I definitely haven't led a charmed life, but I have had a blessed life. I am old enough and have been through enough hard times to realize this now. Having two surgeries a month apart, a scare of a malignant tumor with the unknown of what was to come while having 3 kids under the age of 12 and a full time job to worry with has been hard! I have done some hard things in my life, but they usually involved me thinking of someone other than myself. Let me just think about what I have endured over the past 12 years...
I have had to come to terms with the fact that the baby that I was carrying may not survive the birthing process and would probably be seriously deformed. I had to carry that baby girl for a month and a half after finding out that she would die either during or soon after birth, which involved feeling her kick and move inside my belly every day of that month and a half. My husband and I then had to sign a DNR for that sweet baby girl who not only survived birth but lived for 3 days despite all of the doctors' predictions. No one should have to sign a DNR for their loved one, but especially not their new born child, which was also the first born grandchild on both sides of our family. I then endured the viewing and funeral of our 3 day old, which nearly undid me.
I have been through a miscarriage. I have been through two more labors of tiny babies that didn't survive. I had to explain to my 5 year old twins that their baby brother was very sick and would not be coming home from the hospital with us. I had to watch as they held him and deemed him an Angel. We have a small graveyard of urns on our piano, along with pictures and tributes to our family lost, which in our home isn't strange...it just is.
We have been through 2 very stressful adoption processes and the raising of premature twins that didn't sleep for months on end. I have had to watch one of those twins struggle every day in school because of delays due to the cocaine put in her system by her birth mother. I am the mother of a child on the Autism Spectrum, which comes with giant challenges, tiny victories, massive worry, much wonder, growing knowledge and thankful blessings.
I am a wife, which takes position after mother as the hardest job on the planet. Marriage is trying, marriage is fulfilling, marriage is a blessing and marriage is just hard. It is hard when you don't have extenuating circumstances and it is hard when you don't have struggles, but throw in a few dead babies, sprinkle them with very expensive adoptions and then serve them with a side of depression layered with fibromyalgia and anxiety...and you have a recipe for disaster. Our time together has required patience, love, strength, belief, forgiveness, anger, passion, faith, hope, faith, grace, help and did I mention FAITH?
So now we get to our present situation. This has been hard, painful, trying, expensive and most of all downright uncomfortable. That is the best way to describe me at any given moment recently...uncomfortable. But I realized something. At every uncomfortable stage in my past twelve years has also been change. Bad change, good change, debilitating change, transforming change, but all the same change. Uncomfortableness (that is now a word) causes you to move, or stay still, or scream, or ask why and all of that causes you to learn.
I learned that I could overcome grief, that I could change my physical self, that I could change our family's health, that I could follow my dreams, that I am strong, that I can become stronger, that I can learn more and that I can help other people through the knowledge of my pain. So I have embraced the grief, the pain, the uncomfortable, the scary, the strange and the different that is our family.
God has known every test that we would take and has prepared us every step of the way. I have also learned that you can't take care of those that need you if you don't take care of yourself. If I hadn't changed me, I never would have been strong enough to overcome this latest challenge. I am not completely healed, but try hard every day, cry when I need to and am thankful for my support system.
Keep getting back up, search for that which makes you uncomfortable and then show it who is boss!
