A single mom to three boys working hard to live my truest life. I hope as I share the beauty, the gratitude, the grief, the hard…you find inspiration + hope to show up to your life as honestly as possible.
All in Finding Him
It’s only been two and a half weeks since I shared I’m pregnant, but that time has felt exhaustingly long.
… It has been a calling of sorts to share some of the What Would Typically Be Private pieces of my journey + heart over the years.
I hold the hope + carry a conviction of loosing chains of shame for others. The response through my years of sharing is that that is exactly what happens when we choose to shine light in our own hidden corners where shame and pain reside.
I find myself in yet another season of deep, irrevocable loss.
When I wrote my memoir about finding the fullness of joy through allowing myself to grieve — This Undeserved Life — I could not have foreseen the depths of grief and trauma I still had coming at me. But isn’t that exactly how trauma works? It blindsides us and catches us off guard and knocks us down to our rockiest of bottoms.
Tumultuous. That’s the kind of journey I am experiencing.
Loss, no matter the kind, changes us.
It works into the corners of our souls a sorrow that remains, even if at times we don’t feel it.
I find myself living in my worst nightmare. The kind of nightmare you didn’t even believe could happen in the darkest of nights to you. The kind of nightmare that only happens to other people, less holy people.
It’s the kind of nightmare where every thing just sucks, where there is no going back to before the nightmare began because before was still miserable, it was just the hidden kind. The kind that is hidden from even yourself…because you so, so don’t want it to be reality.
But… before the nightmare woke us all up, I was slowly dying a quiet, secret death. It was okay enough though, because I was believing it to be okay and wanted it to be okay so badly.
I lay down all the dreams I dreamt,
all the things I was sure were meant
to be.
Everything is changing,
there can be no more waiting.
Every piece of me burns,
caught up in a flame,
a fire creating sorrow-filled pain.
I am standing in the second row, metal folding chairs lined through the cafeteria, the drums right in front of me, the stage up and to the right, worship music being sung.
Coffee in my hand, sometimes cupped by both. I vacillate in and out of the present.
The words leave my lips like whispers. I want to mean them in the deepest parts of me, and some of the lines I do, but others I am not there yet. Lyrics of His grace and forgiveness and closeness ring true and I believe them in this darkness, I need Him in my brokenness; He brings wholeness into all the cracks of me.
There are a lot of cracks.
I don't know if it's my endometriosis, Seasonal Affective Disorder (hey, Oregon!), not sleeping more than 90 minute intervals for over two years, or the pressure of supporting our family with my (non-studio, natural light) photography business in the middle of winter....
but I am stuck in a disappointingly-dreadful doldrum.
I was once writing fifty hours a month for other websites, creativity coming out of my keyboard left and right, stories flying from my fibers through my fingertips. I was getting paid to pour my pains and grace onto internet-paper, bleeding my feelings and experiences onto the screen for anyone to see and read.
Here are our fall crafts!
...
I continually find it is always through the tears and the pain I find the most growth. It's always through the transition from vibrant days to in-my-face confrontation that I evolve and relearn what it means to be humble. I never want to lash out and hurt others, as a defensive reaction. I never want to choose my comfort and protection of my heart over truly seeing a human for who they are and what they're crying out about.
The struggle is real around here and I battle blaming myself for not being a more structured, routine-oriented mom. I look at other moms who have an amazing routine, who have had their babies sleeping through the night since they were 3 months old and on a strict eating/sleeping schedule.
But I can't do that to myself—blame and battle and belittle—so I remind myself we are all different with different strengths and different personalities and different lives. Right? Those mamas who have it down are not perfect at something...right?
Im tired, much like the rest of you.
Still in the fog of morning sluggishness and with a thinly veiled air of motherly annoyance, I dropped my four older children at soccer practice with water bottles and balls and snacks in baggies. I thought perhaps I could use a few laps around a field to clear my head. So I put two-year-old Bo in the stroller with no plan for where to walk, just knowing I needed to pound it out on the pavement. The chaotic early morning rush to get everyone ready and out the door had shredded my nerves. I struggled to like my kids in that single moment, and I surely didn’t like myself. I was remembering why we didn’t do these early morning activities very often.
The carpet fibers catching my tears were soaked with salty love poured out.
Month eighteen of trying to conceive had just passed and I was weary of purchasing pregnancy tests, only to pitch them.
I was exhausted from the physical pain of endometriosis. I was worn thin from the emotional pain of waiting.
The season will eventually change.
But for now, as you find yourself here in the wait, whatever that might be, I’m praying the Father gives you eyes to see the subtle change of Spring, to see what’s really growing underneath.
I'm addicted to getting things done.
My greatest sin is that I never pause enough to truly rest.
I believe every sin is sin, so when I say "my greatest" I mean my most frequent sin.
It's the sin in my life I am very aware of, but do little to (repent and) change.
Sin, to me, is disobedience to God and what He intends for us. I believe He invites us into a whole and full life, one where He commands things like rest...because it is for our better good. It is for our best life.
I continue to live in constant disobedience of the commandment to rest, to enjoy the Sabbath. A commandment given out of love, a gift of grace. It was commanded not out of control, but out of love and gentleness.
We were created to rest.
While in the infant adoption process and awaiting our match, every day I battled urgency.
I felt urgency to be matched with an expectant mama making an adoption plan, but was simultaneously fearful we didn't have even half the funds to be due.
There existed in me a void, one created by the wait.
Two years ago we were waiting and longing and hoping; there were so many unknowns.
I still had to live the story needing written: the story of miscarriage after The Wait, our adoption journey, immense ministry + church trauma, and birth trauma. The story needed to be lived before it could be written.
I'm praying this book is a gift from Father to you,.
I ache in the deepest parts of me my story and words on these pages bring you THIS much closer to healing, wholeness, and loving bigger than you knew you could.
I pray my story shared in this book inches each of you further into His oceans of grace.
Sometimes you can avoid those broken pieces, sometimes you can't. Either way, it's painful and it's exhausting, because even though we do our best to ignore the things that bother us, to ignore the pain-filled areas of our hearts and stories...it doesn't actually fix anything.
When my husband came home from his meeting only 30 minutes after he had left home for the meeting to "plan our transition out of this city," my heart raced. When the quiet, desperate, pained words "He fired me" came out of his mouth, I felt my eyes widen and my jaw drop.
When the birth experience I had been dreaming about for over 4 years turned into one of the loneliest experiences of my life, I felt guilty.
When we were forced to say goodbye to our first baby too soon, when his tiny body left mine to reside forever below the earth and among filth, a part of me went with him.
I'm tired and I'm raw and I'm all sorts weary. This post is more for me than for you, because I just need to write.
Truth be told, I have been struggling with the current view this world has regarding Christians; I've been struggling because of the way we Christians have painted ourselves. It's our fault. We are seen now more than ever (in my small life) as interested in only our own safety. We are interested in making society bend to our morals and beliefs, forcing others into a world of what we deem as Right Living. We are interested in making America a "Christian nation," something I don't believe it ever has been or ever will be.
... Jesus broke Himself for us; He offered His physical body to be crucified and His spirit to endure the heaviness of Hell. All so we foreigners would be welcomed.
Why do babies die in the womb or during birth? Why can people in power choose to bomb their own countries, without being taken down? Why do people continue to defend deaths/injuries and explain away "how they deserved to die" when we should really just shut our mouths, stop thinking we know everything, and mourn? How can people actually say they are grieving the tragedies of Aleppo when just two months ago they were complaining about people seeking refuge? WHY ARE WE SUCH A MESS OF BROKENNESS?
The advent is here.
The coming of the King so near you can taste it.
Or can you?
![How to Tell Your Soul What is True [Sara Hagerty]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5850be0d03596ef94b5f7921/1504672356287-IHL8LTAGFMKJXEULSJHX/300+dpi+cover.JPG)
