There are times I wonder about my life.
There are times I wonder what if I had been different. What if I had been capable of stringing together more than just one and a half semesters of college? When I was able the GPA was 3.9, when I wasn't I was pulling out of all classes before failing grades could be assigned to my transcript.
So there were times I would wonder... Wonder about all the "what ifs."
I have learned to sit with Jesus in those places. I have learned to grapple with disappointment and lay it at His feet. I have learned to walk with sorrow and I have learned to wait for His comfort.
The other morning I laid curled up in a bed as the reality of some of the events of the last three years were trickling across my heart.
The timeline of the last three to five years is scattered with apparent loss, death, lack, sickness, civil rights violations against one of our children, and the list can go on and on....
But I lay there upon my bed feeling the need for grace to lift my head, the most precious loss of the season was touched by the finger of grace.
In all honesty I have been pregnant 12 times. We walk the earth with six. The math is obvious. I've written in this blog about Josiah, he would have been our oldest and I have hinted about Grace, the daughter we miscarried before Gregory. What I haven't done is write about the days when on the way to a conference last Summer the tell tale signs of miscarriage were upon me.
Not even having known we were pregnant, my body was acting weird... We were driving to Florida. It dawned on me that either the season of stress was affecting me and my period or.................
Every stop we made I would go to the toiletry section of the rest stop shop. I was looking for a pregnancy test. One way or another I wanted to know. We would stop and there wouldn't be anything... then we would stop again and there wouldn't be anything, we got to the last place we were going to stop before arriving at our destination.
As I entered the store I prayed. If I am pregnant, if this isn't just my body acting weird, I need for there to be a pregnancy test here. I went to the section I had gone to in numerous other locations, no pregnancy test. I actually even went to the bathroom because my conclusion was that this was the answer to my prayer. Body just acting weird.
As I exited the bathroom, as I was feet from the exit, as I was moments away from being able to conclude that the stress of the move last Summer and other events in life had just affected my body, the attendant behind the counter looked at me, "Are you ok?"
I looked at her and thought to myself, "Keep your mouth shut, just say, "yes," keep going." Except what would come out of my mouth was, "Yes, I am ok but do you have a pregnancy test?"
"Oh yes we do. It's right behind here." She reached to the shelves behind the counter and the test was purchased as was a new bottle of water.
Arriving at the destination I would take the test that would come back Positive. I was pregnant. In one minute I was presented with the fact that at forty years of age, after already having 6 kids (one about to start his senior year in high school), I was pregnant with a pregnancy that we hadn't been looking for, I was pregnant with a pregnancy that we hadn't been looking for but with a child we would love but we were losing him or her before we could have ever even thought there was a him or her.
I would eventually throughout the weekend tell the others I was with what was happening. I would lie upon a carpet, side by side, with a beautiful friend as worship music floated over and as a vision entered my being and tears began to fall.
I would see a picture of me laying fully on the back of a huge eagle. My head turned to the side and I couldn't move a single muscle. I was like a wet noodle. As I laid on the back of this beautiful creature it soared. I couldn't move. I couldn't move an inch but I was soaring on the back of this amazing eagle, that was carrying me through the skies.
Last Friday I would sit within a group of women and a song talking about soaring and eagles would be played and my heart would lurch. The picture of eight months earlier would fill my being. The reality that as we approach a move, as we approach a graduation, as we had walked through all we had walked through this past year I should have been pregnant.
In all honesty there are moments where the weight of this last season causes my heart to falter into numb. That place where from being overwhelmed and being in situations and circumstances that offer too much within them my heart wants numb.
Except I know the landscape of numb is not life.
And I know that in these waste places, in this wilderness, in these times.... I am met with the Lover of my soul, the Bride Groom, my Father, Comforter, Counselor, Friend... I know in these times where numb would want to lock my heart behind some prison and have my ears listen to the most hideous of lies, I know that my redeemer lives and I know He leaves the 99 and finds me....
I know that not losing a pregnancy, not losing friends, not losing finances, not losing in court, not losing in a marriage, not losing in any situation imaginable can ever separate me from the reality of the love of God in Christ nor can it pluck me out of my Father's hands.
Maybe I should have been a good many things and I should be eight months pregnant but the one thing I am that nothing can ever change is daughter, beloved... child of the House of the Living God. I can rest in that .... that is enough....
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