A lot can happen in three months.
Your little girl can get the worst case of the flu she’s ever had, just days before a solo trip across the country. Your doubts in being a mother, a daughter, a wife, and a friend can fall back in familiar negativity. Your emotions can get the best of you, your relationships, and a good night’s sleep.
And you can lose your tiny-formed baby, 10 weeks into a pregnancy, only 24 hours after an all-too silent ultrasound.
…
I’ve tried to make it a personal policy to write honestly, and yet never leave a chapter dwelling on the negativity. I want to use my writing to help me process, and turn things around for when it’s hard to understand. If nothing else, the words I write need to become a mirror for me to reflect on what I think I see, and realize what is actually true.
So in the times when I still can’t see the Truth, I keep the writing to myself; until the fogged glass becomes a little clearer, and I can at least see the direction in which I’m meant to be looking.
Right now, the glass doesn’t just look foggy – not even warped. It looks broken, because I let it slip when I tried to move it too fast. And it happened so quickly, that I didn’t see it coming.
So I’m trying to pick up the pieces, one by one. I’m trying to put them back together and make sense of what is happening around me.
Not because I want to. Not because I’m ready to regroup and get back into routines.
But because I feel lost. And I know that if I ever want to be found, I need to start putting the broken shards back together.
And the first piece I picked up…?
A few hours after the ultrasound, I wrote out everything I knew to be true – everything that I knew about Him, in order to remind myself over the coming hours, days, weeks… until Something Happened. Until my prayers were answered. Until my cries were heard.
I was going to print a gazillion copies, and tape them all over the house, on every cupboard, wall and mirror, so that I would not forget. So that I couldn’t possibly forget. So that my faith wouldn’t falter.
What happened in the following hours after I wrote them, did not change them. Nothing does. Nothing can. That’s why they are Truths.
They are Absolute.
I can’t see the picture in the mirror yet. I can’t even figure out where this piece goes, or if I’ve even got it the right side up. Honestly, I’m overwhelmed, numbed, and uncertain of what to say, do, or how to breathe.
But this is what I do know:
I am a chosen child of God.
His love is never-ending – deeper, wider, and higher than I’ll ever know.
He makes all things good for those who love Him.
His ways are beyond my understanding.
His blood was shed… so mine doesn’t have to.
He moves mountains.
He heals the bleeding.
He raises the dead.
He blesses us with children.
He understands me as no one else does.
He knits each of us in the womb – fearfully, and wonderfully.
His Power will come through the least of us.
His Grace is Enough.
Jesus wept.
And I am never, ever alone.
And that’s a peace I’ll never forget.
