sydney's grace...

i had to sit 45 minutes in the chiropractors office this morning with liam, good times. i sat across from a pregnant young women who could have passed for me and as i sat and awkwardly, i am sure, stared at her belly, another young pregnant women came out from the back of the office, again, almost the spitting image of me....brown hair...tee-shirt and jeans and flops, messy hair up atop her head..freaked me out, made me feel like someone was playing mindgames on me...smile from ear to ear...waddling and sashaying her way to the door....i remembered being her...i remembered carrying my sweet angel that way, that largely and getting teased about, "wow, when are you due?"....i started crying at the first sight of the one across from me and then without being able to catch my breath the other one sneaks up on me and i am pouring tears.....flaming mad, angrily bitter and cussing inside at God for taking my little girl from us....for stealing my joy away that i saw on those girl faces...i had flash backs to being just like them and then flashbacks to this weekend as ian and i wept together at saying "goodbye" to sydney in front of our friends and family....i had flashbacks of liam asking and crying for his baby sister two nights ago and wanting her here with him...i had flashbacks of being the pregnant women i see walking the neighborhood all the time now...i had flashbacks of many appointments of hearing her strong healthy heartbeat....and then reality. these women have life inside of them, i don't. and i can't. not right now at least. ian and i have set up an appointment a month from now to meet with a new specialist and get a second opinion and weigh our options...but as much hope as that should bring us, it just reminds me that we are doing it because she is not here. and i feel like i am betraying her...passing her up and moving on....trying to cover her up with a new possible set of dna.....and the fear of another dead child in my arms is too much to grasp at most times and gives way to a fear of not wanting to try that again....if the outcome will be the same.

i leave the office and go to the store. i am followed (it seems but i know she is just shopping with her friend) from aisle to aisle by a young latina teenager who is bursting with life inside of her, listening to her complain about her doctors appointments and vitamens that she has to take as i scan over the juices and whole grain bread. i see her running around one aisle as i wander down the next one...so carefree, so naive with her age it seems as to the massive blessing she is carrying within her...i cannot judge her or know any different but this is my first guess with any teen i see that is pregnant....it wasn't a blessing to them i am sure when the first stick turned pink....i hear her say how worried she is about not fitting in her clothes anymore...it seems that my friends who are pregnant now around me don't have the super powers that these other brick throwers have...it must be because i love my friends and know their stories and we want them to be blessed...these painful bricks seem to come from strangers, usually-not always, but usually it is the women i don't know, who don't know me, whom i pass by in the store or cross paths with at a doctor's office....it seems easy to think of them with anger because i don't know them...the ones i do know, i can't be angry with because i love them.....it still hurts but i hardly look at them with bricks in their hands....

i check out amidst more tears and liam whining for food bc it is in fact lunchtime and i am a bad mom for taking him then, i think to myself....i make my way out of the store and have to get around a young mother with her newborn baby girl who is getting a little kiss under her pink blankey from her mommy as she makes her way through the doors....another brick thrown at my heart, assailed into the depths of my soul....where the hell do all these bricks come from and why, on God's green earth, do i have to keep dodging bricks like these? why do i have to endure this same loss every morning, again and again?
my thorn? yes maybe..but it seems cruel that so many women have to feel this way, every damn day....i know you were looking for positive uplifting great things from my weekend, right? that our beautiful service for our beautiful daughter would have left me with beautiful peace....i wish i could say that....i am sure that time will come soon...for now, i feel like i am stuck clinging at her "proverbial" gravesite, unable to move forth in this life without her, like i am sitting with my hands sifting through the dirt in the ground covered in tears as so many parade around me with the life that "won't be taken" from them as i mourn the one that was taken from us....i am having a couple of bad days. it's fine. this will be my lot, my thorn for as long as i live....i get that. but today, i left my house...tried to "accomplish" and "multitask" and "do my job as mom and housewife" and i came home with 4 bricks jabbed in my side and i can't breathe. it makes me not want to leave the house, it makes me want to hide from life, from others, especially "others" that don't get it, or get us and our "crap" right now....it makes me want to become a hermit or move to an island...but God called me to live an abundant life that bears fruit and witness.. to His love and grace and Truth, He gave me Life everlasting and in return i need to find a way to live it....this life...good or not, whole or broken and not hybernate from it or piss it away with regret and ungratefulness...

i am working on it....i just need to put on my Armor more before leaving the house i guess....but for the rest of this day at least, you can bet...my child is napping, hot tea is steeping, a blanket and a good book are waiting for me....chores tossed to the side...dinner being cooked for me thanks to my slowcooker...and not a pregnant women in any square feet of the this house to haul bricks at me.....for just this afternoon, i will feel safe and try to reconnect to where i am supposed to be, plug back in to where i should be and just breathe.....and only a mommy who has been in my shoes will know of my heart and my cries today and all others might probably be offended and that's ok...their world spins differently than mine and i do not speak for them...i speak for the mommy who had to endust or pledge her child's urn this weekend instead of getting flowers for mother's day from their little one, i speak for the mommy who had to visit and decorate her child's gravesite marker this weekend instead of join their little one for a bike ride....for the mommy who had to endure baby dedication at churches on sunday on mother's day while she secretly or loudly wept in her pew with heavy tears holding her angel necklace or locket with her angel baby gracing the inside metal...instead of being able to join the other young families up front...

if i am to be made perfect in Christ, if i am to become Christ-like in my trials, it will be through our shared experience in suffering like His right? ..ian and i are trying make sense of what we do now...for us, the 6 month mark is approaching and yet we still hear that doctor telling us he is sorry as he touches my shoulder with regret...it is still new for us...feels like yesterday...so many questions, so many tears...i know where i am to Look for my Truth and i shouldn't be led astray with my emotions and feelings...but it is what it is, that's where i am at today. i miss our daughter terribly and i can be sad and hide from bricks right now if i need to...