Thoughts from my journal
December 3, 2020
As difficult as this year has been, I am (mostly) hopeful. There are some deep dreams of mine that have been coming to the surface and I feel they could make their appearance into reality at any waking moment. Pottery. Writing. Starting a business with Nolan. I feel the rush - the adrenaline of risk - standing on cliff’s edge overlooking an ocean of adventure and excitement. I am inches away from the great leap. It’s the kind of healthy fear that comes just before the roller coaster is launched - trembling, yet you know you are going to love it.
In the same breath, a more tangible risk hangs in the balance; a risk I am unsure if I am ready to take. My desire yearns to plunge head first, but logic holds me back. Children. Pregnancy. Two previous miscarriages. Everything in me longs to carry a child within my womb. A deep calling speaks, “you were made for this.” Made to bear, nurture, teach, comfort, and raise children. The thought of it and nothing feels more right. The lack of it is something huge missing from my arms, hands, heart, and soul. Flesh. Sacred, fragile flesh. The risk. The faith that gave Sarah the power to conceive. The unbelief of a desperate father. “I believe. Help my unbelief,” he cried. I believe. Help my unbelief. The teeter-totter, back and forth. Faith. Fear. Keep moving forward.
Each new day; more specifically, each new month seems like the promise slips further away, just out of reach. The anticipation. The longing to just, “jump in!” Yet the ropes of doubt hold me here. Secure. Empty. Safe, but truly alive? Questioning if I could handle another one - Blood. Flesh. Loss. Still, hope-tinged “what-if’s” break through. The joy of loss diverted and turned to the smell of joyful human flesh- the eyes of the created - the promised- staring back at you.
Imagining. Which births expectation. Which births disappointment; a disappointment more likened to a broken heart refusing to be comforted. A human life you never met, yet is more a part of you than anything else ever has been. For too little time.
Time. Mourning. Hopeful imagining held in by the boundaries you have forged- holding together pieces respectfully, in light of the world who does not see, or hear - the heart.
Fragments pieced together by the embrace of a husband, the sound of tired, breath-stenched sighs, an ocean of dense, salty tears that burn the eyes, and prayer.
A lot of prayer. Prayers that speak from the deepest places within. Speak? Rather, cry out. Cry out like a hungry infant needing it’s mother’s chest. Nourishment. Comfort. Hunger. Prayers mixed with the salty cries, hopeful anticipation, dreadful questions, longing emptiness, and that inch of supernatural courage to try again. The sound of quiet just after a long cry and just before giving in to sleep. A God you know is near, yet seems he is out on another assignment. Next time. . . maybe.
A daughter still clinging to Truth, despite all of this. Another prayer. This time, for new vision and a new way to look at this. The eyes of hope and faith. Praying for awareness of the God she knows has never left. A prayer for peace beyond understanding and a heart that remains tender and soft in the Potter’s hands. A prayer for the mind of Christ - a renewing - a transforming - the dawning of “new beginnings” and a redemptive end beyond the silent suffering. The cross. The healing. The coming alive. The same Spirit that raised Him now living in us. The new Kingdom we belong to and live from, although still juggling the form of earth and all she carries with her. In the balance, we dare to hope again. We refuse to deny the gifts, eclipsed with humanity, given to us by He who knows. We push past murky questions and seek to see with the eyes of eternity where the little ones we have lost rest with God Almighty. We set our minds on things above, where Christ is - where our precious children are. And we rest in the tension of “today.” The jump. The risk. The hope. The fear. The promise and the Promise-Keeper.