Remembering

Remember how I said I would write during the hard things rather than after when I could package it nicely? Sigh. Working on that.

An old post that I wrote back in October. Still feeling many of the same things today. I'll pick up and add to it, so read on.
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Our pregnancy announcement came up in my Facebook memories today.

This didn't catch me off guard. I've been reliving and remembering since we lost them, but it's been especially heavy the last month. I'm remembering a time when I was pregnant and we didn't know there were twins. We didn't know we would lose them. We were trying to wrap our heads around how hard the 1st trimester was and being hopeful that it would improve through the pregnancy, because I had so much work to do.

I attended a festival as a vendor this last weekend. Last year I was there, pregnant, already feeling better as the 1st trimester ended. It was a rough weekend then and this year too. Perhaps because I remembered.

I cried the entire drive out which was about an hour and a half. My mind visited all the details. My body remembers all the feelings, labor especially. It's a memory that hurts to relive, but also feels so good to hold onto. Not every miscarriage story has that and I count it a blessing. I can stare at my palm and know I held both of my babies right there together. I touched their tiny hands and was in awe of their sweet faces. 15 week fingers and toes are precious, friends. Precious.

I was trying to not cry, because I need to be able to sit down and experience this when I actually can let the tears flow and look at pictures. But ya know . . . grief . . . our bodies . . . we don't always get to decide. I cried about how hard it was then and has been since. Not just because I lost our babies, but because I lost time, experiences, finances, dreams, hope . . . I've been stripped down to bare bones. I have no clue where this goes from here or what God wants of us or has in mind. I want to know so badly, so that my efforts of making sense of this mess could be directed to the right things.

My husband and I were discussing trying again in a few years after I have had a break and worked out of the home for that time. Our kids would be 10 and 9 or around there. Ten year difference . . . that was never my ideal. I know it would be good, but it makes me feel like a failure to my kids. My daughter especially wanted another baby and still does. She doesn't ever express disappointment in me, but I conjure that up on my own. I tell her I'm sorry when it comes up, and that I wanted a baby too. It's disappointing to want something good and not be able to have it for no apparent reason.

Right now I don't even dare want anything. I look forward to getting out of this house and working. Maybe, just maybe, making a difference in our financial struggles. Lord willing. But I don't count on anything. I want the pieces to come together and resemble something. What are we doing here struggling still? What will all this waiting bring? Will it bring anything? Are we pining after different and missing the point? I'm trying so hard not to.

It hasn't all been bad. I've regained pieces of myself that had been lost in all the striving to be something different. I lost the emotional side of my relationship with God a long time ago, and I'm finally finding my way back to experiencing Him in those places. I can sense God through light again, and color, and nature, and sounds, and the air I breathe. Back to the basics I knew as a kid. The kid who was described as soaking in everything in life and living in the moment. Without fear of the future . . .

If I could ditch fear and worry and just engage that would be lovely, and it's happening. I've thrown on these things and they have shaded me from actually experiencing God the way He wants me to.

My children are incredible. They have changed so much in the last year, like kids do. Oh they are sweet and smart and love me so well. That's probably my favorite thing about them right now, how well they love me. I've needed it. I've had so many moments this last year that I needed to be taken care of and my beautiful family has done that.

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We passed the one year mark of losing the twins, and things have shifted. There are days when I gasp and get that terrible drop out feeling in my stomach like I've forgotten an important deadline simply because I hadn't thought about the twins at all that day. I think I can confidently say I don't think about them every day anymore or if I do I don't dwell there. We have a canvas print of me pregnant with them hanging near my side of the bed, so I see them often.

Mostly I stare at myself and wonder who she is.

I do photography from time to time, when people let me. I was thinking about my own senior pictures that I took myself and wondering the same thing, "Who is she?" There was a huge chunk of time when any reflection of myself at that age was covered with a lot of heart ache. I spent years sorting through all that, and now I see the girl that was there before. It's like looking at someone through glass. You can see them clearly, but you can't quite reach them. That girl back then has something to do with who I am becoming now. The me I threw out with the bad, because I couldn't separate the two back then.

I'm in the dark. Having faith when you cannot see sounds really amazing when you're not actually living it. When you're living it it doesn't always feel so great. More often than not you hear Christians talk about their hard journeys with a lot of Christian language about what sustains them. I'm not at all suggesting anything but God sustains me, but those words are extremely hard to connect to when you yourself are in that place waiting, wanting, lost, confused, hurting, and in desperate need of relief.

Keeping disciplined to follow after God is not easy, friends. Not in the dark places. You may *know*, but when your senses don't connect to it, man it's lonely. Don't think when you read what someone has written about walking through this that it was easy for them. I'm writing this mostly as a reminder for myself. I'm in a place right now where outside sources that look all nicely wrapped up in a bow turn me off. I judge myself against it, and think "How worthless am I that I'm not doing that?"

I used to assume being a pastor's wife meant having it all together and presenting as such. Well, obviously I gave up on that a while ago, but even now I struggle with it. I want to present as such. I want to be a good influence and someone people can turn to because of my faith. I'm learning first hand that my faith is given to me by the one I put my faith in. So even if someone were to come to me I would first take that burden off of their shoulders. We weren't meant to carry ourselves.

I look at the people in my life and compare myself to them like everyone else. I feel like I will never measure up or amount to enough, based on my own standards. Why are our own standards so disgustingly high for ourselves? Somewhere along the way we let goals and dreams become standards and started beating ourselves up for not instantly being the best person.

Lately, my biggest concern is that I do not have anything of value to offer people. I'm in a season of life where I need so much. Caring for myself has been draining. I carry around guilt that I cannot help others to the extent that I want to. Or perhaps I have no clue how or if I am helping others, but as isolated as I am by my schedule I assume I'm wasting away here. My heart for the hurting, lonely, and hopeless has always been big, but it's growing as I experience these things myself. Perhaps that is where he is leading me. To walk along side the hopeless. To be the hand that reaches out and pulls them up and cares for them when their strength has given in. To shower them with love and truth when their mind seeks to destroy them. To hold them when they cannot see past their own fears. All the things I crave in my darkest moments I want to give. Perhaps he is leading me to a place to do just that.

He is in the waiting.

I've been trying to wrap my head around experiencing God fully when you are desperate. When the season of waiting has gone long past what you considered reasonable for growth. I guess I had no clue just how much God wanted to grow me this go around. The longer it goes on the more lies he is unwinding from my mind. Friends, this is not fun. The end results will be worth it, I'm sure, but the process of waiting on God to do big things in you and actually experiencing said things is  . . . is there a word for this? Painful isn't quite right. Hard is too vague.

I'm learning to be patient with myself, to not demand perfection each day. God is going to do his thing, and I will learn to let him or so help me . . .

If you're walking this journey too in your own life, I see you. I will pray along side you. Feel free to message me. It's okay that it isn't pretty most of the time. It's okay. You're still here, a living breathing story. God knows you, and he knows this. What he is doing is beyond us, and despite the pain we may experience in this we *know* he is faithful. Wait on the Lord. He *will* renew your strength.

I'm here too. Waiting.