What’s in a Mother

It takes a toll, to parent with surrender.  It takes sacrifice to be humbly present.  It takes patience to listen to every single minute loudly proclaimed as it passes by, not a gentle reminder of what a vapor time here really is. 

Loud screams.  Mean looks.  A bite for good measure.  The daily ins and outs of the unglamorous moments of motherhood.  

Silent moments don’t happen.  Even when trying to squeeze in some alone time, there are still echos of screams and tantrums and arguing.  It never stops.  

Is it just an age thing or is it a Trauma thing or is it because we’ve messed up birth order … that every single one of our children need 100% supervision.  

The days are long, oh so long, and I can’t believe how quickly the years go.  

Thank God for His mercy and that He refreshes my soul daily.  Thank God He trusts me with this mission of motherhood and that while I find myself overwhelmed and unable to stay afloat, I have a Savior who walks on water.  I know I can trust Him and turn to Him on the hardest of days.  When my kids are acting out or I’ve messed up.  

So what is in a mother?  A whole lot of everything.  

Reading Time

I have been taking time to read more lately.  After the loss of our sixth baby, I picked up Lisa Bevere's book Godmothers.  This book has been phenomenal and eye opening in different ways.  It has encouraged me to think deeper, to love more boldly, and to reevaluate some of the relationships I have or do not have in my life as of currently. 

God has used Lisa's words to minster to me.   I have taken a good look at who I am as a mother, a sister, a wife and a friend.  

I never envisioned myself as someone with influence.  I have not thought of myself as someone that others look to for motherly advice or wisdom.  But I am at a point in my life where I look around me and I see where others are looking to me and coming to me for advice.  

Some areas I do not feel adequate to offer advice in.  Other areas I feel like just because I have lived experience does not mean that others have much interest in hearing my thoughts on it.  I am being proved wrong in many areas.  Just this weekend alone I had friends asking me for baby registry advice, breastfeeding advice, ttc advice, as well as wedding planning advice.  

I am open to offering what I know and have learned, but so often I feel like a firehose of information.  And then there are times when I feel that I have offered as much as I can think to share and I am still asked to share more and I wish that others would put in some major leg work and do some digging to gain the knowledge, too! 

There is a fine line between offering what I know as a means to share information and also having a boundary so that I am not burned out by constantly giving and giving of myself. 

I would like to have a small goal this year of reading 12 books.  That is one book a month.  I would like to read a book of about 200-250 pages a month.  I am about to finish Lisa Bevere's book hopefully tonight.  I have been reading each night before bed for a few minutes.  Hopefully I can increase my reading time while decreasing my screen time.  This is only my first book of the year, but I do believe between now and the end of the year I can catch up as after this book I will have 10 months to read 11 books.  I may just read through all of the Bevere books I own as a jump start to reading.  I go through spurts of reading a lot and then dry spells. 

One of the most recent things I read in Godmothers was about being kind.  Just between last night and this morning I decided to implement kindness in a radical way - a way I felt I had not always been initiating kindness.  Well, morning one, and my family was on pins and needles.  There was so much unrest in my house this morning.  Things were rough.  Arguing was happening.  Nothing was going smoothly. 

I brought it before God during worship and I was so kindly told that it was because I was trying to be kind on my own, apart from God.  The cool thing about God is that He is such a gentle God.  He did not condemn me.  He did not chastise me.  He just clearly and simply put it that I was trying to do it on my own without Him as the center and that is why it was such a burden to carry.  In that moment immediately I invited Him into my day and my desire to be kinder.  I can be nothing without God.  I cannot accomplish to the fullest extent what I set out to do without God.  I need Him.  He is so readily available and wanting to be included and invited into my everyday.  

After that moment, conversations improved, connection improved, there was let "at each other's throats" and more quiet and peace within my house!  Oh what a joyous moment it is when God comes quickly and remedies my errors and selfish ways so quickly!   

Where are my Eyes?

Where are my eyes?  A question I ask my child multiple times a day.  As well as where are other parts of her body. 

What an end to 2020 and a start to 2021!  Only God.  Only God could have orchestrated the absolute beauty from the ashes that we have experienced. 

2020 ended with us finding out that another baby was onboard.  Pregnancy loss has been so prevalent in our lives.  I felt so much peace.  I felt that come this summer, we were going to be filled to the brim with baby diapers and teaching and raising babies.  We were so excited!  

Then mid January, I laid on the ultrasound table only to be told that baby's heart had recently stopped growing.  A second scan a week later confirmed this.  The miscarriage part was not awful, but postpartum has been absolutely incredibly difficult.  

We have been going to church where there has been a heavy focus on Philippians.  Reminders to forget the past and focus on the future - keeping our eyes on the prize of Christ Jesus!  Every Sunday, I wonder if I focus too much on our losses instead of our gains and what awaits us.  This last pregnancy, even if no one wanted to hear it, I shared that if we had this baby, it would be the longest stretch of time in our marriage without a loss (although we already were at that mark and made it 17 months with no losses!). 

I do not know for certain what the future holds.  I do know that I am going from glory to glory.  Even amidst the heartache and sorrow, God is here in my midst.  

Amazing things are in store for us.  God has shown up.  While I will forever carry my babies in my heart, I choose to keep my eyes ahead - on the prize of that which is Christ Jesus. 

When the Harvest Comes

What has felt like forever of waiting, praying, lamenting, waiting, crying, waiting, waiting waiting ... God has been in the midst.  It can be so difficult to know that God is with me and for me in the middle of a season.  It has certain been difficult the last year and more seeing the hills and valleys in hindsight.   

We are not completely out of a valley even presently, but I can see what is to be expected in the weeks and months to come.  I can see how answers to prayers are coming and how I am no longer left in this season of not being able to see ahead. 

I have no idea what the season after this looks like.  I know there will be more seasons where it feels like drought and storms, only very quickly to feel like a flow of milk and honey. 

This season is bursting with God's goodness and mercy for me.  He is here in our midst.  He is here and has always been here. 

I wish I knew the why I have to wait so long to see Him at work in some of the big areas of my life, yet I am thankful that I have run the race of endurance and that while I wish my faith was less wavering, I know that God has been and is with me.  He will not leave me nor will he abandon me.  

There is still more waiting to be done, but I can rest knowing that God is holding me.  He is with me.  He is carrying me through.  He wants to give me good gifts.  Sometimes I am impatient and just want what I want now, whereas He is calling me to patience ... as He has something even more beautiful in store for me.  He has the best gift for me and He is apt to reveal that to me when I sit back and allow Him to show up.  

More of Him, less of me.  May my life be a testimony of complete surrender to the Lord.  I love how even when I am weak, He is strong.  He shows up.  He is in our midst. 

God Be with Me in All I Do

Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him (Psalm 34:8).  A beautiful reminder of pressing into the Lord when life is a struggle.  God does not disappoint.  He is there, just waiting to be seen.  He is steadfast and His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). 

Yesterday did not go as expected.  We had high hopes that God was with us and was going to show up in ways we have been praying for quite some time.  We had faith.  We believed.  We had some reservations because we have experienced rejection from people in this specific request before, but we knew from experience that God shows up.  

Then we waited.  And waited some more.  We prayed in the waiting.  We went for a drive in the waiting.  We cried in the waiting.  We questioned if we were actually following God in the waiting.  We questioned if we were missing something and if that is why we have been walking through this barren land without reprieve. 

Then we got the notification that the prayers we were praying were not answered in the way we had hoped, yet are perhaps actually answered in the way we have been praying.  

I am reminded of 1 Peter 2:2 that I have tasted that the Lord is Good.  He has shown up in areas I have been on the borderline hopeless about.  He has revealed His goodness to me and I am reminded of what he has done for me.  He led me to Deuteronomy 8 which talks about the Isralalites trek through the dessert - they were stripped of their pride and their hearts were tested to see if they would follow the Lord.  

This season gives me a glimpse of what Job may have been going through.  I pray I will never experience such turmoil and anguish to the magnitude he did, yet I also can relate to the loss he experienced and the well intentioned friends giving not so good of advice.  

Although life has not been as rich and joyful in certain areas as I have hoped for, I am reminded in Psalm 23:6, Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

What a beautiful reminder that God's goodness and love follow me all the days of my life!  So while I may feel disappointed that we received a different answer than we hoped for, my prayers are not in vain and my prayers are not for naught.  My lamentations are heard and God hears the cries of His people (Psalm 34:17). 

As Time Goes On

Time does not heal all wounds.  At least that is what I am finding out for myself.  We just celebrated the date that our first child would have joined our family had the heartache of loss never entered our world.  Celebrate, that may be too much of a stretch.  Instead we grieved, and ached, and mourned what is not.  We cried, we held each other, we tried to press on and not dwell in the darkness of anguish and pain.  Sometimes laying there in the misery of it all sounds more appealing then picking up and carrying, all the whilest remembering and not forgetting what has been our life.

In the midst of this chaos and brokenness, I feel lost.  I do not know how I climb out of bed every day and face what the day brings.  I do not know why death has entered our lives and robbed us of three very much wanted children.  I do not get how the thing we want so badly has been just close enough to be true and then vanishes before we can tangibly count is as ours to be had.

It is so hard to look forward and imagine that this time will be used as good.  This time feels broken, and messy, and vulnerable, and scary.  It feels impossible that this season can be overcome.  It feels impossible that what the future holds can ever out weigh the hardships and heartaches of this season.  How can my heart go on?  How can I recover from a past 8 months that have been filled with hurt, pain, loss, sadness, yet mingled with joy and hope and gratitude?

Yes, although there has been loss ... there has been so much more hope.  Three time this year we have been blessed with two little pink lines.  Three times this year I have experienced life within me.  Three times this year I have had the honor and the privilege to share with family and friends that a baby was on the way!  I have so much hope and joy reminiscing those moments.  I have faith that our story is not over.  I have to believe that the hope I have is not for naught.

God is good.  He is writing our story.  Death has never been part of His plan, but death entered this world.  I have a choice to make every day.  Do I allow the crushing weight of death to overcome me, or do I allow Him who overcame death to fulfill me and continue to minister to me and give me hope?  From this experience, I can reassure you that choosing hope has been the best choice I have ever made.

The future still remains unknown.  I still struggle to envision a time where this mess will be turned into a message.  But I have faith that God is using our story of brokenness and that redemption is His.

These losses have helped press us even further into the journey of foster care.  We are closer now than we have been before to being licensed foster parents.  And perhaps that is how God is using our story.  I do not know.  But God does.  Send us, Lord.  Let us be instruments on this journey of life and let us be Your hands and feet to the least of them. 

In the waiting

So take courage my heart 

Stay steadfast my soul 

He's in the waiting 

He's in the waiting 

Hold onto your hope 

As your triumph unfolds 

He's never failing 

He's never failing

Another weekend come and gone.  And it feels like the second worse weekend I have been through in my life.  This past Saturday we said hello and goodbye to yet another baby.  It had only been a few short days since those two pink lines appeared on the test and I sat in awe and wonder on my bathroom floor as tears of faith and joy ran down my cheeks.  I was full of praise, yet I was terrified.  I had walked this journey two times already.  I was hopeful, oh so hopeful, that this was going to be our take home baby.  Our Redemption baby.  

I had plans to celebrate with my husband.  I wrote a poem.  We had a photo shoot scheduled under the guise that we were having our one year anniversary photos taken.  But then all the hopes and dreams that had been building for a lifetime, that had suddenly become a reality three days earlier all came to an abrupt halt as I now sat on the bathroom floor watching my hopes and dreams of this child that I had prayed for vanish. 

I feel the weight of the pain, and the memories of "what ifs" infiltrate every cell of my body and I cry out begging for relief, begging for answers, begging that this is all a dream.  Can I wake up yet?  Can this not be my reality ... please?  I just want to hide.  I just want company.  I want to be everywhere and nowhere all at once. 

This journey has taken me deeper with God.  I have continued to press into Him.  Even in the hard moments, I find my strength in Him.  In the morning, when I rise, give me Jesus.  

While I wait, Jesus is here.  What I wait for, I know not.  But I know that my God turns mourning into rejoicing and ashes into beauty.  And for that, how can I not have hope?  

To be completely raw and honest, this seasons sucks.  It is frustrating, challenging, tear-jerking, and at times I hardly like being around myself because I feel so consumed with grief and heartache. 

I know I am not alone.  My heart goes out to all of those mommas and daddys who have lost babies and who walk this same journey, or one similar.  As much as I want to say that it will be ok, or that we will all hold our miracle babies, I cannot make those promises.  Yet I know who holds the days and I know that God is constantly making all things new.  For that, I am thankful. 

My heart holds so much hope.  Perhaps my eye has been on the wrong prize.  For what am I supposed to long for and hope for?  I am praying for guidance through this journey.  I am praying for a healed heart.  I am praying that God will indeed restore that which has been broken and turn it into something beautiful and amazing (Joel 2:25). 

In this seasons, I know God is near.  As I wait, I know God is here.