Tag: crisis

Changes

I’m not the woman I was five years ago, heck I’m not the same woman I was a month ago. Life has a way of changing people, but the Holy Spirit has a way of changing you even more.

When I started my journey with the Lord I really had no idea what I was doing, I still don’t, but thats besides the point. I grew up in church. My dad was my youth pastor or my pastor for the longest time. I don’t ever remember a time where I didn’t know about the Lord. But it really wasn’t until my sophomore year in college I began my journey to KNOW the Lord.

When I started to dedicate my life to Him, a lot of things started to change. Things came to my mind that I had totally forgotten about, hurt was exposed, scabs were ripped open. It was terrifying to go through- even more so because I was alone. Friendships dropped and I didn’t have family around. I didn’t know where to turn, I didn’t know why this was happening. I thought I had buried it enough, so that they would never see the light of day again.

The truth is, I was hurting. Deeply. With the old, and now with the new. The new loss of friendships, the overbearing sense of loneliness, and the not knowing why. Burrying was not enough, it needed to be healed. I don’t know what flipped or when it flipped, but I knew my heartache was trying to teach me something. I knew my loneliness was so that I could learn to rely on my Heavenly Father. I knew the scabs being opened and the hurt being exposed was so that I could surrender those things and be freed. Freedom that only comes from The Father.

Total surrender is crazy scary. It still is for me. I’m a little bit of a control freak and hate to not have my hands in every aspect of my life. I hate surprises, not the ones from my husband, but the ones where I’m blindsided and hit by a truck, Ashtyn’s diagnosis for example. I think it comes from being moved around my whole life, just when I was getting comfortable it was time to be uprooted. Leaving friends, leaving schools, leaving churches, it was all out of my control and I hated it. I think this is also why I don’t put myself out there as much as I would like. It’s a fear that lives deep inside of me. I’d like to say lived, but that wouldn’t be honest. I still have flaws and damage, but I’m a work in progress.

The Lord loves every part of me, my stubbornness, control freakness, my humor, my questioning and adventurous heart. Every part. Nothing I do or say or think surprises Him, because He KNOWS me. I find that very comforting, He is where I place my roots. He cares about me. He loves me.

I don’t think I would have these revelations without Jesus and His spirit. I’m not one of those people who believes that if I stub my toe the Devil is out to get me or the cliché that everything happens for a reason. But I do believe that The Lord operates in all things. He is always moving, so exposing my past hurts, ripping open wounds, was just another step in His divine operation.

Do I still struggle? As a mom, more than ever. Do the past hurts play in my mind like I have them on replay? Oh yes. Do I have days where I want to shut down and cry? Absolutely. But I now know who I can turn to. I can wrap all the hurt, wounds, and fear up and give it to the Lord. He is a good Father, He heals, He delivers, He restores.

My favorite place to be is in His presence. There is room for you, too.

    Change is good. Change is necessary.

    Part 2

    I don’t even know if this is going to actually be readable. I’ve sat down time and time again trying to start this, but just couldn’t. It wasn’t “writer’s block.” It was just that I couldn’t find the words to really express what our life was like when this happened. The emotions I went through, the roller coaster that derailed about 70 times, the not knowing, the emptiness. How does one even begin to reopen that box and put words on a page? Nothing I wrote did any justice to what it was actually like.

    Let’s recap: Ultrasound confirmed we were having a girl. Ultrasound came up abnormal. Doctor made appointment with high risk the next day. Alex and Cassidy=broken.

    I remember being so angry that I physically became ill. I was shaking, I couldn’t think straight. I texted my dad “start praying for your grandbaby now.” Alex called our pastors and prayer warriors. All of them had about 85 questions each, and we just had to tell them what we knew- that there was fluid on her brain. They immediately began praying that the healing anointing would flow from God and touch our baby girl. Alex anointed my belly and we both just started pleading with God. “Please Lord, please” was all that I could utter. I’m not actually sure what happened the rest of the day, but I know that Alex and I were just silent. Not that we were mad at each other, but because we didn’t have words to say.

    Here Alex was watching his wife hurt and knowing his baby was “hurting” as well, and knowing that there was absolutely no words to help ease the pain. Here I was, being the person I am, running every last scenario through my head. Torturing myself on google. Going through our ultrasound pictures and imagining what went wrong. Did I eat something I wasn’t supposed to? Did I do something within the six weeks I didn’t know I was pregnant? Was it something I was being punished for?

    Again, we prayed right before we went to sleep, “Lord. please heal our baby. Please let the fluid be gone tomorrow.”

    When the next morning came around, Alex again anointed my belly. And we prayed and asked God to be with us in the room. And He was, just not in the way we had hoped. The lady came in, put the warm jelly on my stomach, and started taking many pictures of our sweet blessing. She was nice, talked to us the whole time, just trying to ease the tension in the room. She left, and again. We prayed. We were so devastated with the doctor came in.

    “I’m afraid that it’s not good news.” My heart sank. The next words that came out of his mouth could have probably killed me. “It’s just not fluid, your daughter is missing parts of her brain. And she probably won’t survive past the second trimester.” I was gone. Again, my world went black. I came through as the doctor informed me about my “options.” I quickly jumped up and shut him down real fast.

    He then said that I should do further testing. Before we left the doctor ordered an amniocentesis, and a conference call with a genetic counselor. Then he left the room.

    Alex and I again, just fell silent. Tears were coming out of my eyes without even realizing it. Yes, they were sad tears. And I would be lying if I said there weren’t angry tears, but most of them were cries to God. I wanted so bad to be mad at Him. I wanted to be able to throw a fit and question Him like I had so many times before, but this was different. Yes, I was completely broken, but I was also comforted in knowing that I serve a big God.

    No, God didn’t answer our prayers the way WE wanted him to. But we did know that God is a miracle worker and the God of life. So right then and there, Alex and I decided that we were going to pray life and life more abundantly over her like The Word says in John 10:10. The enemy really did come and try to steal, kill and destroy, but he messed with the wrong family. We knew Who our miracle rested in! We weren’t going down without a fight, a fight that we knew was already won!

    God gave us this beautiful baby girl for a reason; she was ours. We were going to do whatever we had to do for this precious gift to have a chance at life. It was something we didn’t and still don’t take lightly.

    We didn’t know what the future held other than constant monitoring and testing. We didn’t know how to plan for Ashtyn. We knew we were in for a journey, one with many twists and turns. We still didn’t have a confirmation on what just what we were dealing with, so that made it even harder. Many names were spilled out of disorders that it could possibly have been, but it didn’t matter. We loved our sweet baby, and trusted Jesus to do the things only He can do!