heart work.

i have had to pray a lot for grace the past week. i have pleaded for compassion and mercy for several situations i have experienced. i have tried to really move past bitterness and anger and seek the Lord's view on what i have seen. tried to see things and these people the way He sees them....

i sit in a hospital room, awaiting the birth of our son...scared out of my mind...his ultrasound picture staring right at me from across the room...my tattooed foot of our sydney's footprint staring at me as well, all the time, reminding me of what we have walked through, what we have lost....what awaits for us still in Heaven.....i ache for our daughter and worry about our son that is to come this week...i miss and worry for our oldest at home, away from his momma for two or three weeks.....i just sit here, alone a lot and contemplate life, appreciate the value of it and how blessed we are that we even get to experience it.

then i walk downstairs and see postpartum teenage girl out for her 15 smoke of the day. constantly and consistently ignoring her baby that lays in a nursery bed.

i see her another day, sitting in her hospital gown, on the fire lane gutter, barefoot smoking one afternoon, cigarette after cigarette after cigarette as i sit and watch her...so lonely looking, so lost. wondering if she had a girl or a boy. wondering what it is like to actually give birth to a live baby and just ignore it's needs so.

i overhear a nurse talking about a baby born on the floor to a mom who is an addict. the baby tested positive for drugs as well and is detoxing in the NICU. i secretly wonder and suspect it is her.

ian and i on our walk today saw a young teenage couple out in the back parking lot of the hospital, scavaging through the parking lot ash trays for cigarette butts...hospital gown still on, barefoot.....

i overhear again a nurse telling a story of a young mom who propped a glass bottle of formula on a towel for her newborn to drink from, in it's nursery rolling crib while she lays in bed and watches tv..wants nothing to do with her baby...doesn't touch it much less feed it.....

flashback to me holding my dead daughter in my arms...giving anything to shake her back to life or breathe life into her again if i hold her tight enough.....flashback to this week of me laying in this bed, dreaming out my window of a "normal" delivery and holding our son in my arms...alive and full of breath, covering him in thankful tears and praising our God for the gift of life.....

you can imagine the range of my emotions...honestly, because i am always honest here with my heart...i wanted to smack the girl i told you about earlier....not to get sense into her head, but because i was mad. i was bitter and angry. wake up, you fool. you have no idea what you have.....judging and labeling and having an awful sinful heart towards this girl and the stories i have heard....this has been my struggle this week....

yet, i prayed for the Lord to show me compassion...to show me how to pray for this couple. and my heart has softened indeed to feeling really sad for what i hear....people, lost....struggling, living so dangerously and without caution or care for life...so young...ian and i seem to be the only older married couple on this floor..everyone else seems like babies themselves....they are lightyears from where we are at or where we have been...i cannot judge. i cannot let anger or misunderstanding how they live stand in the way of loving ALL of God's people...even the ones i don't agree with. even with the ones i want to hit in the face. even the ones that seem so unlike me.....

i have begun to pray for them and their life's direction, not just for my selfish dark heart. i pray for their baby that they will take home..into their lives. and God knows what.

i pray for God to keep this anger and bitterness far from my heart...to not let my focus be changed from our main goal...and what we have worked so hard on the past two years....

ian and i have a sobering awareness that henry is not ours....that sydney was not ours either. and neither is liam. all of them belong to God...they are His children. He chose to bless us as their parents. but they are not ours to claim. i will fight for my children with a fierce mother's heart...but to fight and try and control so much lately makes it seem more like they are my property and my idols...and they are not. henry is God's child and He will do what He will with his life and ian and i prayed today in the small quiet hospital chapel to embrace and receive what ever God's will is for our son's life.....so we wait.