Here I am again. Over a year of silence from my hamming fingers on the keyboard, pouring out my heart's reflection and awakening...my boldness and vulnerability and authenticity. But a new layer of the onion was about to be peeled away. More growing, along with the pain that comes from the stretch...especially when you resist. There's so much to be said for leaning into the ache. A year and a half where I just didn't have the words...or maybe I was afraid of what those words might say. What they would show...would I show too much of this ugliness that was surfacing? Would those that read the words throw daggers of judgment or maybe just feel sorry for me? But does it really matter what a broken world has to say? It seemed to matter until recently...and by recently I mean over the course of a year and a half where God broke this jar of clay in pieces to remold it into something new.
I am something different than the last time we spoke. A new species of sorts. A new creation in a way I hadn't perceived before. I am a mother; and for those that have gone before me and have walked this road of giving more of yourself than you ever thought possible you know what I am referring to and how it changes you at a core level. Opening your heart and your arms and your space and your wallet... giving away your sleep and your time and your body and your stuff. And from day one you realize you have lost all control...or at least you realize that you never really had it anyway. And this awareness can sometimes bubble up and spill out disappointment all over your filter of this life. And for someone like me, there was a lot of unforeseen spillage! It was hard...so hard, in fact, it began to harden me. And when the potter is working the clay that has begun to harden he needs to work it with that much more strength and tenacity to shape into the beauty he intended...he never gives up. He is faithful to complete the masterpiece He started...even if it takes years. (Philippians 1:6)
I struggled with my perception of the circumstances that followed me. Prayers seemingly unanswered...and when they were answered I struggled to recognize them as blessings. I fought with how things looked...how my story was unfolding. I prayed for MY definition of perfection...and when it didn't look the way I envisioned I perceived the answers as a NO. Not for you.
I longed to conceive and struggled along the journey of fertility appointments and assessments, treatments and disappointments. I expected different. Two years later, a little jaded and worn, I thankfully walked myself into a delivery room after praying for months for a supernatural birth only to meet an induction, an unwanted and failed epidural, countless drugs, a cervix that wouldn't dilate, an unexpected c-section and a baby that couldn't breathe upon delivery. After countless hours of separation from the wee one who had lived inside of me for his entire existence I finally got to hold my sweet boy with a bouquet of wires and an IV attached to his small frame. My incision ached but my heart ached more. This didn't add up to what I had faithfully brought to the good God I knew. I sobbed for my broken body and for my sick baby but I sobbed more for the shattering of this beautiful story I had dreamed up and expected. If God was really good wouldn't He give what I asked for? Shouldn't it look prettier than this tangled up mess? I didn't know it at the time but I was being shaken and stirred, shattered and broken for a greater purpose. My son was being fed his first foods of colostrum and milk while I was being fed a new food for my soul...moving past the infants milk of 1 Corinthians 3:2 to solid foods to grow me as God carefully lead me to this new experience and revelation.
Stumbling through a whirlwind of hormones and a heart that felt betrayed, God broke my fall with some familiar words he had spoken to me years before...would I get it this time? Would it finally sink in? Would I accept this solid food to grow me or would I be a stubborn child and whine for my bottle to comfort me? The words of Isaiah 55:9 began to soften this clay and open my mind to an old truth I so desperately needed to grasp. "As the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts". Doesn't a parent always know better?
As I spent countless days attempting to teach my new son how to nurse as he screamed and fussed and protested the whole way, I knew better. I knew he needed what I had to offer...it would grow him and nourish him...even if he didn't think so. I knew that his future was dependent on filling his belly so he could thrive and so I persisted and didn't give in. I knew there was nothing cruel about what I was doing but he sure didn't agree. I had to mold and coax him into following what I knew would give him the best outcome. So if I was to truly believe that God is the good Father that He says he is...that all his promises are yes and amen (2 Corinthians 1:20)...that he truly knows what is best for me even if I don't understand then I must eat the food he's placed before me. And the nourishment I found was in the letting go of my small ideas...my selfish gain. My hopes of a Facebook worthy story or an Instagram ready image of my life. If I am truly going to trust a God that has promised to work all things for good for those who love him (Romans 8:28) then I'm gonna have to free fall into this one, and know that he sees the big picture, he knows the beginning from the end, he has formed every cell and will never let go of one of them. Even in disappointment, even in brokenness, even in a NICU where life's fragility screams out in every laboured baby sized breath. Even in life, even in death. Can I say that? Even in death He is good...He's in control....He knows best!
Lean not on your own understanding...your own fickle feelings. It doesn't make sense? Then trust Him, surrender the disappointment to Him and He'll take care of the rest. He'll redeem it and fill you with His peace. He will not leave you. (Proverbs 3:5-6). I began to realize that I perceive things with an earthly, limited filter. I have a very small subjective perception of what is good and what is not. But God's plans and ideas break through that barrier. I am limited and His ways are higher. I might think I understand how things should go in this life, but do I really? Am I the author of this complicated life? Do I really know all the ins and outs? I remind myself that I am the created, not the creator...Isn't that enough to get me on my hands and knees surrendering to His ways?
My latest molding has been into a little boy's mama. It's been worth every sleepless night, every stitch after surgery, every sore nipple and hormonal tear-shed.
I break my year and a half long silence to shatter the lies the enemy has thrown around and I have believed. Long after the incision of birth has healed and my son has grown strong and well, I speak what I now know to be the truth because that is where our true healing begins. My story remains the same and will continue on out of my control but what now erases the fear of further disappointment is to truly KNOW that His ways are always higher than my ways. That a good Father always knows best. All I really need to know is that He is for me and He truly works all thing together for my good. Today I believe that with God, the answer to prayer is never a NO...it's simply an I KNOW BETTER.
(see picture on Pinterest at: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/98938523044158685/)
