Some Days are Just Hard...even still

Heart hesitates to pen emotion. Stutter of mental ramblings as I try to take pessimistic thoughts captive. Day fades and I find myself here...longing to rid myself through words of these feelings. More tears fall and busy self is forced to slow and face the inner heart...reality of life...where I am. Days are good, show blessing after blessing, promise after promise..but there are days when my hoping heart faces reality of unknown....the road that lies ahead, what my own selfish, mortal heart had planned, dreams that may not come to pass, a part of life cut too short. Days pass, months pass and this body of mine fails to cooperate. Hormones wreak havoc on emotions. Most days are blissfully routine....stability, joy and humor weaving my days into a blanket of normal. Utter delight in my children, hopelessly in love with my husband, clinging to his sweet companionship, his humor, friendship between us, mutual adoration of each other, lover of me that he is in every way. How he continues to tolerate unexplained tears, loves me through needless self absorbed thoughts of pity, emotions that seem to have forgotten what stable is.

Inner self digs deep hesitating to expose raw thoughts, feelings, contemplations. Blunt reality, onslaught of questions. Have I become addicted to having children? When in life did it become a competition...or is it a competition to this heart of mine? The joy they are to me....is it born out of absolutely loving my life or just an addiction to always having more than I already do? Or is it just the addiction to always needing something new to look forward to, the excitement, the adrenaline dump and endorphin rush of always having something just a little farther beyond that it is not quite here yet...something always in the making? How can something so wonderful and something so amazing in my life be considered greed or addiction...always the need to have more ? I look at them play, study, go about their day...hear their laughter....and still more tears fall. My heart longs for what is not here...grieved over what may be the end. Another month comes and another month goes and yet body remains empty...reasons unknown to me as to why God would chose this to be the end. Fighting off insane feelings of failure...lies that wage war with my soul....mind that never rests....wondering if I had done a better job with the eight entrusted to us if He would entrust more to us....wondering why He would end it now. Emotional, hormonal psychopathic ramblings....so much I already recognize within myself.

I don't mind this being the end. I really could come to accept it and be ok with life from this point forward if this is how it's supposed to be. It's the month to month hope of what may be, could be...continually deferred..never coming to fruition. It's hope that makes the heart sick. So I lay in a crumpled heap of self absorbed pity, tears falling....my thoughts and emotions confounding the reasoning of the world, the mind of my husband. I try to explain that I just want to know if it's the end so I can move on. I can come to accept this if it is the end. I really can. I just want to know. But one of the hardest lessons in life of giving over control to the Lord is letting go. I was not promised 12 children....I was not promised the eight we have....or even 1 of them. They are gifts to me...to us. How can I have taken them for such granted...assuming we would always be blessed with more? Mind turns to taking the easy way out. It'd be so much easier to end it now....on my own terms...so that I know this is the end. Husband "fixed". The end. Move on. That this month after month hope would fade and I would know we can move on from this stage of our life to the next. Somehow seeming to put a period to the end of a 12 year sentence. This human heart of mine needing closure...something that this heart of mine can hold onto so that I can move past this point of day after day hope.

So it is that I lay it all down. I will move on and set out to conquer the world ...reaching to accomplish goals long set by the wayside as we have welcomed new babies so many consecutive years in a row. I will run...my heart and body set free to embrace what has not yet been attained. We will camp..something so very hard to do with babies in tow. I will buy 20 pair of skinny jeans cause I can now actually wear them. I will finally go have my tattoo done...something not so entirely possible when pregnant....armband of wedding ring...Hebrew words inscripted "My beloved is mine and I am his." We will throw ourselves into pursuing international adoption. I will skydive and hike mountains. I will resume midwifery.

I will move on. If another baby comes we will be blessed but if it does not there is a world beyond waiting to be seen, explored, discovered by the 8 children we do have. When we gave over the area of our family size to the Lord we knew that He does indeed both open AND close the womb. Controlling and assuming heart of mine assumed He opened it more than He closed it. It is a bigger walk of trust and faith than I ever had imagined. To have given it over completely and had to come to the realization that we may have 14 children as he continually opened it year after year after year and then to be at this polar opposite of realizing that we gave Him control to close it also and there suddenly may be no more. I find it entirely interesting....despite all of the tears...to know this side of God controlling family size. How truly opposite it is from anything everybody has always said about this issue. No one ever talks about this side of it. It is always coping with the astronomical amount that one is usually given in the deal. It is a walk of utter trust and faith in all regards....both sides of it...every aspect of it all. To know and accept that He loves me unconditionally and that it is not anything I have done to end these years of bearing children. It is not because I have failed as a parent. It is not because I did not protect one that we have been given. It is not because she was beaten. It is not because she had a knife held to her. It is not because she was raped. It is not because I have not managed well the ones we have been given. It is not because I lose my patience with them. It is not because I hate cooking. It is not because I fall so entirely short of being everything I want to be as a wife and mother. It is not anything I have done. It is because there is a greater, bigger plan for our lives than I can see with my own mortal eyes at this point. It is because he loves me more than anything I can ever really grasp. It is because He sees my heart and how I long to be the one He can use above all else...when everyone else is thinned out it is because I want to be that one still left standing there...willing to go to the ends of the earth...literally and figuratively.....to serve Him. It is because I want my life to be the vessel He can pour through so that I reflect Him as the moon reflects the sun, as still placid lakes reflect their surroundings...mirroring the image.


"These are the children God has given me. Surely I have been blessed." And I embrace that...come to cling to it.

So it is that I am here and I come to accept where we are...that if this is the end I can move on and be blessed. If this is not the end I will be blessed. And as I lay down the hope for more and accept what may be from this point forward the river of tears stills and an inner peace is temporarily reached. The desire to see, talk or have anything to do with pregnant women still remains far from strong...and is, in fact, entirely absent but I know time will only heal that aspect of it all. But as I focus on moving on I will thoroughly enjoy my size 8 jeans, a size small shirt, that I do not feel like a gestating beached whale, the fact that I can run and do pushups, situps and squats and the fact I do not have to pause every 3 hrs to feed a newborn baby while traveling. And I will get my tattoo and we will travel and I will thoroughly enjoy this new era of our life.

Tears dry and my rational mind returns to me. Once again I am filled with embarrassment over the volatile state of my emotions and the instability of it all....the irrational ramblings of my head. Emotions and thoughts I find hard to admit to the real world....embarrassing state of thought and mind. But there is a peace that comes with accepting and coming to terms with what may be...letting go of the feelings of being robbed of everything sacred in life and just embracing that I have been exceedingly blessed in every area of my life....that I am loved....that I am blessed despite my many failures. And I am an overcomer. There are no more tears for the could've beens, should've beens, what would've beens. There is only a future and a hope that lies before me....and a tattoo, and a mountain to hike and a 5K to run.