Ten years ago today I found it hard to get out of bed. Leveled by a weight I didn’t completely understand or see coming, I struggled to find my footing. I hid.
Go into labor in an instant, be rushed to the hospital by ambulance, deliver a lifeless baby and hold her in your arms…and the world kind of stops.
Leave the hospital no longer pregnant, no longer with child, just in time to meet with the funeral director, because there are choices that have to be made, papers that have to be signed and it’s all so hard to hard to process. It happens so quickly.
Where am I and how did I even get here?
In the days that follow you try to put one foot in front of the other, put the pieces of normal back together, but it’s a puzzle where nothing seems to fit no matter how much you will it to. Everything has changed.
There was still a sweet one year old to mother, a husband who was trying to process the same nightmares, friends and family who wanted so much to help, wanted in, and I mostly couldn’t find the strength to open the door more than a crack.
The next year was hard. It sucked. I realize that’s not a pretty word, but it feels disingenuous to paint pretty words on the ugliest of times.
I cried when my close friend told me she was pregnant – with a girl. She was nervous to tell me. I offered congratulations, hung up the phone and bawled. I did the same another day as I walked by the little girls shoe section in a department store.
I knew God was good, but why did it feel like he wasn’t good to me? I prayed big prayers for my daughter. I rested and didn’t do yard work when I knew things were complicated. I followed the rules, fought for faith over fear. And here is where it all got me, bawling in the shoe department.
In the months that followed, months and months of hoping to become pregnant again, fear became a cancer in my heart. What if this is it for me? What if there are no more babies? What if there never is another little girl?
The questions were real and honest and painful.
And ten years later, I find myself here – mama to two lively, healthy and beautiful girls (not to mention, two awesome boys, as well). I can’t look a them without realizing God has given me nothing less than a double portion.
They are two peas in a pod, these girls, nearly the same size and preferring to dress the same much of the time, as well. We celebrated them last night as they turned 6 & 8, just days apart. And my heart felt overwhelmed. Amidst the festivities, I couldn’t help but realize that God saw every angry and bitter tear that I cried, knowing I would be right here today. He knew there would be beauty from those ashes, that I would one day be able to share my story and hold another woman’s hand in her pain.
And He sees you too.
I still don’t have suffering all figured out. I don’t have a canned answer for the whys and hows, a pretty band-aid for the pain. I’ve much to keep learning and I suspect I won’t completely understand it all until I see the face of the One who made me. But I know that He is faithful. And He is good. Even, to me.
This post originally appeared on IChooseBrave.com and was republished with permission.
