I think I thought wrong.
Last week was the five year mark of that blessed horrific day when I first saw her little body, first heard and saw that miraculous heartbeat flashing up on that dark screen. The utter shock, the total awe. The emotional rollercoaster ride of our Journey to Faith officially left the gates in that moment. We were barely strapped in, surely not prepared for the hardest, scariest, longest ride of our lives that we have been forced to go through.
Every time I think the ride is finally maybe slowing down, maybe going to actually stop long enough to let us disembark… it just veers us hard to the left, and that safe, solid, quiet platform again becomes a blur in the far off distance. Back to the twists and turns and a few more ups and downs.
Five years ago right now I was carrying life within me. Life filled with sickness, life filled with imperfection, but a life with her own beautiful heartbeat. A heartbeat I had been waiting for nearly two decades to hear. A heartbeat that I would be devastated to no longer hear only a few short months later.
During this “month of love” I’m supposed to be working on intentionally “loving myself” better. Love my body, love my mind, love my talents, love my gifts, love my blessings “better”. You know – love this body that has refused to look the way I’ve wanted it to my entire life, the body that has denied creating life for so many years, the body that has created and then had the audacity to take back not once, but twice. I’ve spent nearly my entire life unhappy, angry, intentionally (and unintentionally) trying to punish this body for all that it never was, all it never gave me, all it took from me, all it refused to become.
This is the view and reality I’ve just carried within me all my life. Why it’s so hard to accept who I am for “who I am” is really beyond me. Why is it so hard to just look at all the good, all the positives, all the greatness and gifts I have been given, and simply accept it with a confident, content smile? God created me for me, on purpose, no one else with my same footprint anywhere else. The humbling reality I’ve been stumbling over and over again recently … these thoughts and perceived realities of mine are probably breaking God’s heart. Which only compounds the guilt, the confusion, the anxiety of it all. (Yea I know, another blog, another time. wink)
This morning my body was weary, my heart heavy and hurting, my mind at war with itself to just get up and keep moving forward, one foot at a time, one moment at a time… I went through the morning motions. The alarm clock, the miles and muscles, the shower, the getting ready, the brushing my teeth, the putting on of my jewelry…
As I pulled out a bracelet to wear, one I wear multiple times a week (“Run the Mile You’re In” in little square letter beads surrounded by decorative black and gold round beads), it caught on another bracelet, and then another as I pulled up.
I was left looking down at this tiny little baby bracelet resting at the very bottom. Another little bracelet with white letter beads and a few round decorative beads.
The beads were light blue and the letters spelled Bailey Goebel. The baby bracelet from the hospital that was strung and put on his newborn wrist nearly twenty-three years ago at the hospital. The only baby bracelet I have.
Twelve years ago this week we got the call from the adoption agency that we had been chosen by a birthmom. Twelve years ago right now his little heartbeat was strong and growing inside the womb of another woman. I would take her baby home, she would take his hospital bracelet home.
Five years ago Faith’s little heartbeat was weak, and her sickness causing sickness within my body. We would never get to take her home, nor did they give us a hospital bracelet for us to take home.
But as I slowly reached down and touched that little bracelet, I was struck with the memory that twenty-three years ago there had another little heartbeat strong and growing inside me. The heartbeat of my firstborn son, who now stands six feet five inches tall and has been growing into one of the most amazing, gracious, giving, loving men I know. There are many days I feel I hardly deserve to have him get to call me “mom” but boy I sure do love that he does!
Gosh, twenty-three years ago… it was a lifetime ago, a whole different world ago. A different marriage, a different husband, a different house, a different set of family and in-laws, and an entirely different decade in my own state of intelligence, processing, worldly knowledge, and reality. I had no idea the road that was ahead of me, I had no idea that I should have relished those blessed days so much more than I did.
I was young, naïve, and so sure of a future I could control.
But I am not in control, #lawdhavemercy no. All of it, none of it… out of my control. It’s been a hard pill to swallow.
I remained still, possibly even holding my breath, as I held that precious little bracelet in my hand this morning, and I could feel the sting of tears in my eyes, I could feel the tightening in my throat, nearly burning me. I felt the hot, fat tears start to fall down my cheeks, settling in under my chin. I first brushed them away in annoyed angst, but they just continued to pool, and soon I found myself sliding down the cool vanity, my hand clutching those precious little beads, my head resting on the hands that were resting on my bent knees.
I cried for all I currently have, all I’ve lost, all I’ve wanted, all I’ve messed up, all I’ve done right. I cried for all my babies heartbeats and the stories and journeys of each one of them. Two heartbeats still beating strong here on earth beside me, two heartbeats inside their heavenly angel bodies.
I cried for the heartbeat created in a different marriage that would endure through a divorce and split family journey. I cried for the heartbeat that was handed to me that wasn’t even mine, that same heartbeat that went home with me but not with her, a whole other kind of grief and loss we have all gone through on our adoption journey. I cried for the lost futures, the many what ifs and never-got-to-be’s for those heartbeats that stopped too soon due to a miscarriage twenty-one years ago and a stillbirth five years ago.
I cried for this one bracelet I have, and for the three bracelets I never got. All the emotions are so big, so robust, so hard again right now. The joys, the regrets, the pride, the devastation. The mix of celebration over all these new lives coming into this world, amid the utter grief alongside all those who have also said their goodbyes to their babies far too soon.
Some days I can weather it all well, some days it’s nearly too much. Today, it's all nearly too much.
Today I am tired. I am bitter. I am sad. My eyes are burning. My heart is aching. My emotions are all over the place. Basically, I’m my typical #hotmessexpress. Tiz the season I guess. In the past I have dubbed this season as "My Ugly." It’s been a while since I've tripped and fallen hard, so I’m not all that surprised all the emotions have come again to pay me a visit and stay for a while.
Today, I allow my guard down and let this oh too familiar ache fill me and let the tears again fall. Today, I succumb to this complexity of emotions I can’t quite seem to stay ahead of or keep in check. Today, I feel all the feels and whisper that "It's ok to not be ok" mantra over and over again, willing myself to believe, willing myself to fully feel, fully accept, fully live in this pain in the right here and right now, in hopes that the sooner it's out the sooner this little visiter will decide to quietly slip away again in the quiet of the night.
But until that new dawn again begins to rise, I will not apologize, I will not numb, I will not wish it away. I will sit with it, learn from it, live from within it, and hopefully love ever greater because of it.
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