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.

What I wish…

I wish that mothers would complain less. Before you keyboard warriors start attacking me, let me explain. I know mothers have it hard, no matter what stage of “motherhood” one may be in, IT IS HARD. I think this stage of my life has been the hardest yet- even without the extra challenges of Ashtyn’s diagnosis. This journey is NO joke.

I just wish I was as “lucky” as the “unlucky” mother who complained that her child talks too much.

I wish I was the mother who was up all night because her daughter wanted to have a midnight tea party.

I wish I could watch my daughter and husband, the best father in the world, play superheroes in the front yard as I prepared lunch.

I wish I could deal with the terrible two attitude that I see complaints about.

Something was taken from me once the doctor told us what our reality would be. Everything that I thought I would experience as a mother vanished. I didn’t know what we were in for, but I vowed to make every moment last. I see these parents who are so fascinated with everything around them EXCEPT their child. I see parents ignoring their children when they ask them to play. I see children who long to be the center of their parents attention, but are often upstaged by some sort of device. I want to shake them and scream “don’t you know how precious this moment is?”

Since being Ashtyn’s mom I have learned many lessons, but the one I will carry with me for the rest of my life is to never take anything for granted. Ever. From the moment I heard her first cry, I thanked the Lord. Her first bottle, I etched into memory. Her first smile is forever engraved in my heart. I take every little milestone and document it somehow because they carry victory. I use them as reminders of how far we have come, as reminders of the miracle working power of Jesus.

So my plea to those who are blessed enough to be parents: BE PRESENT. Do not take even the smallest things for granted. There are parents, like me, who would give their last breath to hear their child call them mommy or daddy. We long for the first roll, crawl, step. We wish for something that may never come.

To my fellow parents who feel like I do. You are strong. You are brave. You are exactly what your child needs. You are not alone.

July 19, 2018

One year ago today I found out that I was pregnant with our sweet baby. I did NOT have the normal crying tears of joy reaction. In fact, it was the total opposite. What should have been one of the best moments of my life turned out to be the scariest.

I remember this day being like any other. Chilling with my doggo, cleaning up the house, getting ready for the semester and boiling chicken for supper that night. I also remember losing my lunch over the smell of boiling chicken, something that had never bothered me before.

And then it hit me. Like a ton of bricks. Immediate panic. I whipped out my cycle tracker, sure enough… late. I thought back on the past couple of days and remembered cramps, tender breasts, and being more tired than usual. I didn’t pay any of these attention because they usually indicate that my cycle is around the corner, sorry TMI. I knew. I knew it before I even told Alex that I needed to go get a test. I knew that I was pregnant.

I went and bought not one, not two, not three, but FIVE pregnancy tests of varying type just to be sure. If you have never taken a pregnancy test before, it is as simple as peeing and waiting. Usually the wait is two-three minutes, but it didn’t take 10 seconds for the positive sign to appear. “Surely this is a false positive. It happened too fast. It didn’t take enough time to read accurately.” Who was I kidding, all five of them either spelled out pregnant or had that big ol’ blue positive sign. And I was devastated.

Don’t get me wrong, I have always wanted to be a mom. More than anything in the entire world. But I was about to enter into the most important semester of my life. I didn’t have time to be sick or for doctor appointments. I barely had time to blink, thanks to EdTPA. I had no idea how I was going to make it through. Ya’ll, talk to someone who has faced the demon that is edTPA and you will understand why I was freaking out. Alex and I were barely making it by in a one bedroom apartment, where the crap was I going to put a baby? How was I going to afford a baby, because one can’t work through student teaching? Diapers are expensive, guys. I knew this.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on you own understanding” really had a new meaning for me. The thing about God is that nothing surprises him. He is all knowing. He is all powerful. He is omnipresent. He knew Ashtyn would be given to us way before Alex and I did, ” “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” says Jeremiah 1:5. God had already mapped this out. He knew what my load was during student teaching, and although I told God over and over and over that I didn’t know how I was going to work it out, He did.

Not only did I survive student teaching and pass edTPA, I graduated with honors. I just didn’t do this with being a “normal” pregnant, I knew at 18 weeks that there was a chance that Ashtyn may not survive. And I carried that weight with me every single day. But I pushed and pushed, and when I was weary God carried me miles at a time, without complaint. His peace was (and still is) so overwhelming and where I long to be each day.

God wants us to trust him. God wants to be able to walk our journey with us. And he wants to carry us when we are weary. He longs to be Jehovah Shalom. The hard part is getting over ourselves and letting him.