September 21st.

A year ago on September 21^st I found out I was losing mine and Lewis’ first precious baby. And this week, processing that anniversary, has been more difficult than I was prepared for. I really really believed that I would be pregnant again within a year. Lewis being gone for the last 7 months has kind of put a wrench in that plan, but it hit me really hard that its been an entire year, and I’ve made zero steps in the direction of my purpose and desire. And to top that off, Lewis and I did get to spend a weekend together, and there was a real possibility of me getting pregnant in Sweden. Believe you me that possibility was prayed for earnestly. But God said no. And I threw a little bit of a temper tantrum. So I’ve spent the last week processing that temper tantrum, sin that I’ve allowed to build up in my heart, how I feel vs. what I know to be true, and missing my baby desperately. These are those thoughts written down, hopefully in a way that encourages someone, or shines the light of the goodness and grace of God to His children.

I can’t remember ever wanting to be anything other than a mom. I’m sure I had stage where I wanted to be a vet, and I thought about becoming a nurse at one point, but nothing ever trumped my desire to become a mom. To the point of deciding I was going to move to Africa to raise babies in an orphanage if God didn’t send me a husband. I believe the desire to be a mom is a good, godly thing. Children are a blessing and motherhood is a blessing, and a calling. But they can also become an idol, and this week I realized that I have let them.

I prayed and prayed before I left for Sweden that God would bless us with a baby. I thought the timing would be perfect. I day dreamed about how I would tell Lewis, I thought about how awesome and hard and healing it would be to find out I was pregnant almost exactly a year after miscarriage. But, shortly after getting home, it was made very clear that I was not pregnant. God said no to my prayers. I was heartbroken. Here I had all of this faith and hope, and He was just going to say no? Why?

Now I know all of the obvious answers to this. I’m only 20. Lewis and I haven’t really even had time to try. God makes people wait so much longer sometimes. Sarah waited 25 years. Plenty of my friends have waited years upon years. I’ve barely scratched the surface of waiting and truly being broken by this specific trial. But even in that surface layer, there was so much distrust in my heart. I was caught off guard by my own sinful thoughts and doubts, and my inability to change what I was feeling when I know the truth. I didn’t realize how deep this idol has been rooted in my heart. I didn’t even realize it was an idol.

Which, of course, was why He said no.

What if God continues to say no? Is He still good?

What if He allows me to carry his child for only 8 weeks again and again and again? Is He still sovereign and loving?

What will my response be when His will is so different from my desires and my will that I am heartbroken and confused?

Will I still follow, will I still say ‘Your will be done’?

Will I trust Him when He slays me?

Will I praise Him and bring Him glory, or continue to throw my temper tantrum?

My mind wants to say yes to all of these so badly, but my heart hurts with the weight.

Jesus revealed to me 3 major areas of my heart that are out of line this week. My identity and worth - and where I chose to find my purpose. What I believe prayer is and how I believe it works. And what trusting God’s goodness unconditionally looks like. Or rather, what it doesn’t look like.

I lose sight of grace all the time. I try so hard to please God. I work so hard to intentionally love Him and make Him love me that I forget that He already does. Unconditionally. Simply because He does. Because I am His.  That is my identity. I am a child of God, loved by Love. Jesus gently reminded me of this and revealed my faulty thinking through Matt Chandler’s newest series ‘Marked’, and these are a collection of quotes from the first sermon in that series: “Abraham and Sarah were desperate and dependent - but God was able. It was God who grew them into their names. It was not their effort or pushing or discipline. … He’s saying [in Matthew 5:13-16] ‘You are the salt. You are the light. That true about you now, but you’re going to grow in your saltiness and your brightness. Its going to take place over a period of time, and its going to take place immersed in a community of saints who understand most fully what we just learned above – namely that we are fallen, broken people in need of grace, a savior, and a safe place to be honest and vulnerable about where we actually are. … The God of the universe just said, ‘You are salt.’ So now what I experience is grace without shame. That’s my first experience if God has named me and will make me what He named me. I’m already salt. I can’t see I’m salt, because I want to be more salty than I am. God’s promise is ‘You’re salt right now, whether you see it or not and I’m going to make you more so.’ The key is to rest in who God called me.” That is my identity and my worth. And my purpose is to serve and follow as He makes me brighter and more salty. I asked someone I love dearly ‘what am I supposed to do if He tells me ‘no’ for 25 years?’ What do I do in the mean time, what’s my purpose? Their response was, “To do what He put in front of you. To be faithful where you are. To love the people around you.” I can rest in that. I will need to continually be reminded of it – but I can rest in it.

So, on to prayer. I have seriously misaligned what prayer means. I tried to use it to twist God’s will to my own, and that is literally entirely backwards. “The very name of God is holy. So you’re recognizing His place right there at the beginning [of your prayer]. Prayer at the inception is the idea of recognition. You are now submitting your mind, soul, and purpose to God in terms of Him being Father, you being a child, Him being hallowed & holy, and you not so much. Everything we ask is subservient to His will.“ –Abdu Murray. Prayer is to align my will to God’s. To align my heart to His. To soften my heart to wanting His will above my own, and trusting His goodness above all else, no matter the pain or discomfort, because He simply is just good.

Which leads me to the 3^rd thing the Holy Spirit gracious revealed about my sinful heart this week: distrusting God. I really thought I learned this lesson last year when He took Bean, but no part of my heart trusted His goodness when I found out, after praying and having faith and hope, that I wasn’t pregnant after Sweden. I totally doubted His plan and His goodness and faithfulness to me. So I went back to the same resources I used to help me through miscarriage last year, to teach my heart the same truths again. “To murmur against God and question His goodness is indeed sin. We should work as diligently in trusting God’s love as we do in obeying His commands. God’s love is an objective truth that cannot be contradicted but it is a truth that we must store away in our minds and hearts. Then we must use it, in the midst of adversity, to deal with our doubts, to combat the accusations of Satan, and to glorify God by trusting Him.”

I felt so discouraged about what I perceived as failures in my heart. How could I have not learned the lessons He was teaching me last year? How am I still struggling through the same things? How is my heart this disgusting and disappointing? How do I know these things with my brain, tell them to other people even, and not really truly believe them in my heart? Why does my heart just want to scream and cry and be angry about God’s perfect will and timing and goodness to me?

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me! ² You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. ³ You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. ⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. ⁵ You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” He knew before I did. He saw the parts of my heart that weren’t submitting to His grace. He knew how I would react. He knows that it will take me more than a year to learn how to trust His goodness and faithfulness. He loves me enough to know all of this intimately and show me. To reveal to me my wickedness, and to use what He already knows will trigger me, to lovingly draw it out. To teach me how to trust Him, how to pray, and to always remind me of my true identity and purpose. And that is incredible, incredible grace.

So, in a years time I have come to a deeper understanding of how wicked I am and how good and gracious God is to me. He loves me unconditionally, and I cannot the depth of it.

I cried the whole time I wrote this. My heart is so tangled up in my desire for children and motherhood and my desire to submit to Christ and seek His will first that I cant separate them by myself, and asking Him to is proving to be painful. But we are never promised easy or simple or pain free. We are promised grace, and a fresh start every morning.

Oh Jesus, help me to submissively say it is well, even when I don’t feel like it is.

“In acceptance lieth peace,
O my heart be still;
Let thy restless worries cease
And accept His will.
Though this test be not thy choice,
It is His -- therefore rejoice.

In His plan there cannot be
Aught to make thee sad:
If this is His choice for thee,
Take it and be glad.
Make from it some lovely thing
To the glory of thy King.

Cease from sighs and murmuring,
Sing His loving grace,
This thing means thy furthering
To a wealthy place.
From thy fears He'll give release,
In acceptance lieth peace.”

Hannah Hurnard

“Acceptance is taking from God’s hand absolutely anything He chooses to give us, looking up into His face in love and trust, even in thanksgiving. Acceptance is knowing that the confines of the hedge of our particular struggle are good. Even perfect. However painful they may be, simply because He Himself has given them. Acceptance is the key that unlocks the door to contentment. Contentment is not the end of your desires, but it is the place where you may deal with your desires in a way that pleases God.”

Oh my sweet precious baby. Momma loves you so much. I can't believe its been a year since  I had to say goodbye. I miss carrying your sweet little life every single day, but I look forward to one day finally meeting you, and getting to hold you again. I am so filled with peace and joy even in my sadness, because I know we are both being held by Jesus. My heart aches, but that ache means that I am a mom and I love you, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

- Momma

Gardening

I try not to write until the words pour out of me because they have to. Because I don't want to force something. And today the words poured out. I have been reflecting on mine and Lewis' relationship, and this is basically the result of those thoughts. 

Gardening

“My heart is a secret garden and the walls are high.”

This is a line from something that has always been stuck in my head.

I always wished it was true about my own heart.

But I don’t know how to build walls.

I let everyone in.

I let everyone plant whatever they wish in my heart’s garden.

Weeds and flowers alike.

I don’t know how to distinguish, how to protect myself.

My garden became overcome by weeds - it was a jungle.

And not the romantic kind of jungle, the kind that reminds you of Disney movies or adventures.

My jungle was just untamed plants, left there by everyone in my life.

I had no idea how to weed out what didn’t belong, so I watered and tended to everything.

And everything grew.

But weeds did what weeds do, and began to choke and kill the flowers and bushes and herbs and trees.  

My garden became the backyard of an abandoned house.

My heart became full of lies and confusion and hopelessness.

I gave up on gardening, on self care.

But.

Then you came in.

You came in easily because there were no walls.

Because I still hadn’t figured out how to make those.

And you looked at the weeds and the jungle, and you didn’t see a back yard, abandoned and untamed.

You chose to see an adventure.

You chose to love and nurture what I had left to rot.

You brought your shovel and your own lovely flowers, and began.

You took my hand and showed me what the weeds were.

And why they were weeds, and how to tell a lie from the truth.

You gently pulled, and every weed and every lie loosed from the soil of my heart. 

You replaced weeds with flowers, and vines with strong tall trees of truth.

You watered them with your own sweat and tears and emotional effort.

And I watched, in awe, as you gracefully and graciously worked.

You taught me how to work along side you, and I began to understand myself.

You helped me build a fence.

To protect my garden, to keep my heart safe from lies.

It’s white and pure and slender, but strong, and I am safe for the first time.

Weeds still sprout up, but now I know that they are lies.

I know how to pull them out and keep the flowers and the truth safe.

I have begun to look at myself and see what you see.

I see life and love and something worth time and emotional effort.

I see a beautiful garden.

And I see you with your hands full of flowers and love and truth and grace.

And now I am at home, I am not trapped in a jungle.

I am at home within myself, within my own skin.

Because you came into my life and made me your home, and made me someone you loved and cared for.

You made my mess worth loving and nurturing.

My heart is a beautiful garden, and it is full of life of love.