Feeling Full in the Desert, a Prelude to Lent

I have been thinking about Lent, Jesus in the desert for 40 days.  He must have known to some extent the 40 days was just a period of suffering.  He must have known the ups and downs of his life, death and resurrection lead to glorious victory, however, sometimes I wonder how the Son of God handled being alone, suffering, and without.  I know my life experience is nothing to compare with life in an actual desert.  I have to deny myself certain foods for Lent because I am becoming dependent on them for emotional comfort.  So I by no means want to say that dealing with infertility and all the emotional/hormonal issues has any comparison to the Lord's 40 days, death, and persecution. 

I do however feel like I have been in my own metaphorical desert.  And starting the Lent season when you already feel like you have been wandering alone for the last 8 months, doesn't motivate me the same way it used to.  Lent to me used to be a challenge to show my faithfulness in a fun way.  I would add some devotionals into my life, stop eating sugar, maybe give up soda, and then gleefully go about my life.  I think our "first world edition" of Lent is often that way.  Give up a tiny idol from our alter and joke about missing it for 40 days.  But what if before those days, God allowed many of those idols to already be destroyed?  What if you come to the desert already thirsty?

I have been hungering to feel God in the midst of all of this loss and pain.  Last week's fertility appointment led to us delaying our fertility treatments due to two large cysts discovered on my right ovary.  I was so hopeful that Chris and I discerned the right thing.  See a month ago, I went alone to my first visit back to the fertility doctor who treated my endometriosis before having KK.  A talk of fertility medication was discussed but not decided on.  In talking with my sister, we discovered that the $1500 medication that I needed to purchase for these treatments was the same one she used.  And ironically there was a full unused dose of it in her refrigerator.  Insurance had paid for it last year and it was still good to be used.  It left Chris and I with very little expense to try this route and the prayers we had been lifting up felt answered. 

Then at church, they asked for an offering.  We decided to give the $1500 to the church because here we felt we had an answer about using the medications.  I felt so hopeful last Sunday, and so hopeless by Monday afternoon...

It's not that the situation is hopeless.  There are two walnut sized sacs sitting in my right abdomen keeping us from getting pregnant the last few months.  It explains why I felt crazy, oily, hormonal, crampy, and even pregnant at times in the last few months, but it is a road block for our family growing.  I never realized just how much I could want something until I got pregnant with Kaylie.  When I found out I was having a healthy baby girl at 20 weeks, my heart opened and exploded with love.  And now all I really want out of this phase of my life is to continue to create more of that love.  It's a hunger like nothing I've ever known before.  I am so hungry...

And then I realize this is only a taste of what Jesus experienced.  Because He knows my brokenness, and yours, and everyone elses, He carried that burden and died to redeem it.  If we even know just a hint of Jesus's life and the Gospel is true, our suffering is a mere grain of sand to the emotional and spiritual warfare that He endured for us.  And not only am I humbled, but I am on my face in reverence.  I am quiet with my prayers for a moment.  I have one area of brokenness in my life, but God has endured them all. 

I realize in day 2 of Lent that there is a purpose to this suffering.  Hind sight will be 20/20.  These days of hunger and fasting do in fact show our faithfulness, but sometimes our Lent season is not one we create, it's one created for us.  And I am trying my hardest to not get tempted in the desert to go back to my old idols for comfort, but sadly, I have started to realize that I am going back to them, all the time, every day because for a moment they provide a tiny bit of joy.  I have gained 25 pounds since my miscarriage.  I am back to what I weighed after I had KK, and it crushes my heart.  Because it is a physical symbol that I am hurting and looking for comfort in physical things.  It's the reality that the effects of that comfort are only temporary because for the last 8 months I kept going back and back for more and more of it each day.  Yet, it has provided no real comfort or joy.  It's effects are fleeting but yet, I surrender to the more and more as time went on.  I would have moments where I regained control, but then another hard day would hit and I would "reward" myself with food for "making it through the day".  And I kept growing larger and larger.  Now my post pregnancy pants are tight, and I humbling ask myself in the mirror, "when are you going to realize that this isn't working for you?"  It's not peace, it's a distraction to coming to God.  I need a desert.  I need to be stripped of this comfort.  Because if one things goes wrong in my life, and I can't come to God with it, then what is my faith really consist of?  Am I only going to truly experience you when I get my way?  Am I only faithful when I am full?

So now I have decided that for Lent my journey is to think about that.  I have stripped away those comforts, added in self care, but mostly, I have tried to start turning to God for that hunger.  I have started once again to surrender my sin of over indulgence and tried to lift up my hurts rather than eat them up.  And so in a sense, I am doing whatever one else is, "I am giving up carbs, processed food, coffee creamer, milk, fried foods, sugar, pop, and flour", but what I am really giving up is my earthly security blanket.  I am trading my sorrows for God's peace.  Because if I learned anything about Jesus's life is that He heals, He honors, and He redeems even the most driest desserts.  Sometimes not with what we expect, but in time I know I will get out of this desert and start to move forward.  Whether that means we have a baby or we start the adoption process or we become at peace with the one little, miraculous angel baby that He provided to us.

40 days is a blink of time if you think about it.  In the moment we can focus on what we aren't having, or we can try to zoom out and think of the big picture.  This practice of self-denial whether it be intentional or given to us is refining our faith if we allow it.  We just have to move all those easier- to-worship idols out of the way to find the real comfort, the real peace, and the real hope which is Christ.  

So fellow Lenters (if that's even a word), I hope your journey through the desert is plentiful, not necessarily in getting what you want, but finding peace with God amongst the darkest and most difficult moments.  It's day 2 and I am already feeling some fruits of that fullness. 

Breathless and Empty

And I sat there numb.  Wanting out.  Wanting to be anywhere but where I was.  And I realized in that moment that I am in this place frequently.  Like I showed up for work, an appointment, or with a friend, and I am there but I am not.  Like all the emotion is sucked out of me, and it's not that I don't care, but I don't care.  If I had to pick anywhere else I would be, I wouldn't have an answer.  There isn't this secret obsessive dream I am having where I am on a beach or in a coffee shop.  I just don't want to be here.  There is no reason to feel this weak, I just feel like the life blood has been sucked out of me, and I some how still show up, but I came in an empty shell of a body.

I feel like a shell of who I used to be, and people say they notice.  "You're so calm" or "you seem to isolated".  And those wouldn't have been words I would ever used to describe myself, alas, it's how I feel today.  Maybe it's that I am taking hormones the last few days.  Maybe it's because I am at a loss of words to describe the pain it feels to want to get pregnant but I can't.  Maybe it's the mundane of this life that I am finally getting used to.  My life is no longer a series of unpredictable home visits or McDonald's trips with inner city youth.  But some how I highly doubt that even if I were in the thick of adventure that I would feel like myself. 

I dread the lime light, the effort anymore.  I have been content to maintain my life at this point, but yet, I yearn for something more.  And I don't think that it's because I don't have a good relationship with the Lord.  I don't think I am clinically depressed.  I don't think I am falling apart or in need of something, but I am just different.  I am just empty.  I can put on a face and run the show, but I have struggled to find my joy lately.  I have struggled to be content.  I look at those cute little baby pictures of Kaylie and I am remembering those moments in the hospital where alone I fed her and listened to Adele while Daddy slept on the make shift bed. Those moments where I kissed her super soft little head and smelled that new baby smell.  Those snorts and short breaths that only come from babies were the only conversation we had.  Becoming a mother was like making a dream come true.  But as all mothers say, the time goes by so fast.  I look at my dancing, running, talking little person and while that love is still there, there is a longing to fall in love all over again.

Last summer, I heard that fast paced baby heart beat on the ultrasound and my heart jumped with joy.  I was scared and nervous to have two babies, but it felt like my dream life was continuing to unfold.  Marry a wonderful man, buy a house, adopt a dog, have a child, and start my practice.  It was like everything wonderful continued to unfold into my lap and I sucked it all up knowing each and every day was a blessing.  It just felt like pure abundance and it was so much happiness. 

To lose that, well, it was like the wind stopped blowing and the life of the room was sucked away.  And even when I think of it still, I have to catch my breath.  Because after so many moments of joy, I had forgotten what sorrow felt like.  And now, here I am, day 2 of some hormone pills and it all slams into my head like a distant memory coming alive again.  Yesterday was my baby's second birthday and she is a a beautiful edition of that tiny little babe I fell in love with two years ago.  I miss her snorts and that high pitched newborn cry.  And while I was so very intentional about enjoying every moment of her infancy, I still can't help but grieve that my plan of having another has not come to pass yet. 

I know I am not hopeless.  I know that months from now, this blog could be just a blip in time, but today, filled with progesterone, I am some what of a sappy, quiet, broken mess.  Quiet and still because I feel like how can I grieve when I have so much to rejoice over?  None the less, I grieve.  None the less, I feel like something is missing from my heart, all while knowing my heart is full.

So I guess I just acknowledge my hurt and my joy.  I guess I just remember and hold tight to what I know to be true.  I guess I stop ignoring the hurt and just hold on to it.  Not because by holding it that it helps, but because by denying it, it's also not helping.  At least then, I stop feeling guilty for not having it all together.  At least then I know that I am just sad because I lost something I thought I had.  While it doesn't mean I won't love again, and it doesn't mean that I don't love now, it means that I acknowledge that love that was starting to form just from hearing those little heart beats.  And whether that heart be a person, a soul, or just a group of cells that lived momentarily, I still experience those moments of emotion where they were something.  It's a moment I hope I get to experience again, that joy and fear all at the same time.  Because being a mother is the greatest gift, the greatest joy, and yet also the greatest sadness I have ever had. 

I know some of my momma friends who are right there with me.  Maybe their grieve is expressed differently, but it's powerful.  It's draining.  It's a longing.  It's a lament to God for a chance.  It's the longing my single friends passing the 30 year mark press on through.  It's the moments where you realize your parent is still dead, or that you failed a life long project.  It's a failed marriage or the reality that you messed up big.  It's raw loss.  It's powerlessness.  It's meager hope.  It's empty.  It's a vessel that you feel you become in those moments where the thing you're missing grow in significance.  It's the moment where you can't breathe.  It's wishing you were any where but no where at the same time.  And it's realizing that you have to keep moving, or you'll stop.  So you wrap up.  You put it back into a box, on the tallest shelf of your heart.  I had a moment of grief, but now I go back to life.  This is the depth of myself that no one sees, but it's always there.  Too painful to visit for very long, so I am going to tuck it back away again.  Until that next breathe returns, I grieve, I listen, I wait for God to come back in and fill that empty me with his Spirit.  Help me Lord to be filled...