I said last post that life has been objectively awful the last 21 months. That is true.
Ongoing unexplained infertility. Miscarriage over Christmas. A shoulder injury. Significant job challenges for my husband. A failed adoption opportunity. A week of both of us having Covid. A car wreck that we thought broke my back and totaled my car. Leaving our apartment and moving in with my in-laws because we needed a reduction in bills if I couldn't work. Needing accommodations to be able to keep working. High blood pressure diagnosis likely caused by pain and stress. Confirming I have carpal tunnel syndrome. A seemingly unending barrage of doctor's appointments and PT. Shoulder surgery with three months off work. Intense spiritual warfare and difficulty. Tight finances. Delays in completing our trailer renovations. Tearing up the ligaments and tendons in my ankle right after returning to work. The loss of a beloved pet under awful circumstances.
But goodness. I have to speak of the grace of God in all of these things.
I don't have living children, but I have the gift of time and energy and freedom to love and serve my community.
I lost a baby, but I gained things I hadn't dreamed of. I gained motherhood. I gained deep tenderness and the drive to nurture and hold and comfort, and I get to give it to not just one, but all. I gained grief and sorrow, and it has tempered and balanced my exuberance and joie de vivre. I am no longer afraid of others' grief and sorrow and am ready to sit with them without the need to fix it. I gained entrance to a community of women who have weathered loss with tremendous faith.
Physical weakness has made me reckon with the reality that I am not invincible, and that I am weak and need help and have to ask for it. In being given that help I was given opportunities to spend time with people and have Godward conversations I otherwise wouldn't have. Thank God, my back is mostly recovered, my shoulder has partially recovered, and as the pain and stress of life have lessened, I no longer need to take blood pressure medication.
Though we missed out on the opportunity to adopt a child we came to love very much in a very short time, the child had the best outcome possible. They got to become permanent part of the only family they'd ever known. And that family has been extraordinarily influential in our lives ever since.
Living with my in-laws has been pleasant! We get along well, and it has been a blessing to still have people to be at home with when my husband travels for days at a time for work. It was also a huge blessing to have them present to help watch over and care for me when I was recovering from surgery.
God has generously provided for our every financial need with unexpected and sometimes staggering gifts from many places and people, with some leftover to give away.
The Enemy, the World, and the Flesh have been hard at work in all this. Discontentment, discouragement, and despair lurk in the shadows. But the Lord has developed my devotional life in response. I pray far oftener, with greater urgency, and for more people and situations and needs. I read the Scripture with hungrier eyes and looking for God's character to cling to. He has exposed me in my need, and He isn't done yet. He's working in my husband too.
The brokenness of this kingdom makes me long for a new and better one, and helps me commit to bringing that kingdom here and now through the surrender of myself to its Good King and his Word and will.
And the friendship. Oh the friendship. I could not have dreamed up this sweetness, this closeness, this body. I cannot tell you the number of times I've been told we are being prayed for, even daily. I cannot count the hugs that have been given to me that impart so much of the affection of the giver. Nor can I even begin to recall all the instances of being beheld by soft glistening eyes and of the bestowing of comforting words. Thoughtful gifts to remember our loss, the packing of our apartment by our people as I watched helpless from the couch, the long hours others have spent listening as we've poured out our broken hearts. I have never been so well known and so sought out and so deeply and tenderly loved and so faithfully served as I have been in the last 21 months.
God hasn't taken away our suffering. But He has been in it and with us through every bit of it.
"As they go through the Valley of Tears, they make it a place of springs." Perhaps all the tears of all this sorrow is part of how the old dry ground of the broken kingdom is transformed into the rich fertile planting grounds of the new kingdom.
