know the healing process takes time.  I think maybe sometimes I expect it to be faster.  I feel like I haven’t been happy and truly laughed in forever… but I know it’s not been that long.  Just since we lost our bean, but it feels that way. 
I bought Angie Smith’s new book “What Women  Fear”.  I’m reading a chapter a day so that I can really think about what I’m reading and pray on it.  I read chapter 1 on our drive to Michigan, and let me just tell you I think it was written for me.  Chapter 1 was called Sitting by the Well – Fear of the “What if…”   Oh my goodness – she knew what was in my heart – she knew I’ve been so afraid that we lost the baby b/c of something I did or didn’t do.  I’ve found myself wondering – “What if it was because … I did too much yardwork the day before, or the poppyseed chicken I made for dinner the night before, or the tylenol I took when I got home from work that day b/c my head was killing me… the list goes on and on and wraps up with the hardest two for me to face. “What if it’s because God knows I don’t really deserve to be a mother again?  What if I never am blessed with another miracle baby?” 
Chapter 1 was about Sara and Hagar.  She wrote about how Sara was so desperate for a baby, that she took matters into her own hands b/c she got tired of waiting on God.  I wonder if I did that.  We thought God was leading us through this round of invitro.  Doors opened and things went extremely well, but maybe we were just seeing opened doors where we wanted them.  She wrote about how Sara must have asked God “Where are you in this?”  My heart has been crying those words out to him  as I struggle to understand why a God who loves me would choose this path of infertility and heartache.  Yet I know that this path showed me more than any other could have how blessed I am to have WeeMan.  How precious his life is.  And this path has made my husband and I stronger and closer than I could ever imagine being with him.  How appropriate that our wedding dance was to “Bless the Broken Road” b/c it’s clearly a broken road we travel at times.
She wrapped up chapter 1 by focusing on Hagar.  Angie focused on how sometimes we spend so much time in the “what ifs…” and the wondering if we could have done things better, made things right, that we can’t see what’s right in front of us.   “We can’t go back to the waiting room, to the friend’s house, to the moment where the door slammed behind us.  What we can do is go to the throne of grace with our regret and let Jesus redeem it as only He can.  Take it captive before it takes you…. You weren’t made to walk through life with the stack of missed opportunities pressing you into the ground. ”   I know I know easier said than done.  But I’m gonna work on it.  I have to for myself, for WeeMan, and for Hubby. Like Hagar we have to listen to God and let Him open our heart and our eyes so we can “see” the well that was right in front of us all the time. 
So I’m working on me.  I knew I had to do something and I had a feeling Angie Smith would get it.  I had read her first book “I Will Carry You: The Sacred Dance of Grief and Joy” last winter.  It’s an amazing book about her own personal loss of her daughter.  So I just had a feeling that this was the book I needed to read.  I’m also re-reading  that first book , with a different perspective – one of a mother who lost a baby and it’s comforting, but difficult.  I don’t honestly know if I will make it through it, but I’m taking away some important pieces. She has the words that say how I’m feeling ” We saw each other for what we were – women who were often just going through the motions of normalcy, partly for our children and partly for ourselves.  I began to realize that this was going to be a part of my new life because the world has a way of going on all around you even when you are in the depths of sorrow that belie it’s pace and fervor.”
 I ache to talk to our pastor or his wife, but I’m unsure about going that route due to the situation at our church currently.  I feel like Satan is throwing all these tests up in our path at once -I’m trying to remember to pray for the strength to get through them. 
On the bright side we’re in Michigan for the weekend.  Planning to spend time with Hubby’s family, but also to spend time just the three of us being together and trying to find happy things to do.  As long as it doesn’t rain we’re going to the huge Ren Faire tomorrow. 

Life Changing

For my birthday hubby and his parents and my mom bought me a Kindle – that’s not the life changing part. It arrived yesterday and I went ahead and put a few books on it. I’m already about half way through the first one and it is AMAZING.

I’m reading One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Wherever You Are” by Ann Voskamp. I had seen several of the blogs I follow had recommended or mentioned the book which only came out very recently and I had to see what the buzz was about. Well – this book came to me at the exact right moment in my life. Isn’t it funny how God makes that happen. I’d been lost – feeling sad and blue and doubting and like a fish swimming upstream – hopeless. (Part of why I haven’t been around much since we canceled this cycle) It was heartshattering and hurting and somewhere in the hurt I found myself thinking “If God is so good why does he make things so hard?” I didn’t want to think that – but there it was in the whispers in my heart. Ann Voskamp writes in her book about thinking the same thing…. but then in the hurts and disappointments in life she writes this.

“I wonder too … if the rent in the canvas of our life backdrop, the losses that punctuate our world, our own emptiness, might actually become places to see.

To see through to to God.

That that which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually bevcome the thin open places to see through the mess of this place to the heartaching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave.”

She writes about pain and loss and finding grace in being thankful for the everyday. She writes about starting a list of 1000 things she loves and is grateful for and how in doing that she realized she was giving God glory, and in the process of that she felt herself changing accepting God’s grace and being truly saved . I’m only halfway through the book and my eyes are opened. In so many ways I’ve made the same mistakes Ann talks about. I’ve hurried and rushed and missed the beauty in the ugly every day. I’ve felt like a failure because I can’t get everything done and I can’t make my body do what it’s supposed to and I’ve questioned and doubted God’s love for me. So I’m starting my own gratitude list – my own thousand things to be grateful for and I’m hoping that somewhere in the writing and the pausing to really see my heart changes like Ann’s.

Here’s  a link to her website.

Counting my Gifts






1.Hand me down towel for a Monkey Boy






2. Puddles of water on the floor after a bath






3. Words that inspire






4 Black Velvety ears






5. Warm weight of beast on my legs






6. Sweet warm tea






7. “Dank you, daddy”






8. Hotwheels in piles on the floor and rows on the coffee table






9. Bedtime prayers with daddy






10. An old familiar hymn in an unexpected place