Wait, Pray, Hope

I finally did it. I stood in front of my entire church and told them (very briefly) my story. (Our story really - I'm not alone in this.) I totally freaked out the day before, trying to figure out what I would say and realizing that I was about to share intimate details with not just friends, but strangers and acquaintances. The verse "bear one another's burdens" came to mind, and I knew it was confirmation that I really needed to do this. No one can bear my burden with me if I don't share it.
The anxiety followed me Sunday morning as the church service got closer, but sitting in the worship and listening to the songs brought my focus back to Him and with it enough peace to steady me. I know that my voice wavered as I told them about losing JJ before we had Dune, the year we lost Anastasios, Sayuri, Tacey, Aliento, and then finally, Nima last summer.  I heard it crack as I asked them to pray that we would be granted just one more baby to keep. I felt the hope and the sadness that flowed as I spoke of my desire to come to the end of this story with heart whole, faith strong, and spirit resting in Him whether we were granted a baby or not.
They surrounded us and covered us in prayer. I felt blessed, loved, and tiny part of me healed.

Since I ovulated the night before this, it kind of felt like the perfect timing, and certainly my hopes have raised considerably. But, you know what happens with higher hopes - the harder the fall is when it happens. So with my hopes, my fears are high. I'm struggling to find a continuing measure of peace each and every day. The anxiety attacks aren't frequent, but there is a consistent background anxiety that I recognize through feeling often on edge and somewhat testy with my family. I briefly found myself frustrated with going from a place where I was ready to accept a short time with my next baby and going through another miscarriage, to a place where I was thinking about/hoping for a full term pregnancy and healthy baby and the idea of loss was shooting a bolt of terror through me. I don't need or want that terror.
Now, I'm working on seeking peace for today. One day at a time trusting in God's love, reminding myself to that I can trust that love through each day, whatever that day ends up holding. I really haven't got this down. Several times a day I have to take a deep breath and focus on his love, to bring myself back to today, to let "tomorrow worry about itself." I don't know how I will hold up through this week. I'm hoping this gets easier instead of harder, but it doesn't usually work that way. So pray for me that I won't fall apart by the end of this wait.

Physically, I feel like this cycle is different, that I'm likely pregnant, and while my husband will tell you that I've said that several times when I wasn't pregnant, the getting pregnant part has not been difficult for us historically, so there is indeed a decent chance. Of course, I'm also having the low backache that seems to have become a regular part of pms and was always a sign of an impending miscarriage when I was pregnant. But then that has also recently started coming before I've even ovulated, so maybe it's become something that I will experience no matter what the state of my uterus happens to be. There are no answers! I'm trying (and trying and trying) to not think about it all very much until the end of the week when I will actually have some idea of what's happening.

Wait with me, pray with me, hope with me, won't you?

The Fight for Rest

Figuring out all of this "rest" stuff is turning out to be way harder than I thought. I knew I needed to stop holding myself to these standards that I wasn't sure I could ever reach, but what exactly should my standards be? I mean, I need some, right? I can't just sit around all day, call it rest, and be happy with that life, as appealing as that sounds a lot of the time.
As I'm trying to figure out how to make a restful life without simultaneously feeling like a lazy ass who never does anything, it occurs to me that it's not truly rest if you haven't worked, if you have nothing to rest from. I know! Epiphany! So after I get past feeling slightly ridiculous that this is just occurring to me, I can process the fact that I need to work at my life, to live with purpose, to put in effort, and then rest will be truly restful.
Figuring out my current purpose is not too difficult. I'm at home with my son, which I believe is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Teaching, guiding, and building that relationship is possibly (probably) the most important thing I'll ever do. The difficult part is figuring out how to do that. What is this supposed to look like? I have this idea in my head, but it's the one that stresses me out, making me feel like I'm just never going to get this right, this life style that I'm just not sure I have the ability to accomplish. You know, the shiny family in the shiny house, where the mom has done her prayer time, her run, her shower, and gotten everyone fed and dressed by nine when they all sit down for a morning of school work, with an afternoon of  "fun" stuff like science experiments and all the children (it's always multiple kids, you know) playing nicely together outside to look forward to. She also does all the cooking and makes most things from scratch.
Even though I'm trying to get our mornings trim and smooth, it still takes me until around eleven to get all of that done, and my kid doesn't even get dressed. Our days don't have a schedule, or routine, or even a decent rhythm really. Bug spends 50-75% of his day on the computer watching things like toy reviews and Power Rangers on YouTube. Some days that number is more like 90%. I often get to the end of the day and wonder where my time has gone and how I didn't manage to get anything accomplished or spend any real time with my son.
So, I need a new frame work, a new picture. I want more than we've got, more than this feeling of skimming the surface of every day, floating through them never really getting anywhere, and I can't keep putting that "perfect" ideal on myself. It's only real result is to make me feel like I can't get it right, and emphasize the "I'm a failure" days that come occasionally.  I know that I need something that works for me, for us; a flow and structure that suits our personalities, that plays to our strengths. I need to find our ideal life. And this is where I'm finding some of the difficulty.
I used to have a pretty good idea of who I was and what I was good at, and of course some of that stays with me and continues to be true, but that was before I was into this role of mother. I don't know who I am as a mother. I don't really know where my strengths are, how to use my personality and spirit to our best advantage. I don't know what kind of lifestyle is ideal for our family, or what will help us flourish and bring purpose to our days. I know with just one four year old, I'm a relative newbie to mothering, but you'd think I'd have some idea at this point.
So I'm struggling to figure this out, to take tiny baby steps forward. I'm wrestling every day with trying to identify myself, to see where we are doing ok, where we need work, which step of change I can make today. I'm nervous, scared really, because often change isn't lasting around here, and what if it all falls apart in a week, and I just feel like a failure again? What if I never really figure this out, and we end up wasting every day, letting it slip through our fingers, until I look back and realize years of our lives have gone by simply vanishing into nothingness? I'm definitely a little bit lost (and freaking myself out right now), but I'm still in the fighting stage, and all I can do is pray that I will keep fighting until I find some solid ground to pull us up onto. I have a lot to figure out, to learn, discern, and I feel like I'm wading through muck and fog searching for light and dry ground. But over the fear I have strength, perseverance, and hope.

Both Resting and Trying

I've never been big on new year's resolutions. They always struck me as a bit ridiculous and I've never seen anyone actually carry them out. I never had any desire to set myself some vague or impossible goal that would leave me feeling like a failure in a few weeks. A few years ago I started to see a few bloggers post about "one word." They chose one word to focus on for the year, a word to pursue or try to incorporate in their lives.
This idea is so much more appealing to me, so last year I decided to try it and chose the word "joy." I can't come out and say that it was amazingly life changing for me, but I do feel that it had a positive impact on my year and life. Especially through the season of Advent and Christmas, I felt as though my spirit was working it's way to a more present and consistent joy in my life.
This year as I took some time to think and figure out what word would fit for this year, the first one that came to mind was "peace." Seemed like a good word, but not quite the right one. So I'm sitting there, reading my bible, and the word "rest" occurs to me. In many ways, it's not that different, but somehow it just seemed like I had found the word that fit. A focus on making our home and family a place of rest, a time of trying to stop holding myself to my perfectionist standards and never feeling like what I'm doing is good enough, and consciously working on letting go of worry and letting myself rest in God's hands. Rest.

My quiet spot

I know there is a lot in my life that will intertwine and weave through this word, but I think it is going to be especially fitting as Boy and I have decided to dive back into trying to conceive. We've decided to give it our all, to "actively" try to have a baby. We know that this will likely bring more miscarriage and loss into our lives, and I feel somewhat sad about that, but strangely not anxious. I feel like I can handle it, and I'm "resting" in allowing God to plan our family even though that may mean that our family expands only through children we won't get to hold for a long time. But this year, this year is it. Even if I manage to be restful and non-anxious about this, we know that ttc will bring a certain amount of stress and turmoil to our lives. Boy and I agreed that one full of year of all in is where it's time for us to stop. Unless something big changes between now and then, we don't feel it would be fair to keep doing this any longer than that. If there is no baby/on the way at the end of the year, we figure out how to grieve the loss of a bigger family and simply enjoy the family we have already been blessed with.
So, here we go. One year of learning how to rest in God, to create rest, to enjoy rest, to pursue a restful spirit, and to try, hope, and pray for a baby.