Black. White. Grey.

I feel like a bad tomato mama, my poor seedlings are dying off. Each morning I am greeted by a new deadling. I even planted a couple of them outside today during the break of sunshine to see if they can make it on their own; clearly I am not doing a good job! I know you're worried, so I'll keep you posted!

Since this weekend's retreat and the revelations I was excited to put into practice, I have felt the heaviness of the enemy on my heart. It has been a constant fight to take the lies he is humming and replace them with the shouts of truth - I have made time to sit and reflect on scripture each day since and I love it!



In other thoughts...I know it is only natural to still feel sensitive about our miscarriage but right now it feels like something I am coming to God about daily for healing and comfort. My community here in Seattle as well as further afield seems to be blossoming with new babies. Each morning I feel the need to take a deep breath as I check emails and facebook preparing my heart to see "we have an announcement" or "I have a secret" because as happy as I want to be for my friends and family, a part of my heart just feels so sad as I remember what we have lost. I am not just in a place of grief for us but I am also mourning being the friend I want to be. I struggle to celebrate. It doesn't come with out some effort. I need to step away, take a breath, process, grieve and then can come back to the table bringing with me a genuine joy. Until the next email hits my inbox, and it starts over.

I love to see friends bellies swelling with new life, but I am also sad that my belly just swells with cookies! (I am sad about that on many levels, and am a little mad at 30 for the way it changed my ability to eat what I want without consequence!)

I have known grief before, I lost grandparents and some friends. It was so sad, and hard but it was very different to losing our pregnancy. This time something was taken from me, literally. My grief is not only for the pregnancy, but for the opportunity to be parents to this child. I am not in floods of tears every day anymore. I have whole days when I barely think of what happened but I do carry this loss with me and it is waiting to come to the surface when I least expect it. It can be the strangest things that trigger it.

I am starting to understand what I have heard other women talk about, the feeling and heaviness that my body failed. The burden of responsibility over what happened, was my shower too hot? That weight hits like a punch in the gut. The yearning for a do-over is unreal.

It's not even simply about fear of not having another baby but its the sorrow of not ever knowing this particular child. I trust that God designed our bodies well and I know that some little cell balls don't turn in to fully fledged babies because of chromosomal abnormalities. I understand that, but we don't know for sure that's what happened.

I am not here to dwell on this sad event, simply to journal some of the day to day scars it has left.

I continue to pray for healing and I fight for joy to celebrate the new life around me. It is such a beautiful thing. I am learning to find the grey area in life. The place where you can be genuinely sad and yet also truly happen in the same moment. I am a black and white kinda girl by nature and as hard as it is, I appreciate the way God is smudging those lines in my life.

I think this could be one of those moments, in simple form. As I end this blog the tear on my cheek is real but I smell the chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven, and I look around my beautiful home, the sun shining through the windows, and I am happy to be alive. I am keeping eyes wide open to find these moments in the circumstances of life. They are the places we learn and grow, they are what transforms us and they are what brings us life.