Buried!

That pile of envelopes on my table is the orders I mailed out yesterday! I sent out 24 packages yesterday... and today I've got another "work day" so hopefully I'll get caught back up to a sane level soon. Busy season making bows... my "love-hate" relationship with them has been mostly "love" recently; I've been doing better with keeping the balance by trying to restrict my "work time" to early mornings before the kids are up, leaving me freer most days to resolve things early in the day so I have more space to really be present with my family. I also take 1-2 "work days" weekly so that I have some real dedicated time to work on my business. I never really thought life would take me where I had essentially a part-time job working for my own self. But this is where we are right now, and I am thankful for the outlet, for something that makes me feel the sense of significance as an individual that tends to get buried under the overarching "mommy" role. It's also, admittedly, nice to feel successful at something in a time when a lot of our thoughts, money, time seem to revolve around attempting to resolve this big failure that I'm dealing with.

I was thinking about it yesterday (ha! I think about it every day)- and I think that what I really deep down in my heart desire is just to be healed, whole again. I don't feel like it is so much about a baby anymore as it is about just not wanting to be broken. Physically- what is hardest for me is to look around at others (I just about broke down in church on Sunday when they had a baby dedication!), see the vibrant pulse of life within them or wrapped in blankets in their arms- and feel that my own physical reproductive potential is so compromised that it will take a true miracle for me to ever know what that is like again. No guarantees; I could be completely reproductively finished at 30 years old (28 in fact, because that's how old I was when Nora was born). I grieve over the loss of that internal hope that my body possesses what it needs to nurture and promote life.

But when I get down to the real "stuff" underneath, I realize that the physical is only the surface- it's an avenue that God has used to enlighten me to the brokenness in my heart. Feeling so powerless physically makes me realize how much I depend on my own self- my intelligence (ha!), physical capacity, finances, plots and plans to make life turn out like I think it should. I think I had to really get down into this place of brokenness to realize that what I need is not a baby to hold in my arms to make everything all right again and prove that I'm not broken.  What I need is for God to do a miraculous work in me to put me back together again, to seal the broken places together again so that I can be complete, whether or not He ever does answer the prayer I repeatedly pray. I don't want to walk through the rest of my life, dreading and surviving announcement after announcement from the people I love, each one sending another dart of shame and sadness, as if to say "Ha! See, other people are "normal." Other people's bodies work the way they were supposed to. Too bad yours doesn't, and there's n-o-t-h-i-n-g you can do about it!" My heart needs to be whole so that it can hold joy that isn't yet my own but comes from the Lord- so I can spill His love and joy out over my friends' blessings. I need healing for my heart because it is in humility and open-handedness I will find the way to live as He wants me to. It is only in laying down my purposes for my life that I will find His, and in finding His, find the fulfillment and peace that my heart longs for.

"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight."