The beat goes on...sort of.

{Just as a pre-curser, you should know that as I sit here with my knee bouncing and my bottom lip bit....I am at a loss as to what to write here. Not because I have nothing to say, but because I have so much. But God has told me to sit down and write, so here goes...}

I havent really posted anything since the intense few days following our recent experience. Its not that nothing has been laid on my heart to share or express, its because every day is something new and intense. The first week following the loss I was a heartbroken zombie. The reminder never left my mind. The tears were always on deck. Week two was a little better, I was at least functioning, but had to go into the doctor for a follow up from the procedure which brought me back to a dark place. {When I say dark place I don't mean gloomy and without light. I mean my eyes closed and tears falling. There is a difference I have learned.} I had sorrow...but it too passed and I began to function again. The last two weeks have been great. I don't have to remind myself each morning of the loss or feel stabbed at the site of a pregnant woman or newborn. I have accepted what has happened and seen so clearly, already, a purpose out of this. {Knowing full well that God will continue to reveal purposes of it over the years of my life.}

I have had a lot of people tell me that they are 'inspired' by my strength. My initial reaction, being one who doesn't take compliments well {uncomfortable}, I sort of reside from it. But what I know now is that YES, I do have strength! A strength that is incredible. A strength that has delivered me from this with joy. BUT YOU MUST KNOW, this strength is not my own. It is a strength the Lord has given me. A strength I have been able to grow in me over the years of my life because I have chosen to humble myself before the Lord. So if you see my strength as inspiring or encouraging...GREAT!!! But I will not allow that to be the end of it. Please please do not look at my strength with envy or awe...see it as a light. A light showing YOU TOO the way to the cross. My God has given me this strength, and he can give you that same strength {and hope, and joy, and laughter, and purpose, and perspective}.

There is one overlying 'theme' to what God has grown in my heart through this experience and that is that THIS WAS HARD! It was, no matter how much strength or perspective he may have blessed me with. This has been so hard. But if you have ever carried a child, you know the miracle in which it all is. When you walk around for 9 months watching your belly grow, when you FEEL that child moving inside of you, and than, after 9 months of feeling something squirming INSIDE of you...an actual flipping human being comes out of you. Breathing. Kicking. Crying. Looking. I may be able to take a photo or sew a blanket, but folks I cannot create a human! Are you kidding me? GOD makes those babies. He grows those babies, and in the end he gifts us and entrusts us with His children. The Lord is in control, even when its not all smiles and giggles and celebrating. This child I carried for 10 weeks was a gift. Not in the sense I imagined it to be, but a gift. And after all the years I spend here on earth, no matter the heartache or the failure or the emptiness...I have a baby waiting for me in heaven. This is incredible to me. I didn't LOSE that baby...it got postponed. It is a belated gift. You know those gifts you know are coming and the closer you get you get more and more excited? That is how I feel.

I know this may sound silly to some, but God speaks to us all differently. This is how he talks to me:
When I was 11 my uncle died. My only uncle. I was young, but old enough to know what death was and that he was gone and I mourned for him. Shortly after his death I had a dream. I saw my uncle in heaven and he was holding a little boy's hand. The boy was about 6 and he looked like me. There was not even a moment when I wondered who that was. It was my brother. 6 years prior my mother had lost a baby at 5 months pregnant. He was in heaven...and my uncle was this him, holding his hand. About 5 years later I lost my grandpa to cancer. Shortly after his death I had the same dream. My uncle, my little brother, and than also my grandpa. All standing there together. It was incredible. The same dream, and I had forgotten about the first one till than. It was such a gift from the Lord. Well....a few days after I lost our baby I had the dream again. My uncle, my little brother, my grandpa... and in his arms, my baby. I cant tell you the joy that fills my heart, through the tears even as I write this. I cant tell you how many times I have looked at Landon, broken hearted, because I KNOW how much my grandpa would have loved him. Ya, as a great grandson, but more than that. I see him in Landon and just this little spark that would have lighted up my grandpa in such a special way. It makes me so sad. Landon may not get to meet him, but my other baby is in safe arms until the day I get to meet it. God knows I need to feel loved and cared for right now, and he does it in the most intimate ways. I will be running into the arms of those boys someday.

So back to that overlying theme he has layed on my heart; This Hurts. It does. Its hard, it breaks me, and it scars me. But what fires in my heart more than anything else is this thought; 'Ill be damned if I am going to go through this for nothing!' God does not EVER put us through a struggle without a purpose. Its a common saying, "God has a purpose and a plan." Maybe its just me, but I always tend to look to the future for that purpose. But God's purpose INCLUDES what we are going through, not just what will play out from or come of it. Each struggle has a purpose and I am going to use mine in whatever way he intends. I WILL use this struggle for his purpose. Whether it be to encourage a stranger to hold onto hope. Whether it be to comfort a friend down the road who experiences a similar loss {heaven forbid}. All I know is that God needs to use this chapter of my life at some point and Ive got my ears up ready at all times. I thought, maybe I will be able to comfort and relate to my daughter someday, as my mom has to me. Or to Landon's wife, and Betsy has to me. All I know, is that this is now part of my story...and I find joy in that. It may be a hard chapter of my story, but it is what makes me relatable to others. Struggles are what break us to be able to relate to one anther, because we all struggle. Life is hard and having people to relate to makes i bearable. I PRAY that I can be somebody, someday, who can make life bearable for someone else.

When I knelt down and picked up my cross to follow Christ, I was freed from my sins. I was NOT freed from struggle and heartache and hurt. If we want to become more like Christ, we must embody ALL of who he is. And one of the greatest things about Christ was this death and suffering on the cross. So lest we forget that our call to follow Christ will bring us to our own cross time after time after time. The key is to make a purpose out of it. Christ's death on the cross had a HUGE purpose, and each of our sufferings does to. Can you imagine if Christ went through the pain for us, but for no purpose at all? Live your purpose. Endure your struggle. Because GOD has placed you there and is waiting to deliver you.